Ranked-choice Voting: Epic Fail in Oakland.

Mayor Quan releases dove at religious conference.
The dove was reportedly killed shortly thereafter, struck by a wayward bullet
while flying over the Occupy Oakland encampment.

One year ago, Jean Quan was elected mayor of Oakland. She never led in any poll at any time during the campaign. She always trailed front-runner Don Perata in every minute of the campaign from beginning to end.

On election day, 36% percent of Oakland voters said they wanted Don Perata as their mayor. Only 24% of Oakland voters said Jean Quan was their first choice to be mayor. In prior years, a runoff election would have followed and voters would have chosen between Perata and Quan in a head to head runoff election. Not this year. This was Oakland's first Ranked-choice Voting election for Mayor. The other candidates on the ballot were eliminated and the second and third choice votes on their ballots were added to Quan and Perata's totals. Jean Quan became mayor. Oakland saved the cost of conducting a runoff election.

Meanwhile, in the People's Republic of San Francisco...

... over 2/3 of our citizenry did not bother to vote in Tuesday's election for Mayor, Sheriff, and District Attorney. Of those who did vote, many did not understand the "Instant Runoff" Ranked Choice Voting used for the first time in the mayoral race.

Before we get to the results, your loyal blogger wishes it to be known that there was something good to come out of this election season. Specifically, the best thing to come out of this election season was rediscovering The Argonaut by way of their current election edition (the image at the top of this post is from the front page of their latest edition).

The Argonaut is a San Francisco institution the dates back in various incarnations to 1877. As near as I can tell, it is published whenever they damn well feel like it. The preface to their election recommendations in this edition is a pitch perfect articulation of my loathing for this election. I can't say it better, so I won't try:

"... let us express our complete and unqualified contempt for the city’s system of ranked choice voting and taxpayer financing of campaigns – to the current (already spent and still climbing to the highest mountain peak) whistle of over 14 million dollars of taxpayer financial underwriting by a bone-broke city of candidates campaigns. Many of them had no business running in the first place – but the city’s idiotic law makes it impossible for them to drop out of the rat race because if they do the practical thing and drop out of a race they know they have no chance of winning, the prudent candidate is has to pay the city back for the taxpayer money received, which most of them can’t afford to do. But if they wait and stay in the race and go ahead and lose as everyone in town including the candidate him (or her) self knows they will. Just how stupid is that? Very."

Exactly. As noted here before, between the Ranked Choice Voting and public funding of candidates, this election was pregnant with disaster. We have no one to blame but ourlselves. As long as we continue to elect these clowns to the Board of Supervisors, we deserve the unconscionable idiocy and incompetent governance we get in return.

And now for something completely local - 16 Candidates

As a direct consequence of our new public financing rules for the mayoral race in San Francisco, we now have a cavalry charge of 16 candidates running for mayor. C.W. Nevius explains:

"It would be safe to say that many San Franciscans don't understand public financing...

Raise $25,000 and you get $50,000. Scare up $100,000 and you get a 4 to 1 match for $400,000. No wonder there are 16 candidates for mayor. It's political happy hour... this is a poor use of public funds. This is the first mayoral race with public financing and voters are learning that it allows candidates to get easy money and, in some cases, to waste it.

The weird catch-22 of San Francisco's system is that once the money is spent, a candidate can't drop out of the race unless he or she pays it back. The problem is that a 2007 change in the law made it possible to start pulling in the money nine months before the election. By the time August rolls around, candidates may be hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole and can't afford to quit."

So we have candidates who are only in the race because we the citizens of SF are paying them to run for mayor with our money. And the peculiarities of our public finance rules mandate they stay in the race in order to continue to suckle at The City's bountiful teat. But this is all fine because - you know - we in SF have a lot of extra money lying around to finance any candidate who wants to run for mayor. Why would we not want to spend $9 million of our tax dollars for the privilege of sorting through sixteen mayoral candidates? I sure can't think of anything better to do with that money.

As Ron Popeil might say - "But that's not all!" At no extra charge we will now throw all sixteen candidates into the mix-master of our first ranked voting / instant runoff election for mayor. On November 8th, all San Francisco voters will cast three votes for mayor in rank order of preference. "Rank" being the operative word in that sentence. Rich Deleon ruminates about the election and The City's progressive future in Sunday's SF Chronicle Insight: