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MONEY & POLITICS | DAILY REPORT

Despite setbacks, critic of ranked-choice voting persists

May 27, 2011 | Lance Williams

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San Francisco businessman Ron Dudum blames the citys

system of ranked-choice voting for his narrow loss in a
Board of Supervisors election to a candidate he calls "a
crook," no less.
Gallingly, the winner of that 2006 campaign, Ed Jew, didnt
even live in San Francisco, investigators later found. Today
Jew is in federal prison for extorting money from
constituents.
San Francisco Department of Elections

This sample ranked-choice ballot has three

columns to indicate a voter's priority.

Perhaps more galling still, Dudum now has lost the lawsuit
inspired by his losing campaign as well.

Last week a federal appeals court rebuffed Dudums

constitutional challenge to this new elections system, in which voters rank their choices for as many as three
candidates for an office. A computer conducts an instant runoff if nobody gets a majority of the first-place
votes.

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It replaced a system in which the top two vote-getters faced each other in a runoff election if nobody got a
majority the first time around.
Dudum claimed that the system disenfranchises some voters and distorts the political process, but the high
court found no constitutional violations.
"There is no perfect election system, and our search for one would prove no more successful than a hunt for
the mythical snark," Justice Marsha Berzon wrote, referring to a fictional creature from a poem by childrens
author Lewis Carroll.
Despite the setbacks, Dudum says hes confident that voters in the city and elsewhere will come to realize
that the ranked-choice system is a terrible way to hold an election, as he puts it.
When there are lots of contenders for an office and no runoff, candidates dont get properly scrutinized and
issues dont get addressed, he says. Instead, campaigns degenerate into a high school beauty contest and
the least offensive candidate tries to win by accumulating lots of second- and third-choice votes, he says.
That may be the dynamic that unfolds this fall in San Franciscos mayors race, with dozens of candidates on
the ballot and no clear front-runner.
A great city like San Francisco should have a leader," Dudum says. "It shouldnt have the third-place,
milquetoast beauty contest winner as mayor.
The mayor should be the one who is most qualified to lead, and thats the one who wins the election, not the
one anointed by some computer program as the last person standing, he says.
The Ninth Circuit ruling was a big win for advocates of ranked-choice voting. The organization FairVote has
pushed the system throughout the country as a cure for such problems as low voter turnout, negative
campaigning and political malaise.

EXPLORE FURTHER
NEWS POST

After losing, politician

rethinks ranked-choice
voting

NEWS POST

Ranked-choice voting
complaints mount

In California, ranked-choice voting is used in Oakland, Berkeley and San Leandro as well as San Francisco.
After last years municipal elections, some voters complained about the system, saying they found it
confusing. More vociferous complaints came from losing politicians, including state Senate leader Don Perata,
who lost the race for mayor of Oakland because Jean Quan piled up so many second and third-choice votes.

RECENT POSTS

Earlier this year, a poll on ranked-choice voting by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce found that more
than half of respondents dont understand how the system works, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Bullet train bidder has history of cost

overruns

The poll, and the newspapers coverage of the controversy, infuriated Steven Hill, a booster of ranked-choice
voting. He co-authored an op-ed piece complaining that the newspaper had published negative hit pieces in
a relentless attack that was outright hostile and even sad.

Winning bid to start high-speed rail far

below estimates

He wrote that ranked-choice voting produced fair minority representation and a diverse Board of Supervisors.

Some Calif. retirement trustees cancel

Hawaii conference plans

Those reforms also have boosted voter turnout (especially among minority voters), have saved San Francisco
taxpayers as well as candidates millions of dollars, and has led to more coalition-building.

School discipline reform groups question

plans for armed security

But the Examiner, the citys other daily, has also expressed foreboding about ranked-choice voting and the
mayors race.

Oakland school district mishandled federal

money, state finds

With hordes of candidates to choose from and no clear front-runner, a majority of voters will be unhappy with
whomever is declared the winner, columnist Melissa Griffin grumped recently.

POPULAR TAGS

The 2010 election also converted a former ranked-choice advocate into one of the systems staunchest foes:
Tony Santos, former mayor of San Leandro.
Santos, who was unseated by a narrow margin, said the contest made him realize that many criticisms of
ranked-choice voting are spot-on. Now he is spending his retirement trying to dissuade officials from expanding
ranked-choice voting. Recently, he lobbied on the issue in the state of Hawaii and in Fort Collins, Col. In both
locales, plans to begin ranked-choice voting have been sidelined.
He said he played no role in the systems greatest recent setback: In a referendum, British voters rejected the
system for parliamentary elections.
Im really counting on San Franciscos mayors election to be the death knell of ranked-choice voting, Santos
says. Youre not going to end up with a majority winner no way can you get to it."

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The present field is 32 (candidates)," he says. "Its really a morass. Theyre going to have a helluva time just
counting the votes.

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Filed under: Money & Politics, Daily Report
Tags: Ed Jew, instant runoff, ranked-choice voting, Ron Dudum

Comments
Comments are closed for this story.

Good4Rcv
June 1, 2011

Dudum was the fourth strongest candidate in his quest to be supervisor. If Ed Jew had dropped
out or been excluded from the race, two other candidates would still have beaten Dudum, using
either RCV or paired with him in regular runoff.
It is interesting that Dudum's lawsuit argued for full-strength RCV as authorized by San
Francisco's charter, rather than the restricted version that San Francisco initially implemented.
RCV always elects the first-place candidate, the candidate with the most votes. Unlike Dudum's
preferred alternatives, RCV doesn't stop counting votes with the job half done.

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