San Francisco City Committee to Hear Proposal to Eliminate Instant Runoff Voting for Citywide Offices

On June 14, at noon, the Rules Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will hear a proposal to eliminate Instant Runoff Voting for the city’s executive position elections. The hearing is in Room 250 in City Hall. UPDATE: the rules committee sent the proposal on to the full Board, with no recommendation. The full Board will probably vote on June 26.

The proposal provides that for Mayor, Public Defender, District Attorney, Sheriff, City Attorney, Assessor-Recorder, and Treasurer, Instant Runoff Voting would no longer be used. Instead, the election for those offices would be in September. If no one gets 65% for one of those offices, there would be a run-off in November.

The proposal does not change the existing system for Instant Runoff Voting for Supervisors. Nor does it change the existing pattern of which years these elections are held. Currently, as well as under the proposal, elections for Mayor, District Attorney, and Sheriff are held in the odd years before a presidential election. Public Defender and Assessor-Recorder are elected in the even years in which gubernatorial elections are held. City Attorney and Treasurer are held in the odd years following a presidential election year.

The proposal to eliminate IRV for the citywide offices is almost ludicrously impractical, as applied to elections for Public Defender and Assessor-Recorder. If the proposal passes, San Francisco voters in gubernatorial election years would be going to the polls in June for the partisan offices, in September for Public Defender and Assessor-Recorder, and in November for the partisan elections and for run-offs for those two city offices. Voters would be voting three times in a span of five months.


Comments

San Francisco City Committee to Hear Proposal to Eliminate Instant Runoff Voting for Citywide Offices — 27 Comments

  1. IRV for single offices = T-H-E method to elect Stalin/Hitler clones.
    ——-
    34 S–M–H
    33 H–M–S
    16 M–S–H
    16 M–H–S
    99

    Save Western Civilization STOP IRV at ALL costs for single offices
    — regardless of ALL EVIL brain dead math moron IRV FANATICS
    — as EVIL crazy stupid as any gang of FANATICS in world history.

    There happens to be THE divided majorty problem in ALL elections with 3 or more choices — ignored by such brain dead EVIL FANATICS.
    —-
    P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. – pending Condorcet head to head math (but which requires *some* literacy – a now major problem in New Age brain dead regimes).

  2. BAN’s ill-thought out decade+ support of IRV, censorship of free speech and unfair elections in the Libertarian Party have really hurt the advancement of pure proportional representation (PR) reforms.

  3. BAN has been a big proponent of single-winner districts (IRV) and the perpetuation of the power grabbing egotists like Gary Johnson types that thrive on such elections.

  4. “Top one” or IRV is OK with BAN, but when it comes to “top two”, give them money so they can fight it and they’ll go asking for hand-outs.

    But if it’s “top 1000″…BAN says; “not enough room”.

  5. Gary Johnson AKA “Mr. Veto” is the poster child of plurality elections, since veto/pass is a plurality decision. If you like pluralism, you’ll love Mr. Veto.

    The alternative of course is ranked choice consensus voting. Ls aren’t for that.

  6. # 2- 14 Any Peaceful Revolution website and/or constitutional amendment petitions ???

    The brain dead media has the FATAL sports mentality of ONE winner – horse racing, baseball, football, etc. — applied to gerrymander politics —

    One Prez, one party hack robot in each gerrymander area, etc.

    i.e. about ZERO knowledge or mention of P.R. in the brain dead media in the U.S.A. — used in MOST of the civilized nations in the world –

    Germany (having some sanity in the Eurozone)
    Israel (having some sanity in the Middle East)
    New Zealand (having some sanity in the western Pacific Ocean)
    etc.

  7. Pingback: San Francisco City Committee to Hear Proposal to Eliminate Instant Runoff Voting for Citywide Offices | ThirdPartyPolitics.us

  8. @15 No petitions yet, but we need to get started on this ASAP for sure. We’ve been building the team for 17 years, and we have some pretty good players, but one petition for a united team on this matter is a good idea.

    I would like to see someone like Lani Guinier and/or the NAACP coordinate with the USA Parliament, and I will be making some phone calls today to try to find interested parties.

  9. @15 I called the NAACP, the MD & CA branches. I tweeted to Roseanne’s team, i,e, Cynthia McKenney etc., however we need to go faster.

    If anyone wants to coordinate with the USA Parliament, please contact us ASAP and as one of the five national executives, I will elect your name to the Cabinet as Attorney General Minister. Current Attorney General Minister Link K. Scwartz [Info. Not Avail.] will then become Deputy Minister.

  10. This SF proposal almost seems designed to diminish turnout so that elections are more easily manipulated by a machine that can get its loyal supporters out. It is clearly not intended to advance democracy.

    @ #1-15 IRV has been demonstrated to be the lease manipulatable election system in highly competitive elections. No voting system is perfect, nor is any best for all types of elections, but IRV is the best fit in high stakes, highly competitive races.

    PR is fine for legislative bodies, but is not relevant to single seat elections for mayor, district attorney, treasurer, etc; which is the subject of this article.

  11. @21 IRV is for single winner districts which attracts egotists and power grabbers.

    Multi-winner districts attract and encourage team psychology.

    SF is a town with eleven supervisors. For you to write that SF is not a legislative body makes absolutely no sense.

    Eleven people are elected to represent the city at-large, and PR would elect those names based on the voters’ interests whether those interests are geographical or not. PR is based on the name that receives the #1 tic.

    If you want to perpetuate a two-party system, then continue to support IRV. But if you want to see any interest group represented with as little as 8.33% plus one vote of the total votes cast, then support PR.

  12. #21 See head to head Condorcet math
    — with an Approval Voting tiebreaker, if needed
    — but requires *some* literacy
    — i.e. too difficult / discriminatory for the armies of politically correct math morons these days ???

  13. @24 Approval voting is winner-talke-all

    Check this out:

    Say three voters have five tics each for eleven city council members:

    Two of the voters puts three tics on one name, two tics on three names, and one tic each on two other names.

    The third voter spread their tics, two tics on the name that the two voters gave three tics, and the other three tics go to the name that got two tics from the other two voters.

    Results: winner takers all. The two voters elected 100% of the seats.

    In sum, approval voting is no good, it’s winner-take-all plurality voting.

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