San Francisco election officials still have 10,000 ballots to count from the June 7 primary. As of the morning of June 16, the vote count for U.S. House, 12th district, is: Democrat Nancy Pelosi 163,456; Republican Bob Miller 16,021; independent Preston Picus 15,843; Green Barry Hermanson 13,633. As the provisional ballots have been processed, Picus has been gaining on Miller.
If Picus places second, that will be only the second time that any independent has qualified in a California top-two race, if there was at least one Democrat and one Republican also running in the primary. The first instance was in 2012 in the 33rd U.S. House district in Los Angeles County, when independent Bill Bloomfield placed second in the primary, even though a Republican and a Democrat were also in the race. In that race, Democrat Henry Waxman was re-elected.
top 2 = a nonstop perversion version of IRV.
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top 2 does ZERO about minority rule gerrymanders.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Top 2 may be a version (or perversion) of normal run-off voting, and it may if anything intensify the problems of gerrymandering. But it’s hardly a variation on Instant Runoff Voting; at most, IRV’s provision for candidate preferences could be included alongside Top 2.
Top 2 is a SHORT perversion version of IRV.
i.e. the top 2 get nominated regardless of the votes for ALL other candidates.
e.g. the top 2 may get 10 percent each in a top 2 primary.
the other 80 percent of the votes are ignored.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
The example given shows how Top 2 can eliminate alternative choices from the general election — but it has nothing to do with IRV.
The idea of IRV is to identify one candidate with majority support (at least support from a majority of those who still care after their otherwise-unpopular top choices are eliminated). It does this by letting voters express their preferences in order.
Top 2 is based on the US’s sad standard of first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting . . . it’s just that the first *two* past the post get a runoff. That could be seen as an improvement on FPTP — but I see it as more of a way to make further institutionalizing of the current duopoly seem like a reform.
I suppose one could devise a voting process combining a Top 2 system with IRV-style voting, and including some sort of threshold a candidate would have to reach to qualify for the Top 2 without looking at the IRV rankings. But it would be a Rube Goldberg-ish contraption of a combination . . . on the way to that fabled multi-round system used in Venice to elect the Doge — for five centuries!
http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf
Among the 4546 votes counted since your report,
Pelosi had 76.2%, Picus 9.7%, Hermanson 7.4%, and Miller 6.8%.
For the total vote: Pelosi 78,2%, Picus 7.6%, Hermanson 6.5%, and Miller 7.6%.
This means that Pelosi is getting late votes at about 97% of her overall rate, Miller 90%, Hermanson 114%, and Picus 128%.
Provisional votes are cast by voters who aren’t on the registration list; or were VBM voters who didn’t have their ballot with them when they went to the polling place.
Voters who aren’t on the registration list are likely to be more recent registrations. Someone who has lived at the same address for 10 years, and voted in 8 of the last 13 elections is less likely to have been dropped from registration lists. Someone who recently moved to town and misspelled the street name, and gave the house address of where they lived before, is more likely to have been placed in the wrong precinct.
Voters who had a mail ballot but had procrastinated, or lost the ballot, or didn’t have a stamp or a post office nearby, may have decided at the last minute to vote in person. Perhaps they had not planned to vote, or had been sent a nonpartisan ballot, and then heard that they could vote in the Democratic primary.
So generally these voters would be more likely to vote for a independent candidate. “I’m independent so hadn’t planned to vote in the primary, and then heard I could vote in the Democratic primary against the presumptive Democratic nominee, and Bernie is not even a real Democrat. And then if they continue to vote, will pick out an independent congressional candidate.
Among 4635 ballots counted, Picus gained 132 on Miller. There are about 8500 ballots remaining in San Francisco, so likely around 7000 in CA-12 which is entirely in the county. The yield of countable ballots is unknown. It may be that the easy ballots have already been counted. But if we assume around 2/3 are countable then Picus could gain another 130 or so and lead by about 90.
I suspect that there will be a recount.