San Francisco’s current system, approved by voters in 2002 and put into effect in 2004, allows voters to rank up to three candidates for each elected office. Those with the lowest vote totals are eliminated and their second- and third-place votes are reassigned until someone has a majority of the votes.

A charter amendment proposed by Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell sought to scuttle ranked-choice voting and replace it with a primary and runoff system, while another measure proposed by Supervisors David Campos and John Avalos sought to make minor tweaks to the current system.

Neither proposal will go in front of the city’s voters in this June’s election though — supervisors voted Tuesday afternoon to table the runoff system proposal and send the other one back to committee for further analysis.

KCBS’ Barbara Taylor Reports:[audio_link url="http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d0/dZ/dV/d3/dF/ZV3F_4.MP3" name="San Franciscans Won’t Weigh In On Ranked Choice Voting" artist="Barbara Taylor"]

Campos had sought to delay a vote on his proposal, which included more voter education on ranked-choice voting and the consolidation of the city’s odd-year elections into a single year, saying it would be better served to go on the November ballot after more analysis was done on its potential effects.

Elsbernd accused him of pushing for the delay because ranked-choice advocates thought the lower turnout in a June election might not favor their proposal, and said enough analysis had been done on the issue.

“This has been in front of us for the last 10 years,” he said. “I’m not sure what more we need to discuss.”

The board eventually agreed to send Campos and Avalos’ proposal back to committee, but not before narrowly voting 6-5 to table the runoff system proposal, in effect killing it, Farrell said.

“It’s a shame we didn’t send this to the ballot to let voters decide,” he said.

Farrell and Elsbernd were among supervisors who had argued that the current system is too confusing to voters, and that it leads to too many candidates that were hard to differentiate from each other.

Campos disagreed, saying “The system we have in place is a system that works … instead of throwing it out, we need to make it better.”

He said when his proposal goes back to a board committee for further discussion, he would consider incorporating any additional ideas from other supervisors, such as one from Jane Kim, who proposed having runoffs just for mayoral elections but not for other elected offices.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

This was St Paul’s first use of the system known as “ranked choice” and the system is being put to the test in the Second Ward, where incumbent Dave Thune was challenged by several other candidates, none of whom received a majority.

“We will drop the lowest ranked candidate — the candidate with the fewest votes — take a look at those ballots again, determine if any of those voters made a second choice, or a third choice and so on. And then reallocate those ballots to the remaining candidates” said Ramsey County Elections Director Joe Mansky.

That recount — and selection of a winner — is scheduled for Monday.

NewsRadio 830 WCCO’s Steve Murphy Reports

Download: ranked-recount-wrap.mp3|titles=Recount%20In%20St%20Paul's%201st%20Ranked-Choice%20Race

The SF elections department on the night of the election will only post the number of first-place votes that each candidate got in the ranked-choice voting system.  This being the case it will be nearly impossible to fortell the final numbers for the election and positions, which leaves us a tense waiting period.

According to the Bay Citizen, only about 80-90% of the votes will be counted on election night anyways.  The votes counted the night of will be poll-place voting and mail-in votes sent before election day, provisional ballots as well as the ballots sent in by mail on the day of will not be counted until after election night.

Ranked choice voting will be run three seperate times, on 4.pm Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday after the voting is complete.  Officially the election department is not required to reveal anything to the public before Dec. 6, although news outlets may announce results before that date. The department of elections is required to recount %1 of all votes by hand to verify machine accuracy.

So although the election is upon us very soon, quickly will come the dead space in which bot hvoters and candidates must anxiously wait as the official side of business is taken care of.  So while we may all be excited and pumped for the political action, like many things in politics it will take quite a while for any actual results to be posted. I don’t know bout you, but I am not looking forward to that wait.

Ranked choice, or instant runoff voting has been used in San Francisco elections for seven years now, yet some people still don’t get it, and even many of those voters who do understand don’t like it. Complaints include that it’s too confusing, and that the person with the highest number of votes doesn’t necessarily win.

Actually, the system is quite simple, insists the man who designed it, Steven Hill, who said that it spares the city from running a runoff election if no one wins an outright majority.

“We ask voters to tell us their runoff choices ahead of time so that we don’t have to come back and set up the polls a second time,” said Hill.

KCBS’ Doug Sovern Reports: [audio_link url="http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d0/dZ/d4/dG/dF/Z4GF_4.MP3" name="Some San Franciscans Baffled By New Ranked Choice Voting System" artist="Doug Sovern"]

Critics say voters should get to make a clear choice in a runoff between the top two candidates, instead of listing their second and third choices on the ballot in advance. But Hill says runoffs are expensive, negative, and have notoriously low turnouts.

“This second look that voters supposedly want of the candidates in a second election is more theoretical than actual,” said Hill. “Most voters, when you give them a second election, don’t show up.”

Despite the national outcry when second-place Jean Quan upset frontrunner Don Perata in the Oakland Mayor’s race, Hill says ranked choice works, and recent races in San Francisco prove it.

“It seems like it’s doing quite well because we have a much more diverse board than we’ve ever had,” said Hill. “People are getting representation and saving a lot of money, candidates don’t have to raise money for two elections. I think the benefits of it are pretty clear.”

Voters, and candidates hope the results will be pretty clear in next week’s election.

(Copyright 2011 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

KCBS and Chronicle Insider Phil Matier Comments:
[audio_link url="http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d0/dX/d2/dE/dK/X2EK_4.MP3" name="Ranked Choice Voting Requires New Campaign Strategies" artist="Phil Matier"]

In ranked-choice contests, voters list their first, second and third choices. If no candidate wins more than half of the vote, last-place candidates are eliminated. Then second and third place votes from those ballots are redistributed until a candidate takes the majority.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports 55 percent of those who responded to the poll said they didn’t know whether their vote counted once their top three choices were eliminated.

Ranked-choice was adopted to get rid of costly runoff elections, and backers say it encourages greater voter participation since turnout for runoffs tends to be lower.

San Francisco has used it since 2004.

Opponents argue the system allows candidates to get elected with an extremely low number of first choice votes.

Voters start to ask more questions about ranked-choice as the number of names on the ballot increases, according to KCBS and Chronicle Insider Phil Matier. Ranked-choice also requires new campaign strategies, he said.

(© 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Now I’m not happy about this, at all. But I can deal with it.  I’ll have to, 47% of Torontonians liked Ford’s populist message enough to make him mayor.  In our democracy 47% is a lot of support.  You can usually win with anything over 45%, that’s how our system works and he won fair and square within that system.

Some people are twitter are saying they’ll leave town, move to Vancouver, or Calgary!, because Ford will be ruining our beautiful city. That’s just nonsense and it needs to stop. And so do the fat jokes for that matter. Ford can only achieve all his crazy goals if we let him.  He will get to pass some of his most important promises, involving money and car license fees… (seriously? that’s an issue? ok….whatever you say…) but he can’t single-handedly destroy Toronto, he can’t just cancel the marathon or the World Pride Celebration that will land right after his term ends.  This is especially true since a lot of the councillors getting elected are actually quick progressive. So….headline says “Conservative wave in liberal Hogtown!” yet all the progressive councillors won? What’s going on here Mark?

Glad you asked.  It actually makes perfect sense if you think about it.

Part of the reason Ford won is that there are a lot of conservative leaning people in Toronto, not a majority, but a lot, and they are perennially frustrated. Think about what it would be like to be even a right leaning centrist, a supporter of the old Progressive Conservative Party.  The ridings downtown are diverse and progressive and there are lots of them.  Whether it’s city, provincial or federal politics, they all go to progressive (l)Liberal or NDP-like or even green-style candidates.  If you’re more conservative you never get what you want at the ballot box. That’s unfair, it is, even though I don’t want Harper’s Conservatives getting a seat in Toronto, they do deserve one, maybe even a few.  But our voting system, at every level, only rewards those who are the majority in each voting district. So Toronto’s concentrated progressive neighbourhoods beat out the diluted, spread out conservatives in town every time.

However, for the mayoral election that flaw is removed. Everyone in the city votes for mayor in one riding.  So even if your support is spread thin and can’t win any particular riding, it might be enough to gain the largest number of votes across the whole city if you opponents are divided.

It’s kind of surprising it hasn’t happened before actually (does Mel count?) but Ford’s campaign had a simple message, that pushed all the buttons for fiscal and even social conservatives and they all finally got behind a single candidate.  And it turns out, there really are quite a few of them.  This was combined with a number of factors to give Ford the win:  apathy amongst progressive voters unexcited about voting for Smitherman; the significant showing of a third candidate Pantalone; the protests votes for also-ran candidates leaked support; even protest votes for Ford by people who aren’t even necessarily that conservative.  So that’s why we now have a fairly progressive council and a very conservative mayor, winner take all voting is unfair in both cases, and produced different results at different scales.

The same reasoning explains Naheed Nenshi’s victory in Calgary last week.  Progressives and centrists in Calgary must feel just like conservatives in Toronto. They found a candidate they could all get behind and low and behold, with the status-quo/conservative vote split he won the Whole Cowboy Hat.

So what we’ve seen this week is two very different cities, with very different political cultures.  But one story, the underrepresented,  political minority wins out over the expected side through a combination of splitting the ‘usual winners’ vote between status-quo and change.  In both cases this was combined with underestimating the outsider because they don’t fit the stereotype of the city which let them sneak up and gain an unstoppable momentum.  It seems surprising, but only because we like to oversimply complex, beautiful places like cities.

Democracy functioned this week in Toronto and Calgary, it functioned passably.  But these are not a victories for democracy, they are yet another wakeup call that our votes are not really respected, our voice is not really heard.

And for the record, I still love Toronto, no matter who’s in charge.  If you love it too, get on twitter and say “I #XOTO no matter who is mayor.”  Its like giving the city a big warm hug.  And tonight, for a little over half of Toronto at least, could really use that.