Ranked Choice Voting Didn’t Change ResultsPaul Hogarthbyline‚ Nov. 10‚ 2008The SF Elections Department conducted its preliminary Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) allocation on November 7th, but it didn’t change the outcome in the four closest races for Supervisor. All candidates with the top “first-choice” votes – Eric Mar, David Chiu, David Campos and John Avalos – appear to have won, and voters unaccustomed to a relatively new system didn’t cast “strategic” votes when picking their second and third choices. The major exception was District 1, where Alicia Wang voters strongly preferred Sue Lee to Eric Mar—but there weren’t enough of those voters to change the outcome. There was no clear “strategy” in District 9, where Eric Quezada voters split evenly between David Campos and Mark Sanchez—and Myrna Lim voters in District 11 also split between John Avalos and Ahsha Safai. The latter defies ideology, but Avalos credits his campaign’s intensive outreach to Filipino voters. In District 3, ideology played virtually no role in RCV voter selections – but in at least one case identity politics did. Claudine Cheng voters preferred David Chiu over Joe Alioto, due to the emphasis Chinatown voters placed in electing a Chinese-American Supervisor. |