Since adoption of ranked choice voting, Oakland winners earn more votes:
Of the 18 Oakland offices elected by RCV in 2010 and 2012, the winner
had more votes than the winner of the previous non-RCV election in 16 of
them. This is a common pattern in RCV elections that avoid electing winners in low-turnout June primaries or December runoffs.
Fewer voters now skip city elections:
Voters are more engaged in city elections with RCV. Traditionally, a good
number of voters skip their city elections, but that number has declined sharply since adoption of RCV. .
Candidates must treat every voter as a swing voter, and
make an affirmative case: With RCV, the strongest candidates will need
to treat every voter as a potential swing voter. In a vote-for-one
system, candidates write off anyone who is settled on another choice.
But with RCV, there is a direct incentive to find common ground with
such voters to earn a second or third choice.
Scholars find RCV has a clear impact on civility and substance:
Fair Vote is part of major scholarly study on the effect of ranked
choice voting on the civility and substance of campaigns. Initial
findings, summarized here,
suggest that RCV is having a big impact. Voters from RCV cities were
significantly less likely to report that candidates criticized one
another “a great deal” than were voters from non-RCV cities (5% to 25%)
and were nearly three times as likely to say that candidates had not
criticized one another at all (36% to 12%). RCV city voters were also
significantly more likely to indicate that they were "very satisfied"
with campaigns, and over 60% of respondents in RCV cities supported the
system.
Bay Area voters had more trouble with the first Top Two primary ballots than RCV: The huge majority of voters in Bay Area cities handle RCV ballots well.
As one measure, less than 0.4% of voters invalidated their ballots in
their first contested mayoral elections with RCV in these cities. But it
was another story with the first Top Two primary ballot in June 2012.
In that election, more than 1.5% of voters cast an invalid ballot in the
U.S. Senate primary in Berkeley and San Francisco, and more than
4.5% of voters did so in the Senate primary in Oakland and San Leandro.
Electing the most representative candidate:
There have been dozens of hotly contested RCV races in the Bay Area,
including 31 in which there was an "instant runoff" to determine the
winner, and five in which the ultimate winner trailed in first choices.
In every single election, the winner has been the candidate who defeats
all other candidates when matched against them 1-on-1.
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