Ranked Choice Voting in All Elections
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is an important reform, and I will introduce legislation requiring its use in all California elections - State, Local, and Federal.
This isn't a matter of taste. Elections that don't use RCV are easier for interests to game. It butchers democracy; this is a necessary fix.
RCV is used in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro, and around the world, both here and abroad (statewide in Maine, too).
This solves many problems both with straight plurality voting that we have in local elections, as well as top two runoffs in state and federal elections.
For voters, it's very simple. Voters are asked to rank candidates in order of preference.
For a single-winner election, like this contest for State Senate, these rankings are used to simulate a one-by-one runoff, in a process known as Instant Runoff Voting.
First choice votes are counted first. If any candidate is above 50%, they win. Otherwise, the last place candidate is eliminated. Ballots that ranked this candidate first, then have their 2nd choices counted instead. This counting process repeats until one candidate has a majority. As more candidates are eliminated, the ballots who ranked them highest, continue to count for their highest-ranked candidate who hasn't been eliminated.
RCV works for multi-winner elections too. You just keep repeating the single-winner process, with each winner being eliminated.
An obvious benefit of RCV is that you can rank your favorite candidate first and help them gain traction, without worrying that you're wasting your vote, if they are not a front-runner.
How Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) Works
The Problem with Top-Two Runoffs, Plurality, etc
First, it's messy. We can even see in this election where we have 9 Democrats, a Green, and 2 Republicans on the ballot. It probably won't happen here, but in such cases, you can have a heavily-democratic district divide its democratic vote among the large number of democrats, causing 2 Republicans to advance to a top-two runoff. It's happened.
This brings us to the second problem. To avoid the first problem, party machines and insiders are forced to try to keep good candidates out of the race, so their votes don't get spread thin among many candidates. This becomes even more the case in local elections which often don't have top-two primaries. This is terrible for democracy and political discourse.
Third: Other systems encourage negative campaigning, tribalism, and us-versus-them mentality, while RCV encourages positive campaigning and discourse, because candidates still want the second choice votes of other candidates' supporters.
Fourth: It's really messy. Besides for the first problem, involving multiple parties, it's still messy when there's only one party. Are voters really represented when the biggest factor in elections is who also ran?
Fifth: It's expensive, and keeps most candidates out of the general election, where voters pay the most attention and turnout is highest. With ranked choice voting, you only need one election, not two.
Sixth: Candidates like Ralph Nader and Jill Stein either have to stay excluded from politics or risk being blamed forever for ruining America.
Seventh: Voters get afraid of wasting their vote, so it's hard for new candidates with new ideas to get started and gain traction, even if they can't win the first time.
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Even if I can't pass this on the first try, there are smaller steps I can try to take at the same time, such as legislation requiring that any newly-purchased voting equipment be capable of facilitating RCV elections, and allowing all local governments to use RCV.