By HARRY ROTH | DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION
Voters in Oakland, California, have elected a new mayor following the recall of Mayor Sheng Thao, who faced criticism for rising crime and an ongoing FBI corruption probe. Thao’s 2022 victory was due to the complexities of ranked-choice voting—which was also used this month to choose Mayor-elect Barbara Lee.
Ranked-choice voting, or RCV, comes from the left’s grab bag of bad ideas about “our democracy.” Ironically, it only makes voting harder and even disenfranchises voters.
With RCV, voters rank candidates in order of preference instead of voting for one candidate. This makes ballots longer, with many more bubbles to fill in and more complicated instructions. RCV benefits voters who have plenty of spare time and access to information.
First-place rankings are counted first, and then the least popular candidate eliminated. On those ballots, if voters ranked someone second, rankings are adjusted upwards for the next round of counting. Ballots without other ranked candidates are discarded, resulting in a decrease in turnout with each round of counting.
Of course, all this is done by computers since doing it any other way would be too slow. The counting, adjusting and recounting happens over and over until a candidate has a majority of the supposed first-place votes.
RCV advocates claim it leads to better politics and more centrist winners. But in 2022, former city councilor Loren Taylor likely would have won if not for ranked-choice voting. He was the more moderate, reform-focused candidate. Instead, the radical Thao was elected, only to be later removed.
This year, Taylor appeared ahead on election night once again, but Barbara Lee was eventually declared the winner after nine rounds of adjusting votes, discarding ballots and re-tabulation. Part of Lee’s eventual win was also due to California accepting ballots long after Election Day.
Mayor-elect Barbara Lee seems set to continue Thao’s failed policies, including gun buybacks, “violence interrupter” programs and the same “ceasefire” strategy as her predecessor. Basically, she’s going to ask criminals nicely to stop shooting and robbing quite so many people in Oakland.
Months before the election, Barbara Lee returned thousands of dollars donated to her campaign by a family linked to former Mayor Thao’s corruption scandal. Barbara Lee was also one of the few prominent figures that publicly opposed the recall of Sheng Thao.
Oakland has become a case study in the failures of RCV. Does it lead to moderate winners? Absolutely not. Does it make politics kinder and gentler? Lee’s allies spent the final days of the campaign trying to tie Taylor, a long-time Democrat, to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, while Taylor’s allies were pointing out Lee’s ties to Oakland’s corruption scandals.
RCV has even led to a failed election for the Oakland school board. Voter mistakes on their RCV ballots were compounded by a computer programing error by county officials. These RCV failures went undetected for long enough that the wrong winner actually took office.
All this highlights why some in Oakland are working to repeal RCV. Earlier this year, they announced plans to gather signatures for a petition that could lead to a vote on repeal. Oakland’s decline is clear, and it isn’t far-fetched to say that ranked-choice voting is playing a big role.
For the second time in under three years, RCV elected a far-left mayor with ties to a corrupt political family. It’s time for Oaklanders to take back their city once and for all and repeal ranked-choice voting before it’s too late.
Harry Roth is the Director of Outreach at Save Our States and Project Manager of the Stop RCV Coalition.
CORRECTION
“Oakland is a case study in the failures of ranked-choice voting.”
And Alaska is a case study in its success.
GO LISA!
Alaska is a case study of the failure or RCV
Don’t think RCV played in any legislative races last election as Republicans figured out a workaround like they did with the Peltola race. Lisa OTOH is another thing entirely. Cheers –
Re: “For the second time in under three years, RCV elected a far-left mayor with ties to a corrupt political family.”
This author needs to provide some evidence that under a different voting method, say simple plurality, a different mayor would have been elected. A voting method does not elect a candidate, the people do. It might make more sense to blame the voters for electing these corrupt mayors.
Read the article more closely. It does.
Oakland’s decline is a lesson of the liberal “ you owe me “ mentality.
Two easy examples are the Professional NFL and MLB teams that left Oakland.
Unlike other cities that realize the benefits of Professional sports in their communities, Oakland wanted to squeeze money out of the Teams in their community. As a result the Raiders and Athletics are now based out of Los Vegas. Oakland like the rest of California is in a steady decline. California is leading the nation on people on welfare and illegals. It used to be “ as California goes, so does the nation”.
Not anymore, with exodus of people and businesses from California, is symbolic of how terrible a once great State has declined. Just reach out and talk to working class people why they left California, I have. It is an eye opener on the blatant double standards applied to those who live above the poverty line and those who live below the poverty line. Most of the illegals are below the poverty line. With the voting rules in California allowing anyone to vote without any proof of citizenship, there is no short term hope for a State I once enjoyed visiting.
Leftists: That damned politician! I voted for him because he was a Democrat. Now look at the place, a total disaster!
Also leftists: Next time, I am voting for a different Democrat.