First, second, third -- and done.
San Francisco's ranked-choice voting system is drawing ire from elected officials on both sides of the City's aisle -- that is, Democrat and progressive Democrat -- who may soon introduced competing measures to do away with the nine-year old voting system, according to the San Francisco Examiner.
For the uninitiated -- which includes most San Francisco voters, according to Supervisor Mark Farrell, who introduced legislation to do away with ranked-choice voting on Election Day -- a voter selects up to three candidates and ranks them first, second, or third in ranked-choice voting, or instant runoff voting.
The candidate with the least amount of first-place votes at the end of voting is eliminated. A voter who had that candidate first will now have their second-place choice count towards that candidate's vote total. And so on, until one candidate has a majority.
Ranked-choice voting was an important issue for progressives, who helped pass it in 2002. But progressive Supervisor David Campos is considering doing away with ranked-choice voting, too introducing a measure to counter Farrell's bill, he told the San Francisco Examiner.
Ranked-choice voting does save the City some money -- prior to ranked-choice, the top vote-getting candidates advanced to a second runoff election, which costs money.
