Ranked Choice Voting does its job.

For several election cycles, the mayor of Oakland has become the Senior Tour of California politics. Instead of giving the job to somebody from the city council, we have had retreads from Washington or Sacramento winning the very tough job by name recognition alone. First it was Jerry Brown, who did kind of okay, then Ron Dellums, who is viewed as a disaster. This year, Don Perata, formerly a President pro tempore of the State Senate and currently a lobbyist for the Prison Guards Union, easily the most corrupt union of state employees, was trying to get the gig. He spent the most money and was always the leader in the polls, but like a lot of politicians with name recognition, he had both high positives and high negatives. More than that, his name was linked with the return of the Raiders to Oakland, a move that stinks to this day of back room politics.

The ballot had ten names and a place for write-in votes, but the system now in place is Ranked Choice Voting, which I have written about before here.

Perata's money and clout gave him the first place position after the first round of voting, but those negatives were still a worry for his campaign. The completely corrupt San Francisco Chronicle supported his run, but the East Bay papers threw their support behind three candidates, a number chosen cleverly since Ranked Choice Voting lets you choose three candidates. That lucky triumvirate was made up of councilpeople Jean Quan and Rebecca Kaplan and political science professor Joe Tuman. Both the Oakland Tribune and the East Bay Express gave their endorsement to all three.

On the first ballot, Perata had a commanding lead.

Perata 34.0%
Quan 24.6%
Kaplan 21.5%
Tuman 12.4%
Others 7.6%

Because Tuman was so far behind, he had no chance to catch Kaplan, and by the time the small fry were re-distributed, Tuman trailed the Top Three by a little more.

Perata 36.1%
Quan 27.1%
Kaplan 23.3%
Tuman 13.6%

Perata still looked to have a commanding lead, but the voters for the other three understood the system remarkably well. As Tuman's votes were redistributed, the big boost went to Kaplan, but it wasn't enough to catch Quan.

Perata 40.2% (up 4.1%)
Quan 31.0% (up 3.9%)
Kaplan 28.8% (up 5.3%)

Going into the last round, Perata was still on Easy Street. If even one in three of Kaplan's supporters switched to Perata, he would be the next mayor. Instead, Quan got 75% of Kaplan's votes that weren't exhausted and ended up with 51.1% of the remaining vote. The word had been spread. If you vote for one of the other three, don't vote for Perata. He spent a boatload of dirty money and he ended up in second place.

I don't think Quan will be a miracle worker. She was in fact my second choice, but I am every bit as happy that Don Perata will not be my mayor as I am that Meg Whitman will not be my governor and Carly Fiorina will not be my senator.

Plagues on all their houses and ashes in all their mouths would be just dandy with me.

Dig up all their fields and salt the earth.

Other Biblical and Shakespearean invectives are implied.

Best of luck to Her Honor Jean Quan.

These aren't the results you are looking for.

Thought I might try a little Jedi mind trick to see if we could get a do over, but obviously the Force is not so strong in this one.

I sent $50 each to four campaigns and only one of those campaigns won. Prop. 25 passed, so now it's a majority vote to pass the budget, though it's still a two-thirds majority to raise a tax. At least it's a step in the right direction.

Prop. 19 failed, Jerry Ellis Powell did not get on the AC Transit board and in the closest run of all the losing causes I donated to, Michael Nava will not be on the Superior Court.

There is some good news. In the statewide races, the Republicans got poll-axed, with the exception of Kamala Harris whose race is still undecided. The money spent by the two Texas oil companies to thwart air pollution standards also failed, so it has not been a good year for obvious moneybag jackasses to buy an election in California.


And then there's the matter of the less obvious moneybag jackasses, which brings us to the Oakland mayoral race. Ten people ran and the top four candidates are as follows.

Don Perata 35.2%
Jean Quan 24.2%
Rebecca Kaplan 20.9%
Joe Tuman 11.9%
six others less than 8%

This one goes to Ranked Choice Voting and the computer program will be run on Friday. It's a lock that Tuman won't be mayor, since even if he's the second choice on every ballot of the six people who did worse than he did, he won't catch up to Rebecca Kaplan. This means it's clearly going to be at least six instant runoffs and it might go to the maximum of eight. If it's decided before the eighth ballot, Perata wins. Quan, Kaplan and Tuman were all seen as the anti-Perata candidates, and several newspapers endorsed all three. There is a chance Kaplan or Quan will become mayor. I would be very disappointed if Perata is our next mayor, but given what I've already seen on Wednesday morning, I'm used to disappointment.

On the bright side, did I mention the Giants won the World Series? Yes, I believe I did.

Want to know something about Ranked Choice Voting? You've come to the right place.

So I was walking across the Laney campus a few weeks back, minding mah own bidness, when a fellow steps up to me and asks if I would like the school the votin' populace of Oakland about Ranked Choice voting, also known as Instant Run-Off.

Hey, it's about combinations of stuff! It produces numbers which can be analyzed! I git PAID to 'splain stuff! What part of this is not fun, fun, fun to Matty Boy?

So this election day, I will be a Ranked Choice Voting facilitator in a precinct near my house. People will come to me confused and in need of knowledge, and they will depart in confidence that their vote will count.

I've taught the stuff to both of my stats classes and did a run through of how it might work in an election like the Oakland mayor's race, where there are ten, count 'em ten candidates.

It should be lots of fun.


Looking around the Internets for more info,I found this graphic showing how voters in Minneapolis felt about RCV.

Notice how Democrats and Independents, who we will lump together in a new category called Right Thinking People, prefer Ranked Choice Voting to a primary system by wide margins, while Republicans, who felt bad they didn't get a new category name so I will call them The Unwashed Masses just to keep them from whining, pretty much hate the idea in a nigh-exact mirror image of the Democratic numbers.

Weird, huh?

I get the feeling anything that takes more than 20 seconds to 'splain and doesn't have a catchy jingle is just not their cup of tea.

So to speak.