Syeda R. Inamdar:
First and foremost on our primary list of evaluative criteria is -- Did it benefit the voters? Based on that litmus test, here is what we know to date:
In the case of the San Leandro election for mayor and City Council, the registrar of voters indicated that 99.8 percent of voters cast a valid RCV ballot.
- Eleven percent more San Leandro voters participated in this year's mayoral election than the November 2006 election.
- Of the 22,484 who voted in San Leandro's mayoral race, only 55 individuals cast an invalid ballot.
- The registrar provided RCV voter-education materials at candidate forums and for many organizations upon request before the elections and on the county website. The process is not complex and apparently requires a fourth grade arithmetic level to understand how it works. The website includes a video demonstration.
Tony Santos:
In addition, I will show why RCV was ultimately a bad choice for San Leandro.It is obvious that the local League of Women Voters did not investigate the outcome of elections in San Francisco and Oakland, and they misrepresent what occurred in San Leandro. There are many reasons for not supporting RCV.It was stated in one of the bullets that "Ranked choice voting provides a method to arrive at a majority candidate without having the costs associated with runoff elections both for the candidates and the public." This is a typical talking point by RCV supporters and is simply not true.If the local league had studied the District 10 supervisorial race in San Francisco, and looked more carefully at San Leandro's mayoral race, it would have seen in both instances the winning candidate did not receive majority support. Supporters of RCV would have all of us believe this is so, but on close review, this does not occur. Look at the results. Voters cast 17,808 ballots in San Francisco's District 10 election and the winner received 4,321 votes, or 24 percent support. By the league's standard, this RCV election did not benefit the voters. I contend this is undemocratic and un-American.For Inamdar and the League of Women Voters to suggest that it takes a fourth-grade education to vote in RCV elections, that is an insult to the people of San Leandro. A recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that low-income voters struggled with ranked choice in San Francisco.Adding unnecessary complexity to a ballot is never a good idea and can have huge implications. Just ask the voters in Florida who used the butterfly ballot, voted for the wrong candidate and changed the course of history.
