This meant voters there didn't cast ballots just for a favorite mayoral candidate, but also made second and third choices. They ranked their choices, thus indicating who they thought they'd pick if there had been a runoff election later.
That's why ranked-choice is often also called "instant runoff" voting. If no one candidate gets 50 percent or more of the first-place votes, ballots cast for the last-place candidate are re-examined and their second choices registered instead. If there's still no majority after the bottom finisher's votes are reallocated, then the same happens to the next candidate up the list, until someone finally gets a majority.
It's unlikely and unusual for the original leader to be displaced this way, but the unlikely happened in Oakland last fall, just as it has two other times in elections for city-county supervisor in San Francisco, and the whining took months to stop.
Ranked-choice voting can deliver surprising results
via mercurynews.com
