Thursday, November 4, 2010
County Election Results Released Friday May Be Erroneous
Politics / People Robert Gammon — Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 3:46 PM
The Alameda County Registrar of Voters plans to release preliminary ranked choice voting results Friday afternoon, even though it won’t be close to counting all the of the ballots cast in the election. And that means the results in close races in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro could show some candidates winning when they may actually end up losing.
As of this morning, 122,000 late absentee and provisional ballots still needed to be counted from throughout the county. Registrar Dave MacDonald said today that he would prefer to wait until his office counts all of the outstanding ballots before running the ranked-choice computer program and releasing the results. The program eliminates candidates with the fewest number of votes, and then adds voters’ second or third choices to the remaining candidates. However, the program can create problems if it’s run too early and shows candidates being eliminated when they shouldn't be -- because those candidates may move up in the rankings when all the votes are in. “You’re preaching to the choir,” MacDonald said after being asked whether it would make more sense to wait to run the ranked choice program until all the votes are in and counted.
Nonetheless, MacDonald plans to go forward with the premature tabulations Friday afternoon. He said that his office feels obligated to do so because it’s conducting the election on behalf of East Bay cities. And he said that the City of Oakland, particularly, the City Attorney’s Office, was adamant about doing it Friday.
But City Attorney John Russo said today that he doesn’t care whether MacDonald runs the ranked-choice program Friday or next week. “Accuracy is paramount,” he said. He also said that it wasn’t his office that pushed for the early count. It was the ranked-choice voting advocacy groups that were instrumental in bringing the system to the East Bay. Nevertheless, Russo said that he believes MacDonald should live up to his commitment to run the count as planned.
Steven Hill of the New America Foundation, a ranked-choice advocacy group that helped bring the system to Oakland, said he thinks there’s nothing wrong with running the computer program before all the votes are in. He said that the public has a right to know the status of various races now — even if the results change later.
Ranked choice voting advocates are also worried that delays in releasing preliminary results will cause impatient voters to become frustrated with the new voting system. If that were to happen, it could slow or halt the spread of the voting system to other cities.
But there’s also the possibility that voters will sour on ranked choice voting if the registrar releases results that show a candidate winning, and then that candidate ends up losing. It also raises questions of fairness as to whether the registrar should show results of candidates being eliminated from a race before all the votes have been counted.
Comments (11)
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The headline of this story ("County Election Results Released Friday May Be Erroneous") is completey misleading, there will be nothing erroneous about the results. A more accurate headline would have been "County Election Results Released Friday WILL BE PRELIMINARY," because that's what they will be. Just as the results released day after day for the Attorney General race, in which Kamala Harris and Steve Cooley are locked in a close contest that will be decided by absentee and provisional ballots, are preliminary. RCV is no different than non-RCV races in that way -- if the race is really close, then it will be decided by absentee and provisional ballots. If the race is not particularly close, then the RCV results released on Friday will provide to voters the information to know who is going to win the mayor's race with a high degree of certainty.
This article also repeats the same falsehood twice, that "a candidate [will] be eliminated from a race before all the votes have been counted." The reporter, Bob Gammon must not understand how RCV works (which is unfortunate because I spent a fair amount of time explaining it to him) because no candidate is permanently eliminated during preliminary tabulations. Each time the Registrar runs the tabulation with the new number of absentee and provisional ballots added to the previous ballots he includes ALL candidates. No one gets permanently eliminated until the final final tally, after all ballots have been processed. The preliminary tabulations are just that -- PRELIMINARY.
Ironically, this article unintentionally shows EXACTLY why it's so important to run the tabulation today (Friday) -- because more inflammatory articles will keep getting written UNTIL the tabulation is run. The media unfortunately likes to find controversy where there isn't any, that's what attracts readers/viewers. We have already seen about a half dozen of such sensationalist RCV stories from other publications, incl the SF Chronicle, the Trib and others, blaming RCV for delayed election results when it's really the result of a policy decision by the Registrar (FYI, other places that have run RCV elections have done the tabulation on Election Night or the next day. Running the tabulation is really easy to do on the voting system used in Alameda County, it takes literally a few keystrokes on the central tabulator/computer, and a minute later you have the results. The ROV could be running the tabulation and posting results several times a day, in fact).
BTW, if you want to see how the round by round vote totals are going to look, take a look at San Franciso election results from 2008, since SF uses the same equipment as Alameda Co. and outputs the same product. Check out this page: http://www.sfgov2.org/index.aspx?page=1800. Seeing the round by round elimination of candidates -- which candidates are eliminated, who their supporters' second rankings go to, etc. -- is very illuminating, as it will be in Oakland when the results are released today.
Steven Hill
www.Steven-Hill.com
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Carlos,
Those types of correlation studies were done in San Francisco, and showed high voter understanding across demographics (as I recall, at least 80% in terms of voter understanding across language, ethnicity, and income). Interestingly, in the second use of RCV, Spanish-language speakers reported the highest level of understanding (90%+).
I'll admit, education-wise, I was disappointed that the county only sent out one easily overlooked mailer, but I heard from others that they had ads playing in movie theaters and on the radio and on buses, so the impressions could be there. Moreover, the ballots were pretty clear: just rank the candidates. (PS - And why should the advocates raise money? RCV saved the city around $1 mil by eliminating an election, maybe that should have been allocated to voter ed. I don't think the LWV have many moneyed connections to draw from in the first place...)
As to people having less of a voice for not marking 2nd or 3d choices I think you are way off. By moving the election to November, WAY more Oaklanders got to participate in local elections than ever before. The increase in turnout more than offsets those who chose not to rank a 2d and 3d choice. Moreover, all RCV does is simulate a traditional runoff: are people who choose not to show up for a runoff (the equivalent of not ranking a 2d choice) disenfranchised? If you really have no preference past your first choice (or if you chose a clear frontrunner, like Perata), then there is no need to rank.
Max and all, I believe if you all did any ground work on this campaign, then you heard what I heard until the very end: "How does this RCV work?" Why were people asking this? Because the education effort was piss-poor. Compare Oakland's education effort to SF's when they first instituted RCV and you'll see what I mean. A failure in leadership to say the least. That's on the education front.
Now let's talk about RCV, in general. We're hearing that many people did not mark a second or third choice, while others did. Some people didn't know how it worked, so they didn't mark a second or third choice. Some people didn't know how their second or third place votes would affect the outcome so they didn't dare go there. Meanwhile, others marked their 2nd and 3rd place choices, so they got more voice in the outcome. Is this democracy? And did RCV really lead to a more civil discourse? I don't think so.
Now, let's run correlation studies between income/education/ethnicity/language and how many people marked their 2nd and 3rd place votes, and see how this plays out. Do any of you RCV-advocates volunteer to do this? I didn't think so--no more than you volunteered to raise the money for education.
It is what it is. Let's just be honest about it. RCV is lame.
Carlos,
I agree with Max that the decision to run the ranked choice program today is not an indictment of the new voting system, itself.
Instead, this is about the decision to run the program when there are still so many ballots to be counted, and the possibility that the results published today may be later proven to be way off.
The delay isn't an RCV problem, it's just normal delay in getting absentee and provisional ballots counted. (The 2006 Mayor's race, which was pre-RCV, had a 2-week delay for just this reason.) So far, RCV seems to me like a huge success. 1) A lot more people voted than would have had the election been held in June. 2) A lot more candidates entered the race than would've without RCV -- this was definitely a more exciting Mayor's race than in '06. 3) I appreciated being more nuanced with my vote (ranked Tuman 1, Perata 2) than the traditional two-round runoff. In terms of confusion, how hard is it to tell people to just rank their choices? The counting takes a bit more explanation, but voting is really easy so it's hard to be disenfranchised.
In regards to running the RCV count early, I'm a bit ambivalent, but I don't see much of a problem with it. As long as it is clear these are only preliminary numbers, how is this different then telling voters who's ahead in a straight plurality election as votes come in?
what's the hurry? no one takes office yet anyhow. It will be weeks till they certify the alaska election.
Carlos,
This problem has nothing to do with Ranked Choice. The problem is the inability to quickly count late absentee votes. We had 90,000 county-wide. If we could count them on time, we would have had an answer on Ranked Choice a few days after the election. We can't count them, so we don't get our results on time.
And this is precisely why the Oakland Builders Alliance came out in opposition to Ranked Choice Voting. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And we were promised by the council members who pushed RCV that education would be adequate and would not leave out those with limited English. In fact, the education effort was horrible, with a high percentage of voters unaware, through the very end, on how the ranked choice voting process worked.
The very same people and organizations that pushed Ranked Choice Voting, including the East Bay Express, run for cover when it comes time to accept responsibility for the poor job done in educating the public. In my opinion, RCV did more to marginalize voters than it did to empower them. Go figure.
Carlos Plazola
It's no more or less empty than releasing results as they're counted in the hours after the polls close.
Re the clean campaign "promise," I think it's off the table if a leading candidate decides that it comes down to just two candidates and losing extra votes won't make any difference. Probably the reference was to Perata and Quan, and we'll see soon enough if either suffers, especially Perata since Quan was arguably just defending herself.
To understand the problems with Ranked Choice Voting, all you have to do it watch this short video on what happened when new votes are found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z3zi6hQ9OI
Many people complained about RCV in Oakland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b42PLX9RTag
You can hear the Mayor of SF explain RCV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1yevviMciw
RCV just isn't living up to its many promises (like clean campaigns?)
The last sentence is inaccurate, and reflects a common misunderstanding of the RCV process. No candidates are being eliminated when the Registrar releases preliminary results. They are just running the RCV formula that shows how the contest would play out if those votes were final. The original votes don't change, disappear, get eliminated, etc. More original votes are added as the rest of the ballots are counted, and the formula shows different results. It's an empty exercise, but the impatient public, media, and RCV advocates demand it.
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