Ranked choice confusion

Pity the confused San Francisco voters looking for a mayoral choice. They’re inundated with door-hangers and leaflets. Individuals and specialinterest groups are pouring big money into advertising — much of it negative — for and against candidates.

Now voters face the additional puzzle of ranked-choice voting.

Though the system was introduced in 2002, ranked choice (also known as instant runoff) remains a baffling experience for many voters.

Here’s how it works:

⏩ Voters are allowed to rank their three candidates in order of preference.

⏩ If no candidate receives a majority in the first round, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated and his or her votes are redistributed to his or her voters’ second choices. The process continues to subsequent rounds until a candidate crosses the 50 percent threshold.

Two candidates, Jane Kim and Mark Leno, have asked their supporters to mark the other contender as a second choice. It’s the progressives’ play to knock out the more centrist London Breed. Strategists for Kim and Leno are convinced that this will allow whichever candidate finishes second in the first round to leapfrog Breed into first place when it gets down to a final two.

Here is an important point to know: Voting three times for one candidate does enhance his or her chances. Doing so throws away a voter’s opportunity to have a say if the candidate is eliminated.

There is plenty wrong with this system. Contrary to the mythology advanced by the proponents, instant runoffs do not produce more positive or substantive campaigns, as anyone paying attention to this mayoral race can attest. The fatal flaw with ranked-choice voting is that voters whose top three choices do not make the final cut are effectively disenfranchised. A prime example was the notorious 2010 supervisor race in which the majority of voters had been eliminated by the final count that went for Malia Cohen.

But this is the system we have, at least for now, and San Francisco voters should understand how it works.