IRV gets high
approval
IRV
wins approval: Only 13% in San Francisco want to return to runoffs
By
Matt Gonzalez
December
14, 2004
San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez released the
following news release yesterday about an exit poll commissioned by
the City and carried out by the Public Research Institute at San
Francisco State University. See the release of this study (to be
completed early next year) here.
Note that in San Francisco, IRV is now usually called "ranked
choice voting." Among the findings:
- Only 13% of respondents would like to go back to the old two-round
runoff system.
- 87% said that they understood instant runoff voting. No more than
23% of any one racial and ethnic group reported not understanding
IRV--despite the fact that a big turnout presidential race brings
out a lot of new voters and people who skip over races for the Board
of Supervisors
In addition, San Francisco State University professor Richard DeLeon
has been analyzing hard election data on Asian Pacific Americans and
IRV in San Francisco. We see his findings as extremely valuable for
rebutting the wild attacks being made against IRV by some in the
Asian American press -- fostered by a long-time opponent of IRV who
trying to blame IRV for not electing more Asians, when in fact Asian
representation almost certainly would be higher if IRV had been used
in 2000, when two Asian incumbents were defeated in low-turnout
runoffs.
Professor DeLeon's analysis focuses on the two districts (Districts
1 and 11) where there were Asian candidates and multiple rounds of
counting to determine a winner. He studies nine hypotheses that
would suggest Asian voters had more difficulties with the system. He
concludes: "Nine
hypotheses with clear predictions were tested in each district,
adding up to 18 opportunities for the available empirical evidence
to reveal patterns of data at least consistent with, if not proof
of, the arguments advanced by some critics that SF's new RCV system
systematically disadvantages the city's API voters vis-��-vis voters
in other racial/ethnic groups. Based on the evidence presented here,
the score is zero for 18." |