S.F Instant runoff voting survives court challenge, its ok if your vote doesn't count

Going to court to challenge the constitutionality of instant runoff voting is a waste of time. Judges don't understand complex election issues and they also dislike ruling against voting systems that have already been implemented. IRV is a placebo type voting method that makes people feel better about voting for a candidate who has no chance of winning. San Francisco has used IRV since 2004 years and yet has no elected third party officials. In 2008 a SF grand jury ruled that voters and poll workers still don't understand IRV. Voters will be stuck with this complex non transparent, Incumbent Return Voting system until there is a close election with a lengthy recount or else where there is a severe miscount.

S.F. instant-runoff voting upheld
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 20, 2010

A federal judge has upheld San Francisco's instant-runoff voting system, which eliminates the two-stage primary and general elections and decides citywide races in a single ballot after voters rank their top three candidates.

A former candidate for supervisor and a group of voters argued that the system, enacted in a 2002 ballot measure, violates the rights of voters who choose only lower-ranked candidates and are disregarded in the final selection.

But U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg said Friday that the three-candidate restriction, which was the focus of the legal challenge, doesn't take away anyone's vote and avoids the confusion that might ensue if voters were asked to rank every candidate on the ballot...

Some favorite readers comments to the article:

demobcracy4/20/2010 11:39:30 AM

kart_125cc: You lay out this scam very nicely. Going thru the motions of voting is equivalent to, but not the equal of, a counted vote. No liberal since Mussolini has said it better. Expediency is a poor excuse for bad governance.

tedlsf4/20/2010 9:37:10 AM

Leo, from Marin (where his voting are rights are still secure) got it wrong. The judge said that common sense is "ranking at least one candidate who is likely to survive untilthe final round." CORRECT! Does the Dept. of Elections tell voters to use common sense? NO! They simply say pick three to get the illusion that you've participated in the system. In Marin, they still have primaries, where voters can choose to vote, or not. They still have run-offs (general elections) to vote in the final round. Voters can participate or not. That's choice. SF voters are disenfranchised if they don't exercise common sense. The voter pool shrinks by design to leave the results up to a minority of voters. The only RCV elections that ring true are those where the winner wins in the first round, or there are only 3 or 4 candidates. Excluding up to 35% of the voters from making a decision about representation is not democracy, but a step toward tyranny.

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