San Francisco

Background

Voters passed Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) as an amendment to the City Charter in March of 2002. In 2004, San Francisco held its first RCV election. San Francisco voters use RCV to elect the Mayor, Sheriff, District Attorney, City Attorney, Treasurer, Assessor-Recorder, Public Defender, and Members of the Board of Supervisors.

Improving Voter Understanding and Election Systems

We dedicate our efforts to this work because we know that with RCV, voters are better represented. With RCV, San Francisco voters only have to visit the polls once when turnout is highest in a November general election. Prior to RCV, many voters did not participate in the second round of voting, which was held in December as a runoff election – the median turnout decline for local runoffs between 2000 and 2003 was 39.5%, meaning just three in five voters turned out in the decisive runoff election. With RCV, 86.8% of voters ballots count in the final, decisive election.

RCV eliminated the need for a costly December runoff election. Based on the Department of Elections, these costs included approximately $340,000 for every district election for a member of the Board of Supervisors and approximately $3.7 million if adding a citywide runoff election for Mayor.

We are advocating for ongoing voter education and support the San Francisco Open Source Voting System Project.

Resources

Resources for Organizations

Resources for Candidates

FairVote California has materials available on how RCV works in various languages:

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Jul 11, 2018

Exhausted Ballots: Did They Affect the Outcome in San Francisco’s Mayoral Election?

By Steven Hill and Pedro Hernandez

Executive Summary

In the 2018 mayoral election in San Francisco, 21,000 ballots (8.6% of all ballots cast) became “exhausted” -- is it possible that the number of exhausted ballots impacted the winner in San Francisco's mayoral election? Or, alternatively, if SF voters had more than three rankings (which might have reduced the number of exhausted ballots), might that have affected the outcome? The answer to both questions is: no. By using publicly available ballot-image data to analyze this race, it can be determined that a substantial number of the exhausted ballots came from voters who supported the less progressive-identified candidates in the race. Those voters tended to favor London Breed over Mark Leno by a ratio of 1.36 to 1. Some voters for Jane Kim also saw their ballots exhaust, and those voters tended to strongly favor Mark Leno. Overall, this analysis estimates that, with more rankings for voters leading to fewer exhausted ballots, Leno might have closed the victory margin by an estimated total of 183 votes. This would not have been enough to overcome the 2,600 vote gap between himself and London Breed.

In addition, if Jane Kim had won 700 more first choice rankings and surpassed Mark Leno in the first round, would that have changed the outcome of the election? Definitely not. In fact, London Breed would have won by an even greater margin, because Kim would have picked up fewer second and third rankings from Leno supporters than Leno picked up from Kim supporters.

Quick Takes - 2018 San Francisco Mayoral Election

Jul 03, 2018

Huge turnout

Voter turnout will end up around 53%, giving San Francisco its highest turnout for mayor in 15 years, much higher than statewide turnout (36%) in California.

Greater usage of ranked choice voting (RCV)

The mayor’s race drove turnout. San Francisco voters cast more RCV ballots for mayor than non-RCV ballots for governor and U.S. senator.
86% of voters used at least two of their rankings in the mayor’s race, and nearly 70% used all three of their rankings.

San Francisco

Background

Improving Voter Understanding and Election Systems

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