Notes about RCV and BAV (semi-organized)

Ranked Choice Voting, or Balanced Approval Voting
Steve Chessin, guest speaker: If the April 2025 special election to replace Omar requires a June runoff, the estimated $3.2M cost will nearly double. Thus, a one-and-done voting system becomes financially attractive! Find RCV background at Appendix F. RCV Exit polling shows its popularity. See doc at https://fairvote.app.box.com/s/mdzeyi5d9bpsym2ztmhf8uu09p7l89be

Balanced Approval Voting guest speaker:
Paul Cohen attended college thanks to the generous state support of education in 1960's America. Earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Illinois followed by post doctoral research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Taught for several years at Lehigh University prior to a short stint at Bell Laboratories but followed by a much longer career at NEC punctuated by ten U.S. and international patents in the general area of semiconductor applications. Now living in a comfortable Maine retirement community and focused on the prospect of upgrading democracy by means of an improved voting system.
Also, Balanced approval voting (BAV) is a quite special voting system because it is both balanced and evaluative, and for that reason it avoids the spoiler effect. Moreover, they avoid giving an undue advantage to famous candidates like most other voting systems do. Broadly, the spoiler effect is characterized as an electoral win that disappoints a majority of voters because of votes being arbitrarily split between two or more similar candidates. This is not something that should happen in a democracy.

Compared to BAV, ranked-choice voting asks much more of voters. And it puts much more effort into evaluating the responses, so it is not unreasonable to ponder whether all that extra effort is justified. This article compares BAV with Ranked Choice Voting. Balanced voting systems allow voters to express with equal ease, opposition or support. BAV is an especially attractive voting system because its adoption would almost certainly put an end to the two-party system. Suspected BAV limitations are addressed here, while IRV limitations are addressed here. Find many articles on voting at https://www.opednews.com/populum/seriespage.php?r=326

What is so Special about Balanced Approval Voting? by Paul Cohen: “In brief, what is so special about balanced approval voting is that adopting it will end the two-party duopoly. That means voters will have more viable candidates to choose from. The rest is all detail, but one important detail is that with BAV, individual voters are not responsible for choosing a best candidate. Voters just set conditions for compromise and BAV chooses the candidate who fits as the best compromise.”
Also, the difference between Ranked Choice and Approval voting is outlined here: https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choice_voting_vs_approval_voting/
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In this 2-minute audio, talk-show host Thom Hartmann notes that only 7 democracies in the world use our primitive plurality voting system. The fix, as shown by Australia and New Zealand, is RCV. (excerpted from 2018Mar14 Hour 2 Thom Hartmann Program) This 7-minute audio explains Ranked Choice Voting and why it is better for democracy (excerpted from 2017Jan18 Hour 3 Thom Hartmann Program). More info here from FairVote.org.
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Here’s an example of how RCV works: https://app.rankedvote.co/rv/mayor-of-candytown/results
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Exit polls and post-election surveys consistently find that voters like and understand RCV by overwhelming margins: https://fairvote.app.box.com/s/mdzeyi5d9bpsym2ztmhf8uu09p7l89be
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After a presentation and discussion (that included the fact that Dominion voting machines are not verified to count BAV votes), SBPA agreed to support Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) over the current voting system.
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**Derek and **Carmen will invite the NAACP into a conversation about their support of an alternative voting system. Does the current system favor candidates of color, or does RCV? Where does RCV fall on their priority list? Steve Chessin provided the names of several prominent Blacks who support RCV. See Appendix A for the list and links.

Appendix A.

Prominent Blacks who support RCV

1. Senator Raphael Warnock. See https://georgiarecorder.com/2022/12/08/senate-runoff-fatigue-renews-debate-over-runoff-process-in-georgia/

At a press conference last month, Warnock advocated for an instant runoff while discussing his legal fight with the state over a Saturday early voting day ahead of the Dec. 6 runoff against Walker. Since the Republican election law overhaul in 2021 cut the runoff window in half, which in turn meant fewer early voting days in a runoff, Warnock said a new system would work better.

“This should be a call to move us to a ranked choice voting system where every Georgian can avail itself of an instant runoff system,” he said.

2. President Barack Obama

https://fairvote.org/when-barack-obama-was-a-leader-in-seeking-fair-voting-systems/

Take, for example, the fact that on October 15, 2001, Obama – then a junior state senator in Illinois – reached across the aisle to introduce a bill with Republican Tom Walsh that would, if passed, put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot to elect the Illinois House of Representatives by fair voting: three-seat districts, elected by voters given cumulative voting rights.

A year later, Obama introduced a bill that would have required that partisan primaries for congressional office be conducted by instant runoff voting (IRV, also called ranked choice voting) and allows local jurisdictions to use IRV elect to their officers.

3. Ritchie Torres, U.S. representative (NY-15). See https://www.newsweek.com/its-time-ranked-choice-voting-presidential-elections-opinion-1600867?fbclid=IwAR17mDGJ2tJYy7bfOobNAeZUfvKoMsQoLpAE1X4ypVFXmnAtnB80WCh7SXk

With ranked choice voting, every vote matters more than ever before, and it matters to every single candidate.

The benefits we're seeing in New York are true in every locality with ranked choice voting, particularly for communities of color. A study by FairVote proves [https://fairvote.org/report/report_rcv_benefits_candidates_and_voters_of_color/] that candidates of color benefit from this system, and candidates pay no penalty when they run against opponents of the same race or ethnicity. Instead of dividing community support, ranked choice voting gives every candidate, no matter who they are, the chance to be a real contender.

4. Cory Booker, New Jersey U.S. Senator: Booker has indicated support for RCV for many years. He told a Voter Choice Massachusetts activist on July 12 that he supports RCV and won an RCV election in college.

https://fairvote.org/let_s_debate_rcv_it_s_the_reform_we_need_and_a_growing_number_of_presidential_candidates_agree/

5. Barbara Lee was a co-sponsor of the Ranked Choice Voting Act; see https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4464/cosponsors

Appendix F

Ranked Choice Voting Presentation - The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is considering the use of Ranked Choice Voting for county elections in August. RCV would eliminate vote splitting (where two similar candidates split the vote allowing a less popular candidate to win) and encourage more positive, issue-focused campaigns.
David Newswanger, volunteer for the California Ranked Choice Voting Coalition, presented an RCV slide show and answered questions. Their website includes an opportunity to send your county supervisor a letter, and an article entitled “California District 16 Primary Would Have Benefited From Ranked Choice Voting”.
RCV123 is a new non-profit with a focused and unique mission - educate about ranked-choice voting by creating systems so any community group, school or anyone at all can hold an RCV election easily and for free. The founders saw the growing momentum of ranked-choice voting and after a lot of strategic analysis, decided that actual use of RCV was a missing link that could help educate and normalize the idea of RCV at the grassroots level.

In their Aug. 22, 2024 newsletter, San Jose Silicon Valley NAACP included:
Ranked-Choice Voting Hurts Minorities: Study By centerforelectionconfidence
Post date January 11, 2024 https://electionconfidence.org/2024/01/11/ranked-choice-voting-hurts-minorities-study/
“Importantly, Dr. McCarty’s research documents these negative impacts with quantitative data, demonstrating that further adoption of RCV risks undermining voter confidence in election fairness.”
An Executive Summary of Dr. McCarty’s study is available here: https://electionconfidence.org/executive-summary-mccarty-rcv-paper-2024/

The full study “Minority Electorates and Ranked Choice Voting” is available here: https://electionconfidence.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/FINAL-RCV-study-1-10-24.pdf

Rev. Moore's latest NAACP San Jose Email contains lots of timely topics but the email headline is "Ranked Choice Voting Hurts Minorities". He clearly hasn't done his homework. The so-called study comes from a Conservative-leaning organization misleadingly called the "Center for Election Confidence" comprised of Heritage Foundation and right-wing funded lawyers.

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/center-for-election-confidence-cec/

They've been funded by right wing types that want to bring prayer back to schools:

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/diana-davis-spencer-foundation/

This same group is pushing Voter ID laws that will disenfranchise the elderly and minorities that don't have driver's licenses.

The Center's Exec Director is Legal Counsel for the Republican National Lawyers Association and tied to both the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.

Lisa L. Dixon is the Executive Director of the CEC. She also serves as Legal Consul for the Republican National Lawyers Association while previously working at the law firm Holtzman Vogel. While studying at the University of Virginia School of Law, she interned at the Office of Chief Counsel, Procedure and Administration, at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as well as at the Center for Law and Religious Freedom. Prior to this, she served as Assistant Student Division Director at The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and interned at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. 18

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While SBPA is generally supportive of RCV, a member of our coalition is not. Perhaps you can provide insight as to why the following study cited by the NAACP is questionable. While SBPA's efforts are currently focused on the election, we will return to the subject of RCV promptly thereafter. I look forward to your response.

In their Aug. 22, 2024 newsletter, San Jose Silicon Valley NAACP included:

Ranked-Choice Voting Hurts Minorities: Study By centerforelectionconfidence

Post date January 11, 2024 https://electionconfidence.org/2024/01/11/ranked-choice-voting-hurts-minorities-study/

“Importantly, Dr. McCarty’s research documents these negative impacts with quantitative data, demonstrating that further adoption of RCV risks undermining voter confidence in election fairness.”

An Executive Summary of Dr. McCarty’s study is available here: https://electionconfidence.org/executive-summary-mccarty-rcv-paper-2024/

The full study “Minority Electorates and Ranked Choice Voting” is available here: https://electionconfidence.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/FINAL-RCV-study-1-10-24.pdf

Ranked Choice Voting: Poised for its Biggest Year Ever

2024 could end up being the breakout year for Ranked Choice Voting, the most popular political reform in the US by Steven Hill, Sep 14, 2024

RCV is continuing to move forward in Santa Clara County! On Sept. 18 at FGOC, Supervisors Lee and Ellenberg requested a final report from County administration detailing a robust community outreach plan, associated costs and best implementation practices from Election Nonprofits. That report will be heard at the Finance and Government Operations Committee (FGOC) in April 2025 for consideration to move it to the full board for a vote of implementation. Thank you for all that you’ve done to show your support for Rank Choice Voting in Santa Clara County!

Beyond Santa Clara County, RCV continues to gain traction and momentum across the country! As you may know, Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin introduced a bill into Congress to use Rank Choice Voting for all of America’s congressional races. You can read more here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9578

This November, RCV will be on multiple state and municipal ballots across the country for implementation. The CalRCV team is hosting a post-election gathering in mid November to hear from FairVote CEO Meredith Sumpter regarding all of the successful RCV measures. We will also be joined by local RCV supporters and leaders. We will send out an official invitation closer to the date.

For a little light reading, please see the Washington Post’s Editorial Board’s endorsement of Ranked Choice Voting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/03/ranked-choice-instant-runoff-ballot-initiatives-dc/

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How Did Ranked Choice Voting Fare in the 2024 Elections? by Juliana Broad, Dec 13, 2024

Six states have banned the practice and voters rejected referendums in four states; however, Democratic strategists and funders behind this year’s push for RCV may be able to learn from the losses.

… The pushback against ranked-choice voting (RCV)—which allows voters to rank candidates according to their preference instead of choosing just one—is typically part of a larger Republican-aligned effort to restrict voting rights by limiting voting by mail, banning ballot drop boxes, and raising the threshold for passage of popular ballot initiatives.

MAGA groups oppose the practice as likely to favor Democrats and moderate Republicans over their candidates. Indeed, “election integrity” groups associated with Leonard Leo and Cleta Mitchell have been attacking ranked-choice voting options in their larger sweep to restrict voting rights, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the right-wing bill mill, has developed and circulated model legislation to prohibit it.

“Special interests are pushing a novel and complicated election process called ranked-choice voting,” ALEC’s model bill states.

3. Ranked Choice Voting, or … - Balanced approval voting (BAV) is a quite special voting system because it is both balanced and evaluative.
   “It is widely understood that we have a duopoly because we continue to use plurality voting; this claim even has a name, Duverger's Law. It really seems more of an observation than a law, but that aside, Duverger's Law should not be interpreted as suggesting that just any other voting system would let us avoid the duopoly. We might coin the name, Duverger's pitfall, for this unjustified assumption. There is little reason to think that just another voting system such as ranked choice voting or approval voting would result in additional viable candidates; doing that seems to require a very special sort of voting system.
   So, what about a balanced system? Balanced voting systems offer alternatives that mitigate some problems with plurality voting. They measure voter opposition to candidates and treat opposition votes as equally significant as support votes. The inclusion of an opposition vote enables voters to just as easily penalize individual candidates as it is for them to reward them. Fear of such punishing votes should cause candidates to hesitate before offending even their non-supporters. This improvement alone makes suggests that balance provides at least a step in the right direction.”
   OpEdNews Op Eds 12/8/2024 What is so Special about Balanced Approval Voting? By Paul Cohen

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https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/seven-candidates-begin-race-for-san-jose-district-3-council-seat/#comment-1819089 See the comment from Robert Means.

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David Newswanger on Ranked Choice Voting

[Sunnyvale Dems] Board Member David Newswanger will explain ranked choice voting, being discussed for Santa Clara County. San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro have been using RCV for over a decade. Ranked choice voting allows voters to list their candidates in order of preference when marking their ballots: first choice, second choice, third choice and so on.

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Message sent on March 5 via OpEd News:

Paul,

Here in Silicon Valley, our County Board will soon consider using Ranked Choice Voting for countywide elections. I stumbled over your article advocating for balanced approval voting, which sounds appealing. So, I brought up the question of RCV vs. BAV, which is now on the SBPA Agenda for March 19

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Below is the plain text version of the Agenda item XIII. Would you be available to participate via Zoom? If not, do you know anyone else who could participate?

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