Dear Friend of the Common Sense Party,
May I please receive your views on two issues about California elections? We have recently been approached by two different organizations, seeking our endorsement of ballot initiatives. One initiative would bring Ranked Choice Voting to Chula Vista. The other would create multi-member districts for the California State Assembly and California State Senate.
Ranked Choice Voting asks voters not just to choose their one favorite among several candidates, but to rank all the candidates running for an office. The lowest first-choice vote getting candidate is dropped, and her or his votes are then reallocated among the remaining candidates, according to that voter’s second choice. The process repeats until a single candidate has a majority of the votes.
The intent is to allow voters to have some influence on the eventual choice, even if their first choice is not successful. It is hoped to induce candidates to be more respectful of other candidates’ points of view, since any candidate is vying not just for a voter’s first vote, but for that voter’s second, and third ranked vote as well. The hope is also that candidates might seek compromise on issues where compromise is desirable so as to appeal beyond a narrow base.
The second proposal is that instead of electing a single Assemblymember or State Senator from a geographic district, we would elect three in a single election from each district. Each voter could allocate three votes for one candidate, or two for one and one for another, or one for each of three candidates. The hoped for result is that, say, in a district with 60% liberal and 40% conservative voters, the outcome would send 2 liberal Assemblymembers to Sacramento, and 1 conservative. The current system just sends 1 liberal. The converse, of course, applies for districts with 60% conservative and 40% liberal voters. Proponents of this change hope that the policies enacted by the Legislature would more represent the breadth of Californians’ views, making room for more independent thinkers.
These two ideas can be combined, but they are not offered in conjunction.
May I please ask you to send your thoughts about each of these proposals? The best way to communicate is via the “Open Policy Discussion” feature of our website, where your views will be posted and others can comment on them or post their own. Please go to https://cacommonsense.org/home/open-policy-discussion/ and open the tab for “Ranked Choice Voting & Multimember Legislative Districts.”
We are still attempting to be officially recognized as a political party in California, which will occur when we have 75,000 Californians who have changed their registration to the Common Sense Party. Until then, however, we can have an influence on important matters facing our state. These two issues are good examples.
The bosses of the public employee’s unions call the shots in California. The Republican have made themselves irrelevant by their positions on social and immigration issues. Until Californians, including public employees, realize that the current situation is detrimental to us all, representation will not change. Voting gimmicks will not help and the last thing we need is more politicians.
The trouble with Ranked choice in my opinion is the fact that a persons vote could be allocated to a candidate that a voter would NEVER choose otherwise. What I mean is that (example) I would never vote for Archibald Bogtrotter because of his views regarding adoption of the Mismatched Socks Monday state holiday on the first Monday of April. And say my favored candidate, Gertrudis Gomez-Lopez de Guacamole has already been eliminated because most other voters dislike her proposed August FlipFlop ban in State parks legislation. I would not want my vote to go to candidate Bogtrotter afterwards, because he would be last in my ranking, not second. At the end of the day Bogtrotter could still win the office, but only with votes he legitimately earned, not using leftovers from other eliminated candidates whose voters may not have wanted him there to begin with, but had to place him “somewhere” on the ballot ranking. Ranked Choice in my opinion is just as bad as the lesser of two evils model. If StatusQuoKamala is eliminated, AgentOrange gets some of her votes versus a theoretical 3rd isn’t a responsible way to vote, nationally, or state. We are currently in a civic pickle where voters do absolutely zero research into candidates. This makes RCV dangerous. Any charlatan could collect enough votes that were not thiers to begin with to win the seat and wreck havoc.
The way Oakland implemented RCV, voters don’t have to rank everybody: If a voter doesn’t rank Bogtrotter, then their vote will never count for Bogtrotter.
We already have charlatans collecting votes that aren’t theirs now because people are afraid to “waste” their votes. The way things work now, liars are able to win by simply directing hate at their opponent, and the person who is willing to tell more outrageous lies and scare the voters more is the most likely to win when people don’t do their research. With the voting system we have now, the greater of two evils actually wins. It merely took this long for someone to be so very evil and lie so very blatantly.
With RCV, even if everybody believes the charlatan’s lies and are afraid of the main opponent, they can still vote for a third party before voting for the charlatan, and they don’t have to worry that voting for a third party would “waste” their vote. This will give third parties a chance. Even if third parties don’t win, RCV would give voters more of a voice than the two-party system we have now.
RCV is better than “lesser of two evils” because voters can actually vote honestly for the candidates they want without worrying gaming their vote and worrying about strategy to avoid “wasting” their vote.
Regarding the Assembly/State Senate expansion proposal. While it looks good on paper, I would need to know more about the rest of the processes etc to determine whether or not it would work in practice. One paragraph really doesn’t say much.
Thank you, RM, for such a thoughtful comment. I believe most Ranked-Choice-Voting proposals allow a voter to rank only some of the candidates. So in your hypothetical, the voter could simply not vote for Archibald Bogtrotter. He could only win using the votes of those who were prepared to rank him somewhere– but that is not every voter.
Kindly,
Tom Campbell
Ranked choice voting has been found to be confusing to the average voter which increases the likelihood of voter disengagement, or worse – suspicion that the ‘system is rigged’.
Multi-member districts raised the concern of accountability. Fringe candidates often survive scandals or bizarre behavior because they secure a dedicated but minority tranche of voters whose support is unshakable.
I fear this proposal would, if possible, lower the caliber of people serving in office and reduce their accountability to the wider electorate.
RCV is much simpler than what we have now. People can simply vote for who they want in the order they want without worrying about trying to strategize and game the system so that they don’t “waste” their vote.
We already have a “system is rigged” problem right now: Bernie fans feel shut out of the Democratic party’s primary process. At the national level, all Democrats were basically shut out of the Democratic party’s primary process in 2024. Boss Tweed famously said, “I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”
With the executive branch simply ignoring the legislative and judicial branches with impunity, the caliber of people serving in office already can’t go any lower.
The Ranked Choice option is a good one. It allows voters to provide more nuanced input into the political process. It should be supported.
The multiple representative scheme is overly complicated and encourages controversy. It should be opposed.
Ranked choice may be good in theory but has proven poor in practice (see Oakland’s prior mayoral race outcome). It is confusing to voters and leads to strategic game playing and distortive collusion between candidates.
Multi-member districts also sound good in theory but may not pan out in practice for reasons similar to the above and those articulated by other commenters.
https://fairvote.org/press/the_real_story_on_ranked_choice_voting_in_oakland_s_mayoral_election_2010/
The correct result happened in the Oakland 2010 mayoral race. Pereta would’ve lost the run-off. The only thing RCV changed was that RCV saved taxpayer money and voter time by not needing a runoff election.
The current system is what causes “strategic game playing” because people who prefer a third party can’t win by voting for the candidate they really want. This means that people who don’t like the candidates of the two main parties have to decide between voting for the lesser evil or throwing away their vote by voting for the candidate they really want.
Right now, there is an overlap between third parties and the two main parties. The current system turns these natural alignments against each other: For example, Many Green votes are stolen from the Democratic party, and many Libertarian votes are stolen from the Republican party. RCV would stop this artificial antagonistic result. RCV would stop this distorted antagonism between natural allies. The “collusion” is a true and honest overlap between party platforms, not some “distortive” effect.
RCV would let voters be more honest and stop with the game playing.
“These two ideas can be combined, but they are not offered in conjunction” is confusing. I’m not sure what it means.
I’m already very much in favor of RCV, and I think it’ll go a long way to resolving what’s wrong with our country if it can be implemented everywhere.