[EM] RCV in SF Mayoral election

[Greg Dennis]

>
> 1. May not elect majority candidate
>

I haven't done an analysis of the cast vote record, but I highly doubt that
additional ranks would have put the winner over a majority of non-blank
ballots. From my experience with past RCV elections, the exhausted ballots
in the final round are largely voters who didn't use all the available
ranks, not those who used all the ranks and saw them all eliminated. If a
voter doesn't use all the ranks, it's an expression of indifference between
the remaining candidates: an abstention from any round not including the
ranked candidates. That's why including all non-blank ballots in the
denominator when determining a "majority" is odd to me: it _excludes_
abstentions from the first round but _includes_ abstentions from the final
round. My guess is you would find the winner _does_ have a majority if you
exclude _all_ abstentions. Happy for someone to do that analysis.

2. What are your thoughts on London Breed’s response to being asked if RCV
> is fair?


I don't know, I'd expect most politicians to think systems that benefit
them are "fair" and those that don't as "unfair," so I don't think this
statement carries much of value. My $0.02.
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