As election day nears, SF mayoral candidates strategize around game of ranked choice voting

(BCN) -- As the race for San Francisco mayor heads into the last leg, candidates are shifting their focus to navigate the city's ranked choice voting system and developing tactics to use it to their advantage. Since polling shows that no one candidate for mayor is being favored by at least 50% of voters, ranked choice voting is expected to play an integral role in determining the winner.

San Francisco's mayoral race is crowded with candidates vying to unseat incumbent Mayor London Breed. The top contenders to win her seat are Breed herself, former supervisor and former interim mayor Mark Farrell, District 5 Supervisor and Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safai and philanthropist Daniel Lurie.

At this point in the race, candidates have thoroughly established and communicated to voters their positions on the city's issues. Now is the time to develop a strategy in approaching ranked choice voting in order to maximize their chances at winning.

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"There are two stages of the election. First there's the campaign and then we have the game of ranked choice voting," said James Taylor, a political science expert and professor at University of San Francisco. "In order to be successful, you have to run up the general election but then you also have to educate your voters how you want them to vote strategically, looking at the city, looking at demographics, looking at turnout and looking at likely voters."

In 2004, San Francisco launched ranked choice voting, or RCV, after the change was approved by voters in 2002. Since then, around 100 races have been carried out with this process.

However, many people say the process of RCV is complex and not as clear as voting for only one candidate.

"There are some aspects of ranked choice voting that are not quite as simple and straightforward," said Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University.

In San Francisco's RCV system, voters can rank up to 10 candidates from their first pick to their last. There are 13 candidates running for mayor on the ballot this election.

A voter's most desirable pick should go in the number one spot. Their second-most preferred candidate should be ranked number two, and so on.

"Your first choice should be your heart," said Ernestine Nettles, president of the League of Women Voters of Oakland, a city that also uses RCV. "Your second choice should be someone you could live with. If you didn't get the love of your life, you could live with this one."

But voters do not need to rank every single candidate.

"You don't have to rank all of them," Nettles said. "That's what people don't understand. There's nothing that says you have to rank each one."

In the first round, all first-choice picks are tallied. If a candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes, then they win and ballot counting is complete. If no candidate gets the majority, then an "instant runoff" begins with subsequent rounds of eliminations and new tallies.

The candidate with the fewest votes from the first round is removed from the race. The votes for the eliminated candidate are redistributed to the voters' next preferred candidate indicated on their ballots.

Then first choice votes are tallied again. This process is repeated until a candidate receives the majority of first-choice votes.

"The main thing ranked choice voting does is it eliminates the possibility of a needing to do a separate runoff election," McDaniel said.

Only preferable candidates to a voter should be ranked because even a voter's least favorable pick can win under this system.

"A lot of voters don't understand that their last pick could win," Nettles said. "If it's somebody you don't like, don't vote for them at all. You don't put them anywhere on your ballot."

Farrell has come out with the most explicit strategy and is directing people how and who to vote for.

"While I may not be a fan of the RCV system, I was the first candidate in this race to articulate that an RCV strategy will be necessary for me to win," Farrell said in an October press conference.

Farrell has formed an alliance with fellow candidate Safai, who has consistently polled last among the top five candidates.

"I'm urging my supporters to rank multiple candidates for mayor. Include Ahsha on your list and leave Breed and Peskin off your ballot entirely," Farrell said.

Despite Lurie harshly criticizing Farrell throughout his campaign, Farrell has also asked Lurie supporters to select Farrell as their second choice.

"Even though Daniel isn't embracing an RCV strategy, and despite his constant attacks against me, my strategy remains clear: I need more number two votes to win this race," Farrell said.

Although having techniques to approach RCV in this election is a smart move, Taylor thinks that Farrell's strategy could be alienating voters.

"Farrell is trying to game the ranked choice voting system, but I think he's being too slick at it," Taylor said.

Instructing people outright how to vote could backfire on Farrell, Taylor said.

"Don't underestimate the intelligence of voters and end up insulting them by directing them exactly how to vote," Taylor said. "The voters have their own intelligence, so that's the danger of overly educating your campaign or trying to direct people how to strategically vote, which is something that people don't appreciate."

Farrell's plan could also come off as a sign of desperation, Taylor said.

"The other campaigns don't seem to be announcing their rank ed choice voting strategies as stridently as Farrell and it may also make him look desperate because the other camps, like the incumbent campaign, seem to be cool on whatever ranked choice voting their voters decide," Taylor said. "We're seeing Farrell scrambling and meddling in the Lurie campaign."

The other top candidates have not explicitly laid out a strategy as detailed and candid as Farrell's. Lurie's campaign has mentioned ranked choice voting without forming an alliance or specifying how to rank other contenders.

"Daniel has the broadest and most diverse coalition, a reality that gives us a significant advantage under the city's system of ranked choice voting," said Tyler Law, a political consultant for Lurie's campaign.

Lurie is trying to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters as his strategy to maneuver around ranked choice voting instead of aligning with specific candidates. He has not specified to his voters which candidates to rank after him, if any.

"If you have someone else that you could see being a good mayor, you can put them down," Lurie said in a video post on Instagram.

Similar to Lurie, Breed is hoping that trying to reach across party lines and attract a diverse demographic of voters that will allow her to gain more second and third place votes.

"We're not trying to keep anyone out of our tent as other candidates are doing," said Joe Arellano, Breed's spokesperson. "We're trying to make our campaign inclusive of all the people that believe that she would do a good job as mayor, either as their number one, two or third choice."

She has not come forth with an alliance or directed people on how to rank their preferences. However, Breed called Peskin on Oct. 14, asking him about second-pick endorsements.

The two have disputed the subject of the conversation, with Peskin saying that Breed proposed that they should join forces and endorse each other as their second choices.

"The bottom line is that Aaron stands by his account of his conversation with London," said Sunny Angulo, Peskin's campaign manager.

Breed's campaign denies this occurred, instead saying that the call was about asking Peskin to green-light allowing his progressive supporters to endorse Breed as their number two pick.

"There's several high profile, prominent progressives that want to endorse Breed in the number two spot because they're concerned about Lurie becoming mayor," Arellano said.

With millions of dollars poured into campaign ads, Lurie is appearing to gain steam, according to recent polls.

"They won't do it, though, unless Aaron Peskin gives them the 'go ahead' because they're loyal to him. Instead of saying 'yes' or 'no,' Peskin declined to answer," Arellano said. "Now he's spreading this rumor that she tried to swap endorsements with him, which is complete fiction."

But some of Peskin's supporters have already endorsed Breed as their number two.

"As for London's story, I'm a little confused," Angulo said. "Two of Aaron's prominent progressive endorsers, my former boss and friend, Jane Kim, and Supervisor Hillary Ronen, have both endorsed Mayor Breed number two."

While Peskin has stayed firm on his own version of the call, Breed's campaign says it's implausible that she would team up with Peskin because of their policy differences.

"There's no way that our supporters would ever get behind an Aaron Peskin for mayor because our supporters are completely against everything that he stands for, like on housing and public safety," Arellano said. "That's why it's complete and total fiction that he's trying to spread because he's coming in third right now. He doesn't really have a path to victory, so he's trying to just throw any kind of thing at the wall and see if it sticks."

Peskin is not forming an alliance or instructing voters how to rank candidates.

"We don't view politicians as the gatekeepers to their voters," Angulo said. "We believe that voters can and do make their own decisions. Our ranked choice strategy has been to go directly to voters who might have another first choice in mind and explain to them how Aaron would be a strong second choice."

Breed's campaign is also developing a strategy intended to bolster more support for second and third place instead of solely focusing on first choice votes, which Breed has consistently led in several polls.

"Part of our approach to winning is making sure that we're not just focused on number ones," Arellano said. "But also twos and threes. Ultimately, the more individuals that we can convince in these last two weeks to support her as their first, second or third pick is going to be the difference. That's just the way that ranked choice voting works."

Taylor thinks that Breed's past success with ranked choice voting means she does not need to worry about siding with another candidate as a cohesive front to gain more support.

"I would tell London Breed, 'let's keep doing what we did before because you passed this test twice. Ranked choice voting is not a problem for you,'" Taylor said.

Breed first ran to represent District 5 on the Board of Supervisors in 2012. After several rounds of instant runoff counting, she won against seven other opponents, including the appointed incumbent, according to the San Francisco Department of Elections.

She was then elected in 2015 by her peers to serve as president of the board. She assumed the role of acting mayor following the death of Mayor Ed Lee in December 2017. In January 2018, the Board of Supervisors voted to appoint Farrell as interim mayor, ousting Breed until she nabbed her seat back in the June election that year.

When Breed won the mayoral race in 2018, it took eight rounds for her to secure the majority of first choice votes. She took the lead in round one, receiving 37% of first pick votes, according to the Department of Elections.

While having an RCV strategy can be helpful, the value of incumbency and name recognition could trump this aspect of the election.

"With the incumbency and Breed having been endorsed by some key politicians and organizations, it's going to be very difficult for the others to overcome that, no matter what the ranked choice voting game is," Taylor said.

An incumbent mayor has not lost a reelection bid in San Francisco since 1995. But elections across the world in recent years have seen a rise of incumbents being defeated or undergoing significant challenges to retain their positions.

"Every election in the world, pretty much for the last two, three or four years, has been basically an anti-incumbent election," McDaniel said. "Incumbents have been losing everywhere, in cities and countries. Or they've been facing really, really, really close, tough reelections."

The race for mayor was originally scheduled to take place last year in November 2023. However, voters passed Proposition H in 2022, which shifted certain city races to even-numbered years.

The argument to pass Proposition H was that moving races to coincide with U.S. presidential elections would boost voter turnout and deliver more representative results.

"Ironically, if this election was planned a year ago, London Breed would have lost," McDaniel said. "Everybody expected Mayor Breed to be vulnerable this year. Her ratings were pretty low last year."

Having an extra year until the election gave Breed the opportunity to boost morale across the city.

"All of these candidates got into the race because they felt like she was a vulnerable incumbent and so they're challenging her," McDaniel said. "She could still very much win. She's in a stronger position now than she was a year ago."

Because ranked choice voting allows for candidates who rank below the top pick in the first round of counting to move up and reach a majority throughout multiple rounds, the winner could be a surprise.

"It's quite possible that the candidate who starts off in second place is going to end up being the winner of this election due to the patterns of support in ranked choice voting," McDaniel said. "That wouldn't happen if we didn't have ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting may make it possible for an eventual winner to be a little unexpected."

Peskin, who has often landed in third or fourth place according to several polls, could end up climbing to the top. He has positioned himself as the only true progressive in the race fighting against a band of moderates.

"If you look at previous elections, there's usually one clear progressive candidate who does a pretty good job of coordinating their endorsements and signaling that they are the progressive candidate," McDaniel said. "A lot of voters identify as progressive in San Francisco, so I do expect Peskin's numbers to go up as more people tune into the election."

A downside to ranked choice voting is that it can deliver unclear results of majority favorability since a portion of ballots may not be included in the final tally. In the 2018 mayoral election, about 10% of casted ballots were excluded from the final count since all their ranked candidates were eliminated throughout the rounds, according to the city's Department of Elections. These are called "exhausted ballots." Ballots that are still in the running are referred to as "continuing ballots."

In a traditional voting system where there are multiple candidates to choose from, if no one candidate reaches majority, then voters return to the polls in a runoff election to decide between only the top two leaders of the count. However, in ranked choice voting, a certain percentage of voters whose preferences did not make it to the last round do not get to have a say in the final heat.

"The problem is that it's really a majority of the continuing ballots, not all the ballots cast," McDaniel said. "If voters don't list all the candidates on their ballot, if their preferred candidates are eliminated, then their ballots are not included in the final majority."

Since the inception of ranked choice voting in San Francisco, 34 of the 100 ranked choice voting elections required instant runoff and multiple rounds of tallying and elimination. The median rate of exhausted ballots in those elections was 11%, according to archives from the Department of Elections.

The best way to avoid having a ballot get tossed out of the final count is to rank multiple candidates. If none of a voter's preferred candidates are one of the final top two choices, then they are not included in the last tally.

This risk associated with ranked choice voting is not articulated in the city's educational materials that are meant to explain how ranked choice voting works.

"The Department of Elections' descriptions of RCV largely overlook the most precarious aspect of RCV: the possibility that a properly marked ballot can be set aside through no fault of the voter," said Andy Lynch, a nonprofit administrator and San Francisco resident. "Although voters choose how many candidates to rank, they currently do so in San Francisco with minimal information about the possibility of ballot exhaustion."

In the official San Francisco voter informational pamphlet for this November's election, only two pages of the nearly 300-page book are dedicated to walking through the process of RCV. Nowhere does it describe how a certain percentage of ballots can be excluded from determining who wins the mayoral race.

The ranked choice voting method is more economical than having to conduct a runoff election. It costs less money since voters do not have to head to the polls again or receive a mail-in ballot for a second time.

Another advantage of ranked choice voting is that less well-known candidates can have a greater chance of winning.

"Aside from the fact that it cuts down on the cost, it also means that a candidate who may necessarily not have all the name recognition and the money for campaigning and can still win an election," Nettles said.

But some political organizations admit that the intricacy of ranked choice voting can stir confusion among voters.

"In ranked choice voting, it saves money in the fact that there will be no runoff election," Nettles said. "But is it really worth it if people don't understand it?"

However, Taylor says that San Francisco voters are uniquely knowledgeable and familiar with how ranked choice voting works.

"Since ranked choice voting has been around for 20 years, San Francisco voters have had to educate themselves on it," Taylor said. "San Francisco voters are a highly educated and sophisticated base."

With Election Day looming and a nail-biter of a race, the order in which voters rank their preferences will heavily factor into determining who will be San Francisco's next mayor.

"The way that voters rank their support is hard to predict and it's going to be a pretty tight race," McDaniel said. "It's still a coin flip. We should expect it to be very close."

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