1. Does IRV/RCV disenfranchise voters, as some critics have claimed? 

NO, it does not, just the opposite. From racial minority communities to women to the elderly and young voters, numerous studies have found diverse groups of voters like, understand and make effective use of their ranked ballots. That’s why IRV/RCV is the fasting growing political reform in the United States today, used in 50 cities and counties and a growing number of states, for offices from city council and mayor to US Senate and House and president of the United States. Today, 16 million Americans vote using IRV/RCV, with a number of US cities now using it for 10+ years, and other nations using it for 100 years. This is a well-established method for better democracy that liberates voters to support the candidates they truly like instead of the “lesser of two evils” candidates.

 

Research has shown that IRV/RCV has enfranchised and positively impacted communities of color along numerous dimensions. According to a 2018 academic study, California cities that adopted RCV saw increases in the percentage of candidates of color running for office. Another study in 2019 found a higher rate of victory for candidates of color in California cities using RCV. In the four Bay Area cities using RCV, 65% of elected offices are held by people of color, up from 38% pre-RCV

 

• According to a series of nationwide polls done by FairVote from 2016 to 2020, 81% of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Multiracial voters support RCV.

 

• Voters regularly report in surveys that they like and understand RCV, with no racial or gender differences in understanding or ability to cast their ballot accurately.

 

• Winning candidates of color, particularly those who are Black or Hispanic/Latino, grew their vote totals between the first and final rounds of counting at a higher rate than winning White candidates, according to studies in 2021 and 2024.

 

• Minority voters are likely to rank more candidates than White voters. For example, in the 2022 Oakland mayoral race, Black and Latino voters ranked more candidates on their ballots than White voters, reflecting their strong understanding of ranked choice voting and their willingness to actively participate in the RCV process.

 

• Elderly:  There is not as much research on the impacts of different voting methods on the elderly. But a 2015 study from two San Francisco State University political scientists found that patterns for the elderly of overvoting and making a mistake on their ballot are similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. While that would indicate that elderly voters are no more confused with RCV than with elections in general, certainly the needs of elderly voters should be addressed with voter education and outreach.

 

• Youth: turnout among youth in RCV cities was higher than youth turnout in non-RCV cities, according to a 2021 study by two academic researchers.

 

• When compared to the primary and runoff elections they replace, RCV general elections are associated with a 10 point increase in voter turnout, according to a 2016 study. The researchers found RCV did not affect inequities in turnout among different demographics.  

 

• Voters in RCV jurisdictions are 17% more likely to turn out for municipal elections than those in non-RCV jurisdictions, according to a 2024 study. The same study found that voters in RCV jurisdictions are more likely to be contacted by candidates, an important measure of voter engagement, because candidates know they may need the second or third rankings from the supporters of their opponents to win.

 

Exit poll after exit poll, whether taken in large cities like New York and San Francisco or smaller cities and towns and rural states like Utah and Alaska, have consistently found that voters like and understand RCV by overwhelming margins. 85% of Alaskans said RCV is simple and 56% of Virginia Republicans who voted in a primary using RCV preferred it to single-choice elections.

 

2. But what about the academic study published by Nolan McCarty, “Minority Electorates and Ranked Choice Voting,” which was cited in the city council meeting? Doesn’t that study show that the number of exhausted ballots was higher among minority communities in New York City’s local elections and Alaska’s state and federal elections, and so is disenfranchising those communities?

 

Mr. McCarty’s study is flawed, both methodologically and due to its failure to take into account overall context. This study claims that minority voters in New York City and Alaska were disenfranchised by RCV. However McCarty’s study fails to mention that both jurisdictions saw historic results in its election of racially diverse officeholders in their first RCV elections. In fact, New York City elected its most diverse city council ever – a majority of councilmembers are women of color, and 31 out of 51 councilmembers are women, one of the most racially and gender diverse city councils in the country. In addition, NYC elected its second Black mayor in the city’s history, and Alaska elected its first Alaska Native woman to its single US House seat.

 

McCarty’s study fails to mention those historic election results. Meanwhile, other studies reveal a very different reality, including these key findings:

 

• In exit polls, over 90% of Black, Latino, and Asian voters found their RCV ballot "simple to complete" in New York City in 2021, and at least 80% of voters across all ethnicities said RCV was "simple" in Alaska in 2022.

• In New York City, voters in all demographic groups used their ranking at high rates. In the mayoral race, 87% of New York voters ranked multiple candidates, and a median of 66% used multiple rankings in city council contests. Voters of all racial and ethnic groups, ages, incomes, and education levels made full use of the ranked ballot. 77% supported using RCV in future local elections.

• The 2021 primary elections in NYC resulted in its highest turnout in over 30 years, with nearly a million voters participating and ranking with RCV.

 

The McCarty study also is flawed methodologically and does not find what it claims – that minority voters are more likely to have “exhausted” ballots in RCV contests. It actually finds some races where that’s true and other races where it’s not true – and then invents new metrics to discount the races where it’s not true. That kind of cherry picking undermines its credibility. Revealingly, the study was funded by an anti-RCV group, the “Center for Election Confidence.”

 

In any case, IRV/RCV allowed more voters’ ballots to count in New York because IRV/RCV replaced extremely low-turnout “delayed runoff” elections (like Redondo Beach’s current system). Any number of exhausted ballots in New York City’s “instant runoff” is dwarfed by the number of voters who have their voices heard with IRV in an election with historically high voter turnout.

 

3. Does ranked choice voting elect non-majority winners?

No, it only elects majority winners. All winners must have a majority of voters in the final round of the “instant runoff.” That’s how any runoff system works, including the two-round “delayed” runoff system currently used in Redondo Beach, where a winner must have a majority of the vote in the final, i.e. second round. An examination of the history of Redondo Beach’s delayed runoffs shows that many times there are fewer voters participating in the second/delayed runoff than in the original general election.

 

For example, in the 2013 mayoral election, voter turnout plummeted by 30% in the delayed runoff. The winning mayoral candidate had fewer votes in the delayed runoff than in the general election. In other elections in Redondo Beach, turnout in the delayed runoff plummeted by 28% and 25%. Turnout was lower in these elections because of the high number of “exhausted voters” – voters who are burned out on too many elections.

 

With ranked choice voting, a winning candidate will have a majority of the final round of counting in the “instant runoff”, just as the winner in a delayed runoff has a majority of the final round of counting. But with RCV, instead of “exhausted voters” there will be a certain number of “exhausted ballots” – voters who, for whatever reason, did not fully rank their ballot (perhaps they didn’t like other candidates, or used all their rankings but selected all losing candidates).

 

Whether the method used is the two-round delayed runoff with exhausted voters or instant runoff voting with exhausted ballots, the winning candidate has a majority of the vote in the final round. But a very big difference between these two methods is that with the instant runoff usually more voters will have a say in who their elected officeholders are, because the number of exhausted ballots in IRV is far less than the number of exhausted voters in a two-round delayed runoff. In fact, a new study of all RCV elections since 2004 found that RCV has caused 17% more votes to count for candidates who actually have a chance to win. The report compared the vote share for the top two finalists in the final round of the RCV count to the vote share for the same two candidates in the first round. The additional votes counting for finalists in the final round reflect extra voters who cast a meaningful vote because of RCV.

 

Most political scientists agree that IRV/RCV elects majority winners. In fact, in the above-mentioned study by Nolan McCarty, even though it’s a critical analysis of RCV, it contains this statement: “First, RCV elections, by design, are more majoritarian than plurality elections. Indeed, a common argument is that they provide a way to get the benefits of a majority-runoff system without holding separate elections.”

 

4. Why is the instant runoff better than the current two-round “delayed runoff” system?  

Former city councilmember Laura Emdee said it best: "Runoff elections are expensive and have historically been hostile. Runoff elections also tend to have lower voter turnout than the city's March general election. Using instant runoff, Redondo Beach will experience more amicable campaigns at a lower cost." Redondo Beach’s charter commission studied the different electoral methods available, and unanimously decided that instant runoff voting/ranked choice voting is better than the current method for all the reasons cited by Ms. Emdee. As previously mentioned, in past elections the voter turnout in the second delayed runoff plummeted by as much as 30% and winners would often have fewer votes in the delayed runoff than they had in the general election. The Charter Commission recognized its many defects and recommended ranked choice voting. 77% of Redondo Beach voters agreed, a strong mandate that should be respected, and the wishes of the voters fulfilled.

 

5. With IRV/RCV, don’t you have to wait weeks to know the results?

No, you don’t. It only takes a couple of minutes to run a RCV tally on the voting equipment, so if the election administrators choose to, they can release preliminary results on election night. San Francisco and Alameda County runs their first tallies for all their RCV races on election night and announce preliminary results. Other cities in other states, for various reasons, have decided to wait before they run the RCV tally. There is a misconception that you cannot run the RCV tally until all ballots, including all mail-in ballots, have been received and processed. This is not true, as San Francisco and Alameda County show. The tally can be run multiple times throughout the elections canvass on the ballots that are processed up to that moment.

 

RCV elections are no different in this way than non-RCV elections. If an election is not close, whenever the election official runs the RCV tally it will be obvious who the winner is going to be. But if the election is close, and there are many mail-in ballots still to be counted, then the winner will not be clear until more ballots are counted. However, this is no different than non-RCV elections. How many times have we gone to bed on election night, thinking a ballot measure was in the lead, and by the next day when more ballots have been processed, we find out it is now losing? With more people voting by mail, it takes longer today to know who the winners are in close races, and that’s true of both RCV and non-RCV races. So the best practice for RCV elections is to run the RCV tally “early and often” so that the public and the media will benefit from maximum transparency and accountability.

 

6. Isn’t IRV/RCV being banned in a number of states?

Yes, recently RCV has been banned in 10 very conservative GOP states: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Montana, South Dakota and Idaho. This ban is coming from partisans who have grown very concerned that RCV is empowering racial minorities, women, young people and moderate Republicans – the very voters they are afraid of. Leading right wing politicians such as Donald Trump and Sarah Palin went on a war path against RCV after its use in Alaska allowed moderate Democrat Mary Peltola to beat Sarah Palin for a congressional seat by appealing to the 60% of independent voters in Alaska. In Virginia, the use of RCV in the GOP primary allowed a moderate Republican to beat a Trump Republican for the gubernatorial nomination. In Idaho, moderate Republicans have gathered signatures on a RCV voter initiative that will be on the ballot this November because the moderates think that RCV’s majority requirement will help them to stop MAGA Republican candidates from winning party primaries with less than a majority. In short, there is a battle going on within the GOP between moderate and right wing factions for the heart and soul of the party, and ranked choice voting is being banned by the right-wing faction.

 

7. Why is IRV/RCV better than STAR voting?

STAR Voting is an acronym for “Score, Then Automatic Runoff.”  It is the most complicated of all the “single-winner” reform methods, and for that reason it has never been used in any real world elections, whereas IRV/RCV has been used for 100 years in public elections.

 

Here’s how STAR Voting works:  instead of ranking the candidates in order of choice, voters are asked to give each candidate a score from 0 to 5 points. A voter could give every candidate 5 points, or every candidate a 0, though more likely most voters would give a mix of scores, with some voters awarding more total points than others.

 

Deciding how many points to give to multiple candidates requires a lot more strategy and calculation of voters compared to RCV, where all you have to do is rank your favorite candidates in your order of preference. But then STAR Voting gets even more complicated.

 

The two candidates with the highest total points then proceed to what’s called an “automatic runoff” – automatic because there is no second election, instead the same original ballots are used for the automatic runoff. In this second part, the points are tossed out and now every voter’s ballot counts as one vote for whichever of those two remaining candidates the voter had assigned a higher score to. Oh, and one more confusing feature: any ballots that gave both remaining candidates the same score are set aside and do not count in the final runoff. Talk about throwing out ballots! STAR Voting advocates have criticized RCV for its exhausted ballots, but STAR has its own type of discarded ballots.  

 

The candidate who receives the most votes in the runoff round is finally declared the winner. If this “two-stage” voting method ever gets used in a real-world election, it will be confusing for voters to figure out how to effectively use their points. They would have to engage in a lot of strategic thinking, otherwise they could end up giving too many points to a candidate they prefer second or third who will ultimately help beat their favorite candidate out of making the runoff round (called the “later-no-harm” criterion). With this two-stage process, it’s very possible that the top choice for a majority of voters could actually lose the election. That kind of conflict between your favorite candidates is not possible with ranked choice voting because ranking a second choice can never hurt a voter’s top choice candidate, since second choices are not examined until your top choice is eliminated.

 

If a voter genuinely tries to score the candidates honestly, they could well find that it actually hurts their interests. Under RCV, the best strategy is simply to rank the candidates in order from the voter’s favorite to their least favorite. People already rank things all the time, from favorite movies to flavors of ice cream, it’s very intuitive. But STAR Voting is not intuitive, the voter has to strategize and calculate. That means that well-informed strategic voters will gain an advantage with STAR voting over less-sophisticated voters who simply follow the instructions on the ballot.

 

So STAR Voting is a complicated and confusing method, and that's why it is not used anywhere. It's not even used in elections by many private organizations. RCV has over a century of use in public elections all over the world, as well as in hundreds of private organizations such as universities, labor unions, corporate boards of directors and more. It's recommended by Robert’s Rules of Order, and it's even used by the Academy Awards to select Oscar winners for Best Picture and other categories.

 

Adding to STAR Voting’s design flaws is the fact that its two-stage method may not fulfill the majority requirement in Redondo Beach’s charter, and so would expose the city to a potential legal challenge. STAR voting is a dead end for Redondo Beach.

 

8. Are there different types of “instant runoff voting,” such as STAR voting or Round Robin voting, in addition to ranked choice voting?

NO, there are not.  It was claimed at the last council meeting there are different types of “instant runoff voting” (IRV), and that STAR or Round Robin voting could be considered a form of IRV. This is part of his proposal to try and use STAR voting instead of ranked choice voting to fulfill the charter requirement for “instant runoff voting.”

 

But both historically and legally instant runoff voting is the exact same thing as ranked choice voting. There is no difference between these two names, they are the exact same method and there is no other method than ranked choice voting that could be considered the same as instant runoff voting. There is a historical record here that is well-established.

 

The name “instant runoff voting” was originally used for the very first time anywhere by San Francisco in its charter amendment establishing the first use of this method in the United States in over 50 years. Here is a link to the charter amendment from 2002 calling this method “instant runoff elections” and “ranked choice,” with that subsection of the charter labeled:

 

SEC. 13.102. INSTANT RUNOFF ELECTIONS.

 

Within the charter itself, this method is continually framed in the following ways: “shall be elected using a ranked-choice, or "instant runoff" ballot” and “Ranked choice, or "instant runoff," balloting shall be used for the general municipal election.” This dual framing as “ranked choice” and “instant runoff” is used 11 times in the charter.

 

Two years later, in the Oakland city charter (link here), the same framing was used:  “shall be conducted using ranked choice voting, known sometimes as "instant runoff voting."”

 

Secretary of State Debra Bowen in 2013 issued statewide guidelines titled “Instant Runoff Voting in Charter Counties and Charter Cities”, here is the link    

https://votingsystems.cdn.sos.ca.gov/oversight/directives/irv-guidelines.pdf

The first paragraph of this document reads:

“Instant Runoff Voting,” also known as “Ranked Voting,” is an election method in which a single election determines the candidate supported by the voters, eliminating the need for separate run-off elections.  As defined in these guidelines, it is a method in which voters rank candidates for office in order of preference and ballots are counted in rounds that simulate a series of runoffs until either a single candidate among several attains a majority of votes or only two candidates remain and the one with the greatest number of votes is declared winner.”

 

Neither STAR Voting or Round Robin Voting can conform to that definition provided by the Secretary of State’s office.

 

The packet given to city council members by city attorney Michael Webb contained a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case, Dudum vs Arntz, in which the court wrote in 2011 “instant runoff (or "ranked-choice" or "alternative vote") systems have been used in the United States and elsewhere at various times.”

 

From a legal and an operational standpoint, there is no daylight between the names “instant runoff voting” and “ranked choice voting.” They are exactly the same, and used interchangeably, depending on the situation. In those cities where RCV is replacing a two round “delayed” runoff, the name “instant” runoff has been used to distinguish it from the delayed runoff. In recent years, due to the popularity of instant runoff voting/ranked choice voting, proponents of other methods have tried to call their method also “instant runoff voting” as a way of piggybacking on this popularity.

 

But in California at this point there is a long track record in which the names “instant runoff voting” and” ranked choice voting” have been synonymous and used interchangeably. Any attempt by the city of Redondo Beach to label another method such as STAR voting as “instant runoff voting” would be illegal, a violation of its charter and would be challenged via a lawsuit.

 

9. Is there voting equipment that can run a STAR Voting or Round Robin election?

NO, there is not. Currently there is no voting equipment from any vendor in California that is capable of running a STAR Voting or Round Robin election. And given the realities of the voting equipment industry, there never will be. The process of programming software, then getting that software and hardware tested and certified by the Secretary of State, is lengthy and expensive. No voting equipment vendor is going to undertake this process because there is no place anywhere in the country that uses either STAR voting or Round Robin, and so the vendor would have no expectation of making any profit from doing this development work. The only possibility that they might undertake this is if they would charge Redondo Beach for all development, testing and certification costs. That would cost Redondo Beach millions of dollars and would take a number of years to develop. In short, for all intents and purposes, this route is a dead-end for Redondo Beach to pursue.

 

10. Maybe Redondo Beach could hand count all of its ballots for STAR voting or Round Robin elections?

NO, it cannot.  Last year, in September 2023, the state of California passed and the Governor signed legislation banning all hand counts in California (with the exception of very small elections). See this link. This legislation was passed in reaction to a situation in Shasta County in which right wing extremists with their stolen election conspiracy theories convinced their Board of Supervisors to get rid of voting equipment and hand count ballots. The state of California responded by banning that practice.

 

12. Does the city council have to make certain decisions about how certain features in IRV/RCV like “skipped rankings” and “overvotes” should be handled?

NO. City attorney Michael Webb and the city clerk made a presentation about different decisions that the city council must make. However the Secretary of State’s office previously issued guidelines about these details and it is highly recommended to follow the Secretary of State’s guidelines. Here is a link to those guidelines:  “Instant Runoff Voting in Charter Counties and Charter Cities”,  https://votingsystems.cdn.sos.ca.gov/oversight/directives/irv-guidelines.pdf