HARRY ROTH: Ranked-Choice Voting Creates Poor Leaders
by Staff
Stop RCV Project Manager Harry Roth wrote a piece in The Daily Caller detailing Oakland's recall of Mayor Sheng Thao and its connection to ranked-choice voting.
Thao’s win in 2022 was made possible by RCV. The novel election system creates winners out of losers by allowing a candidate who received more second-place (or third-place, fourth-place, etc.) votes to win even if another candidate had more first-place votes. This is exactly how Thao squeaked out a 677-vote win.
Her opponent, former Democratic Oakland City Councilmen Loren Taylor, received the most first-place votes but was under 50 percent in the initial round. Because of that, Thao was able to win in the ninth round. And while she had 50.3 percent of the remaining votes, that total was just 45.6 percent of the votes cast in the first round (11,787 “exhausted” ballots were excluded by the final round).