(There’s no reason we can’t do some sort of ranked voting. – promoted by SFBrianCL)
In the June 6 California primary election, 26 races finished without majority endorsement. There will be no runoff election. A winner has been chosen, but the true intent of the voters may never be known. Not having rankings or ratings ballots is hurting us, all the time, every election cycle, in many races. These failures are not rare.
Ten races in the June primary chose a winner with less than 40% of the vote. One of those ‘winners’ got less than 30%. These close elections cut across party lines and affect Republicans and Democrats roughly equally.
In cases where the top two are very close, or where 2nd and 3rd are very close, or simply when the first place ‘winner’ has a low enough percentage of the votes, the election could have easily gone another way. I think it’s reasonable to call into doubt whether the desires of the voters have accurately been recorded and whether they are getting good representation.
If the first place finisher didn’t get 50% of the votes cast, it would have been possible to beat them if the voters who had split between other choices unified on one challenger.By considering the difference in votes between the first and second place candidate and the number of votes for candidates who came in 3rd or below, it’s possible to calculate the probability that the 2nd place candidate could win if the remaining voted randomly for the first or second place candidate. I’m going with random voting because it makes the statistics work out well to use a normal distribution and I don’t know all of these races so it makes bulk analysis of them possible.
Below are 26 races which finished with less than 50% support for the winner:
| Race | Vote Percentages | 1st place votes minus 2nd place votes | Sum of votes for 3rd and below | % of remaining votes 2nd place candidate would need to win | Probability that 2nd place candidate can win |
| BOE District 4 – Republican | 43.4 – 42.7 – 13.9 | 1040 | 22847 | 52.28% | 48.18% |
| CA Asm District 77 – Republican | 31.8 – 29.8 – 18.2 – 11.1 – 9.1 | 671 | 13272 | 52.53% | 47.98% |
| CA Asm District 6 – Democratic | 31.7 – 28.2 – 18.6 – 12.4 – 7.5 – 1.6 | 1922 | 21905 | 54.39% | 46.50% |
| CA Asm District 38 – Democratic | 33.3 – 28.9 – 23.9 – 13.9 | 818 | 7076 | 55.78% | 45.40% |
| BOE District 3 – Republican | 37.3 – 33.6 – 16.5 – 7.2 – 5.4 | 15986 | 129786 | 56.16% | 45.10% |
| Controllor Republican | 40.2 – 37.1 – 12.6 – 5.5 – 4.6 | 42987 | 313356 | 56.86% | 44.54% |
| CA Asm District 65 – Republican | 29.7 – 22.6 – 21.8 – 21.1 – 4.8 | 2105 | 14291 | 57.36% | 44.14% |
| CA Asm District 41 – Democratic | 35.0 – 26.8 – 20.3 – 14.8 – 3.1 | 2860 | 13254 | 60.79% | 41.46% |
| CA Asm District 59 – Republican | 32.5 – 22.9 – 17.5 – 16.5 – 10.6 | 3129 | 14483 | 60.80% | 41.45% |
| Lt. Gov. Democratic | 43.4 – 38.6 – 18.0 | 97028 | 362508 | 63.38% | 39.45% |
| CA Asm District 32 – Republican | 41.9 – 35.9 – 22.2 | 3089 | 11537 | 63.39% | 39.44% |
| CA Sen District 10 – Democratic | 39.2 – 31.0 – 29.8 | 5241 | 19337 | 63.55% | 39.32% |
| US Rep District 12 – Republican | 42.6 – 36.5 – 20.9 | 847 | 2985 | 64.19% | 38.83% |
| CA Asm District 57 – Democratic | 41.4 – 33.7 – 16.9 – 8.0 | 1561 | 5099 | 65.31% | 37.97% |
| CA Asm District 16 – Democratic | 42.8 – 35.4 – 12.4 – 9.4 | 4062 | 12057 | 66.84% | 36.81% |
| CA Asm District 58 – Democratic | 37.3 – 21.9 – 21.1 – 19.7 | 3502 | 9285 | 68.86% | 35.30% |
| CA Asm District 74 – Republican | 42.9 – 32.1 – 25.0 | 4175 | 9780 | 71.34% | 33.47% |
| US Rep District 52 – Democratic | 38.9 – 19.7 – 15.7 – 14.8 – 10.9 | 4867 | 10490 | 73.20% | 32.13% |
| CA Asm District 67 – Republican | 44.9 – 34.5 – 20.6 | 3701 | 7391 | 75.04% | 30.83% |
| Governor Democratic | 47.9 – 43.4 – 2.7 – 1.7 – 1.3 – 1.2 – 1.0 – 0.8 | 90898 | 180697 | 75.15% | 30.75% |
| CA Asm District 44 – Democratic | 42.8 – 26.2 – 23.6 – 7.4 | 4925 | 9217 | 76.72% | 29.66% |
| US Rep District 26 – Democratic | 47.0 – 37.8 – 15.2 | 2528 | 4172 | 80.30% | 27.23% |
| US Rep District 4 – Democratic | 46.5 – 33.1 – 20.4 | 6343 | 9674 | 82.78% | 25.60% |
| CA Asm District 45 – Democratic | 45.3 – 26.4 – 18.0 – 8.2 – 2.1 | 4380 | 6607 | 83.15% | 25.37% |
| CA Asm District 56 – Democratic | 46.1 – 29.2 – 24.7 | 3592 | 5267 | 84.10% | 24.76% |
| CA Asm District 66 – Republican | 48.0 – 19.8 – 19.7 – 12.5 | 6785 | 7790 | 93.55% | 19.19% |
This is just my way of saying again, change the election laws so that we can express ourselves on rankings or ratings ballots and we’ll get more representative elected officials and everyone will be happier.
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Sources:
http://vote.ss.ca.gov/Returns/gov/00.htm
http://vote.ss.ca.gov/Returns/ltg/00.htm
http://vote.ss.ca.gov/Returns/ctl/00.htm
http://vote.ss.ca.gov/Returns/usrep/all.htm
http://vote.ss.ca.gov/Returns/boe/all.htm
http://vote.ss.ca.gov/Returns/stsen/all.htm
http://vote.ss.ca.gov/Returns/stasm/all.htm