San Francisco may ditch Instant Runoff Voting

San Francisco's Chamber of Commerce discussed Instant Runoff Voting. At issue - whether the members should support an effort to ditch IRV.  After 5 years of use, IRV has tied the city to a complicated election process requiring the use of expensive uncertified voting machines, and annual costs have gone up, not down.

Time Redmond of the San Francisco Bay Guardian reports

Will downtown go after IRV?

Interesting meeting at the Chamber of Commerce office yesterday.

... Among the topics: A campaign to repeal the city's Ranked-Choice Voting system. Downtown has never liked RCV, also known as Instant Runoff Voting. ...the Chamber had polled this year on both district elections and IRV...

And while support for IRV was also strong, the voters, according to the Chamber poll, would be willing to consider direct runoffs between the top two finishers if the voting were all done by mail....

At his blog on the Huffington Post, RR complains that it is business groups want to ditch IRV, and that a poll shows that voters are agreeable:

Lessons from downtown business attacks on instant runoff voting in San Francisco June 22, 2009
...A Chamber executive said that its recent polling had found that after five annual elections with IRV in 2004-2008, support for IRV was strong, but potentially vulnerable to the right combination of attacks.

The Chamber's representative was revealing in explaining his opposition to IRV. "The Chamber has always been in favor of direct runoffs" because "it allows the top two candidates to directly address their differences on the issues."

Well, the Chamber's reasoning makes sense, considering that with IRV voters have to choose from a slew of mostly vanity candidates. Narrowing the field and forcing candidates to stand behind their issues is a great value to the voters, and it doesn't happen with IRV. 

In fact, since the implementation of IRV, San Francisco's voter turnout has dropped drastically.  Where is the enthusiasm of the voters that was experienced in the the 2003 Newsom/Gonzalez runoff?  In the 2007 mayoral/municipal election, turnout was only 35.61%, with 100,000 fewer voters than in the mayoral runoff in 2003 where 54% of the voters turned out to vote:

Lets compare the results for the Mayoral Contest in 2007, with Newsome verses "progressive" Mecke to the 2003 Mayoral Contest between Newsom and Gonzalez (Green):

2007 Results  With IRV

GAVIN NEWSOM . . . . . . . . . 105,596   73.66 
QUINTIN MECKE . . . . . . . . . .  9,076    6.33

http://www.sfgov.org/site/elections_index.asp?id=68841

2003 Results With Traditional Rnoff
GAVIN NEWSOM. . . . . . . . . . 133,546 52.81
MATT GONZALEZ . . . . . . . . . 119,329 47.19 

http://www.sfgov.org/site/election_index.asp?id=19802

Regular voters in San Francisco aren't that attached to IRV:

 In 2007, many SF Voters did not utilize the option to rank choices. There was confusion over ranking. According to a Nov 8, 2007 Electionline report ,

"Voters also questioned the value of ranked-choice voting."

"There are a lot of people who only mark one [candidate] or the same person three times,"

"I don't want to vote for a second one, I want this one."

Instant runoff voting is not working in San Francisco. It has not improved the pollitical climate, candidates are not cooperating, nasty politics and whispering campaigns continue, election costs are increasing, and the city is tied to an unreliable voting system solely to accommodate IRV.  The Chamber of Commerce SHOULD help the taxpayers and the voters get rid of this not so instant runoff voting mess.