Author: Katya Rapoport Sedgwick

There is a nagging suspicion among us conservatives that Democrats want to game the electoral algorithm to produce the snapshot of the electorate most favorable to themselves, and that they will continue tweaking it to improve their results in real time. Many on the left, of course, sincerely believe that they are fighting voter suppression or championing innovation.  One of the examples of their innovation is the ranked choice voting that adopted by the city of Oakland, CA in 2006.  In 2010, after a complicated campaign in which candidates vied for second and third place, Oakland has elected Mayor Quan, even though she performed poorly after the first round was tabulated.  A little more than a year later, Quan, who was nobody's first choice, pissed virtually everyone in town with her lackluster handling of the Occupy camp.  One would think this experiment was enough to show that traditional voting arrangements work better, but no.  Other municipalities, and the state of Maine, have adopted the system, and Utah is slated to do it.