Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen

A polling station at the Chinatown branch of the San Francisco Public Library on Tuesday, November 8, 2011

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors seemed poised to reject a change to the city's voting system Tuesday afternoon, likely putting an end, for now, to what has become a "bizarre" partisan battle, according to elections experts.

That battle has pitted the city's moderate politicians, who want to end ranked-choice voting, against more left-leading leaders, who want to expand it. 

Supervisor Mark Farrell told The Bay Citizen he did not appear to have enough support from other supervisors to put his proposal to end the system on the June ballot. 

"There are a lot of people across San Francisco, myself included, who want to see it eliminated, and see this as wrong,” said Farrell, who along with moderate Sean Elsbernd, sponsored the proposed charter amendment.

The board on Tuesday is also going to consider another measure sponsored by liberal supervisors John Avalos and David Campos that would expand ranked choice voting by increasing the number of candidates voters can select on their ballots. Campos and Avalos did not respond to The Bay Citizen's requests for comment.

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who, as a progressive supervisor pushed for the adoption of ranked-choice voting in 2003, wrote in a recent editorial for The Bay Guardian that Farrell's measure favors "downtown" business groups.

"It's clear what these special interests want: a return to the days when local races were decided in low-turnout December elections, and those who had the most money pounded their opponents into submission," Ammiano wrote.

Analysts who spoke with The Bay Citizen said they were baffled that ranked-choice voting might be considered a partisan issue at all in San Francisco, given that the system does not seem to have particularly favored left-leaning candidates during the nearly eight years it has been in use.

“It strikes me as bizarre that this has become so polarizing,” said University of San Francisco political science professor Corey Cook.

According to Cook, ranked-choice voting favors incumbents, regardless of their political party.

“The idea that RCV helps the left is dogma. Whether it’s true or not is another story,” added David Latterman, a lecturer at the University of San Francisco’s McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good.

“Ideologues are going to remain ideologues, even if the evidence shows they’re wrong,” Latterman said.

Mayor Ed Lee, who topped a field of 16 candidates in last November's mayoral election, said Monday he was in favor of reforming the system, but would not say whether he supported one charter amendment proposal or the other.

Lee said the ranked-choice voting system, along with the large number of candidates, led to a lot of confusion. According to the Department of Elections, it took 12 rounds to determine Lee won the mayor's race.

"Even though I won, I still say more people could have been less confused about it," he said.

Some voters were confused. Cook and Latterman's soon-to-be published analysis of the Nov. election found that one percent of voters "over-voted" — that is, they mistakenly listed too many preferences on sections of their ballots, invalidating those sections.

Cook and Latterman also found that Latinos were more than 20 times more likely than the general population to cast “over-votes,” while elderly voters were 10 times more likely to make this kind of mistake, Cook said.

While ranked-choice voting proponents say the system saves taxpayers money by eliminating costly runoff elections, critics say it denies voters the opportunity to see the top vote-getters face off against each other, without a field of contenders distracting voters from their messages.

“Lee would have won anyway,” said Elsbernd. But “voters were deprived of the opportunity to see the two candidates square off.”

Steven Hill, the author and activist who created San Francisco’s ranked choice voting system, declined to be interviewed.

Former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, now the San Francisco Democratic Party Chairman, voted in favor of the ranked-choice voting charter amendment in 2003.

“I think it worked reasonably well, but I don’t think it’s the be all and end all of election reform,” he said. “I don’t think it matters that much one way or another.”