Attacks on Ranked Choice Voting Begin

Don't be surprised if there are more sour grapes and baseless attacks on Ranked Choice Voting from some of the losers in last week's historic election.

"While some voters genuinely like this system and found it easy to use, some voters, in particular Chinese-speaking voters, had a very different experience," said Ben Tulchin of the polling firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maulin (sic) and Associates, which conducted the poll for the voter education group [Chinese American Voters Education Committee].

Why would Chinese-speaking voters have difficulty understanding ranked-choice ballots? It's so easy that children get it -- it's as easy as 1-2-3.

Might the Chinese American Voters Education Committee have had an interest in the outcome of this past election? Perhaps they felt that Lillian Sing would have fared better in a costly runoff against Jake McGoldrick in District 1?

There are other problems with the polls, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• If FMMA's exit polls didn't asky why some voters didn't make a second or third choice, why assume that they didn't get it?
  
• If just 2,108 voters were polled, how many were Chinese American? How many white and Latino voters were polled?

I would remind Mr Lee that in 2002, Prop A was supported by Asian voters and endorsed by Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asian Pacific Democratic Club, and Asian Week.

Mr Lee and his group must work hard at registering Chinese Americans to vote. If he wants to make sure that his constituency takes advantage of RCV, he should concentrate some of his efforts on voter education, instead of fighting RCV, which benefits communities of color while ensuring that candidates are elected by a majority of voters without the need for costly runoff elections.

Why would anyone be against it?