Low Turnout and 9 Rounds of Ranked Choice Vote Counting Makes Barbara Lee Oakland’s Mayor
After 15 years of RCV, “The public still doesn’t’ understand it that well.”
Nine rounds of counting in the convoluted ranked choice voting (RCV) system saw former Congresswoman Barbara Lee elected mayor of troubled Oakland, California in a special election that saw unprecedented low turnout.
The city’s former mayor Sheng Thao was recalled last November for corruption, prompting a special election to fill her office until the next mayoral election next year.
Restoration News has shown how RCV is a confusing, billionaire-backed scheme that drives down voter turnout. It also advantages candidates like Lee with high name recognition, who often lose when people’s first choice votes are counted but win after multiple rounds of eliminating last-place finishers and tallying voters’ second choices. Although many voters don’t prefer the well-known candidate, they don’t recognize anyone else’s name on the ballot and pick that individual as their second choice.
This is exactly what just happened in deeply corrupt and incompetent Oakland.
RCV and Late Mail-In Ballots Rigged the Game for Lee
San Francisco-based SFGate noted, “Given that Lee ran in last year’s statewide primary race to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, plus the fact that she’d represented her East Bay district as a state legislator and later as a congresswoman for nearly 30 years, she benefited from wider name recognition that some thought would make her a shoo-in candidate to lead Oakland.”
Despite facing 9 candidates, her only real competition was former Council Member Loren Taylor, a former biomedical engineer, who ran a campaign on fixing the city’s budget woes. He recognized the city as “broken” and aimed to strengthen police and crime prevention.
In the 2022 mayoral election, Taylor led among first-choice votes and led during the first 7 rounds of counting but lost to Thao after 9 rounds by only 627 votes.
Despite Lee's name recognition, Taylor led on Election Night 48 percent to 46 percent in first-choice votes and 51 percent to 49 percent when voters’ additional choices were factored in. However, mail-in votes—which can be counted a week after the election—gave Lee a 5-point win after the RCV process eliminated the other 8 candidates.
Record Low Turnout
Oakland’s problem with voter participation is getting progressively worse. In 2018, mayoral turnout was 69 percent. In 2022, it was 52 percent. Only 36 percent of Oakland’s roughly 250,000 voters cast ballots, despite the city mailing all registered voters ballots weeks before the April 15 deadline to vote. In addition to vote-by-mail, the city offers early in-person voting days in advance and drop boxes.
One of the features of RCV is confusion, which discourages turnout among ordinary citizens. This makes democracy more of an elitist institution, favoring voters who are political geeks and candidates who are well-funded and well-known.
According to local CBS KPIX, even proponents of RCV in Oakland admit that after 15 years of using the system, “The public still doesn’t understand it very well.”
For reform-minded candidates to fix the problems of a troubled city like Oakland, they first must get elected. That’s difficult enough with voters disillusioned over the city’s politics and facing a candidate with Lee’s name recognition. It’s harder still when the voting process is so confusing.
Some of Oakland’s community leaders suggested campaigns and organizations could fix the problem of low turnout “by demystifying the electoral process.”
Oakland Is No Stranger to Corruption, Crime, and Incompetence
In the 1960s, Oakland became infamous for Mayor John Houlihan’s conviction for embezzlement, the Black Panther Movement, and the race riots that destroyed part of the city and drove away much of its tax base. Many parts of the city have since nurtured a reputation for being no-go zones.
Oakland passed a ballot measure in 2006 that introduced RCV in 2010, ostensibly to give people more representation in government and elect better officials.
Since then, things have only gotten worse. It lost its 3 perennial professional sports teams in the span of 5 years and is projected to run a budget deficit of $280 million within the next 2 years. In 2023, it ranked as the most dangerous city for violent crimes in the U.S. The commercial security company Safe and Sound Security ranks it as the most dangerous place to live in California in 2025.
Lee’s election again proves RCV protects the status quo and discourages voter participation. The city desperately needs leadership willing to drastically cut spending and crack down on crime to attract investment. Oaklanders should repeal RCV and return to the normal voting system everyone understands to boost turnout and give reform candidates a chance to get elected.
