2010 Oakland mayoral election

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The 2010 Oakland mayoral election was held on November 2, 2010 to elect the mayor of Oakland, California. It saw the election of Jean Quan.

The election was held using instant-runoff voting. It was the first Oakland election run using this system.[1]

Background

The city of Oakland, California, passed (69%) a measure in November 2006 to adopt RCV for 18 city offices.[2][3] In early August 2010, incumbent mayor Ron Dellums announced that he would not be seeking reelection to a second term.[4] In November 2010, Oakland used RCV to elect its mayor, three city council races and four other local offices, with elections for mayor and council district four requiring multiple rounds of counting.[3] It used RCV in the city's remaining elected offices in 2012. IRV was again used in 2014 and 2016, including in the 2014 mayoral election in which incumbent Jean Quan was defeated by Libby Schaaf.[5]

2010 mayoral election

Oakland's 2010 mayoral election was an open-seat election in which no candidate earned more than 34% of votes in the first round. In the tally, candidates were eliminated sequentially, with three candidates far ahead in first choices. After the count of first choices, Don Perata was in first place, Jean Quan in second place, and Rebecca Kaplan in third place. They remained in that order of votes after all other candidates were eliminated and their votes re-allocated. When Kaplan was then eliminated, Quan picked up 18,864 votes from Kaplan backers while Perata was the next choice of only 6,407 Kaplan backers. As a result, Quan won a final round majority when matched against Perata, which means she was ranked ahead of Perata on a majority of ballots in which one of them received a ranking.(11% of voters did not rank either of them, making their votes exhausted by the time of the final round.)[6]

Results in depth

Candidate Round 1 Round 9 Round 10
Votes %(*) Transfer Votes %(*) Transfer Votes %(*)
Don Perata 40,342 33.73% +32 45,465 40.16% +6,407 51,872 49.04%
Jean Quan 29,266 24.47% +33 35,033 30.94% +18,864 53,897 50.96%
Rebecca Kaplan 25,813 21.58% +18 32,719 28.90% -32,719
Joe Tuman 14,347 12.00% +10
Marcie Hodge 2,994 2.50% +5
Terence Candell 2,315 1.94% +1
Don MacLeay 1,630 1.36% +6
Greg Harland 966 0.81% +2
Larry Lionel LL Young Jr. 933 0.78% +6
Arnold Fields 733 0.61% +5
Write-In 268 0.22% -268
Continuing Ballots 119,607 100.00% 113,217 100.00% 105,769 100.00%
Exhausted Ballots 0 +149 6,284 +7,383 13,667
Overvotes 355 +1 461 +65 526
Undervotes 2,306 2,306 2,306
Total Ballots 122,268 122,268 122,268


2012 elections

Oakland used RCV for several elections in 2012, including a citywide election for city attorney and for several seats on the city council and school board.[7] Several races were decided after multiple rounds, including the District 3 city council race where the winner trailed in first choices.[8] Of the 18 Oakland offices elected by RCV in 2010 and 2012, sixteen of the RCV winners received more votes than the previous winner had won before adoption in the last non-RCV election [9]

References

  1. "Final Results in Oakland's First RCV Election". FairVote. 16 December 2010. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  2. Offbeat and practical issues taken up around Bay Area, Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 8, 2006.
  3. a b "Instant-runoff voting a go for Oakland". Inside Bay Area. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  4. Kuruvila, Matthai (August 5, 2010). "Oakland Mayor Dellums won't run for re-election". The San Francisco Chronicle.
  5. "Oakland, California municipal elections, 2014". Ballotpedia. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on November 15, 2011. Retrieved November 11, 2011.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. "Oakland City Council Will Change; Oaklanders Get To Decide How – Dan Cohen". Zennie62blog.com. 2012-06-07. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  8. Hailey, Mollie (2012-11-12). "FairVote's First Take on RCV Elections in Four Bay Area Cities". FairVote.org. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  9. FairVote 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610, Takoma Park, MD 20912 www.fairvote.org / (301) 270-4616. ""Oakland (CA) Elections: Comparing Vote Totals for Winners With and Without Ranked Choice Voting"" (PDF). Archived from the original on 2013-01-06. Retrieved 2013-01-06.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)