For months, Ranked Choice Voting advocates in Irvine have been behaving like victory was inevitable.
The sales pitch was simple: Ranked Choice Voting would save democracy, increase civic engagement, cure voter apathy, improve the weather, and probably lower your cholesterol. If you listened closely enough, you’d think Irvine was just one ballot measure away from becoming the political equivalent of Disneyland.
Then reality arrived.
At the most recent Irvine City Council meeting, Councilmember Dr. Kathleen Treseder’s effort to place a Ranked Choice Voting measure on the November ballot came to a screeching halt in the most humiliating way possible.
Not because it lost a vote.
Not because opponents mounted a persuasive argument.
Not because pro-RCV advocates — many of out of town — packed the council chambers.
No.
The proposal died because nobody would even second it.
Mayor Larry Agran asked for a second. Silence. He asked again. More silence. “Hello darkness my old friend…..” (you know how the song goes).
At that point, the most popular choice in the room may have been “None of the Above.” For a movement dedicated to ranking choices, it’s remarkable that Treseder’s colleagues apparently didn’t want to rank this proposal at all. Perhaps council members were confused. Who could blame them?Treseder took the very unusual step of making real-time edits to language that had already been reviewed and redlined by the City Attorney. Watching the proposal change during the meeting was a little like watching someone submit a term paper while still rewriting the conclusion. I thought she had a staff of people who should have done this in advance. Maybe they were on their phones playing video games while the edits dragged on.
One can hardly fault council members for wondering whether they should take a breath before signing on to something still being edited in public. Yet the larger irony is impossible to ignore.
Just a month ago, some RCV proponents were enthusiastically arguing that the City Council could implement Ranked Choice Voting without a vote of the people. They were patting themselves on the back while forgetting that a policy change like RCV should go to the voters first. Democracy is very important. except when actual voters become involved. During the next two weeks, they explained that they didn’t want to bypass voters. They merely wanted the council to put the issue on the ballot. And begged the council to do just that.
So after all the speeches, all the presentations, all the social media posts, all the breathless declarations that Irvine was on the verge of becoming the next great laboratory of electoral reform around since 1915 and not used by 99.98% of the nation’s states, counties, cities, villages, towns and hamlets, what happened?
The proposal couldn’t even get a second.
That’s not a setback. That’s a political faceplant.
And then there’s the cost issue. RCV advocates continue to insist implementation costs are modest. That’s convenient. Even the Orange County ROV Bob Page can’t place an estimate on the cost. What are those costs? Software modifications? Ballot redesign? Voter education campaigns? Additional election administration expenses? Public outreach? Potential consulting contracts? Residents have every reason to ask questions. The RCV people had better start fundraising.
I’d like to revisit the notion the RCV elections will result in more positive campaigns. New York City’s mayoral election was an RCV election, and it wasn’t nice at all.
Whenever government advocates promise something will be inexpensive, taxpayers should instinctively place one hand on their wallet and the other on their checkbook. I think RCV will cost the city millions; not $700K plus.
California’s history is littered with projects that were supposed to be affordable right up until they weren’t. And Irvine isn’t immune.
The refusal of council members to second the proposal may simply reflect a desire for more information. If so, that’s hardly unreasonable. Changing how every resident votes is not the same as approving a new stop sign or naming a park bench. This is a fundamental change to the electoral system. It deserves scrutiny and debate. And it deserves better than being assembled like IKEA furniture during a live council meeting.
The good news for RCV advocates is that the issue can return in two weeks. The bad news is they’ll spend the next two weeks explaining why a proposal that was supposedly so urgent, so transformative, and so overwhelmingly beneficial couldn’t convince a single colleague to say one word:
“Second.”
For a movement that constantly tells us voters should have backup choices, Treseder received a painful reminder that sometimes your first choice isn’t very popular either.
Postcards of a hanging.