Loren, really appreciate how you draw out the deeper dependencies in the governance system --- particularly when you get a bad mayor in a strong mayor system.
Reform needs to consider all those linkages and possibilities in designing a future governance. Otherwise you might simply move the brick wall to a new spot, or open up a new trap.
Charter reform seems like a good idea, but if you don't address the broader flaws in our system, it might lead to such a trap. These flaws amplify each other right now (in addition to our hybrid system and RCV).
Few are willing to say it because of the fear of political or social backlash, but I'll say it. It is my hope that these issues can also be tackled through a reform process.
1. Our city commission structure often places people without expertise, without sufficient time/resource, without accountability, and often with narrow or conflicted interests in positions of authority over our elected leaders through explicit veto power, or the power to delay decisions.
2. Closed-door negotiations between public unions and the city is a deep conflict of interest. Unions receive nearly 1-1.7% of the salaries of city employees (which amounts to more than $6M a year of taxpayer money), some of which is used to elect the politicians that approve those salaries.
--> Effectively, unions are a city contractor allowed to contribute to candidates and then negotiate with them behind closed doors. Greater transparency is critical.
3. There is no state or other external requirement for the fiscal transparency that is essential to good governance. As we have seen recently, the city can delay financial reporting (or skip it) at well -- leaving the council in the dark and with limited options when things get tough.
4. There seems to be a notion that a city job is lifetime employment, regardless of employee performance, or of city needs. There are some amazing talents in the City of Oakland, and some deeply committed employees. But like every private or public organization ever, there are employees who don't perform.
--> If talented folks are not advanced based on merit, or if their every effort at service improvement is crushed by others' apathy, they get frustrated and leave. A merit based culture starts a the top -- and "the top" is selected and held accountable by the system of governance.
--> If the city cannot contract its workforce when needs change for finances change, we are doomed to wasteful, unsustainable governance.
5. There is a lack of any real accountability for long-term decisions -- e.g. spending decisions on contracts or pensions that won't impact current elected, but could sink the city years in the future. Whether it be road repairs (and $Ms in lawsuit payments for the lack thereof), or pensions, or broken contracts leading to decades-long lawsuits, we've seen those decisions play out repeatedly over the past 20 years. Unclear how to solve this, but those past decisions by electeds -- who never felt their impact -- are a large part of our current problems.
There were three of us that sat on the charter review committee that presented a dissension to the majority report. We never should have changed our form of government. It happened primarily because Jerry Brown didn’t want to attend council meetings. As for RCV, I have stopped ranking candidates and now only list one. I am tired of voting for mediocre candidates.
Leila, thank you for your comment. We would like to publish your comment in our next Letters to the Editor column.
We also would be very interested in seeing the dissenting opinion you mentioned in your comment. Do you by chance still have access to it, or can you point us to where we can find it?
I used to have a copy of the charter, the review committee’s report and the dissenting opinion but have Marie Kondo’d it… I did find this: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/plan-to-empower-oakland-mayor-suggestion-comes-3023607.php I thought there were three of us dissenting. One was a former city manager who lived in Crocker Highlands and the other was an attorney (Gary something). Richard Winnie (deceased 2011) chaired the committee and Zack Wasserman also was a member. I think Zack is still working at Wendel Rosen. https://www.linkedin.com/in/zackwasserman
This is a meaningful article and seems to conflate two issues - governance and ranked choice voting. I came from a strong mayor system in Atlanta, and I don’t think Oakland is prepared for the strength that a mayor has to exhibit to succeed in a strong mayor system. It is a productive system, but it is much more aggressive and contentious. Further, I don’t see the notion of mayoral veto being favorable in Oakland. I loved being part of a strong administration. I worked for the mayor. I advanced her agenda. I worked for an amazing mayor in Keisha Lance Bottoms, and I can’t wait until she is Georgia’s governor. There was a clear separation of powers. There was no such thing as a Section 218 violation because the administration would shut council down. I was protected from much of the council foolishness that I’ve experienced in Oakland, and it has been much more than a fake ethics complaint from a council member. I suggest Oakland pick one - strong mayor or council manager. Flip a coin. Pick a governance model. This “hybrid” model is lousy. Both choices are superior. Lastly, city attorney and city auditor need to be hired/appointed positions. Electing those positions is absurd.
Why not just get rid of RCV? This convoluted article completely ignores that possibility. City council can put a vote to get rid of RCV on the ballot for a special election with a simple majority.
Seneca, thank you for your comment. The article does express a preference to eliminate ranked-choice voting. It also notes that RCV has survived multiple challenges, and concludes that reverting to a council-manager government may be more feasible to achieve and could help improve Oakland's governance in the context of RCV.
Mr. Scott…I enjoy Gotham Oakland and have appreciated the evolution of your show even when I disagree with every word you say!! I did not experience RCV until moving to Oakland. I have found it to be confusing. You had a voter turnout graphic on one of your shows that I reference often (I hope it’s OK that I took a screenshot). Voter turnout is very high in D1 and D4. Conversely, voter turnout is not so good in D5, D6, D7. Is there a scenario where RCV has yielded a system that is racially and economically inequitable? The numbers you posted were staggering. It might explain why so many mayors come from D4. We have done a similar analysis at DOT with 311 calls. I can show mathematically that the inequity exists in pothole repair. I fear the same inequity may exist due in part to RCV. Lastly, I’ll pay for my own puppet if you use it on the show!!
Thank you, Josh—I agree. And thank you for watching Gotham Oakland. It’s a lot of fun to make, but it’s also mentally healthy for me. It’s hard to put into words just how much I know about this city’s inner workings. I’m often maligned by those in power because I won’t stop exposing the truth—so Oakland can move forward, heal, and thrive.
I’ve built strong sources on the inside over time, largely because I’m discreet and thoughtful about how I present information. What started as a hobby has grown into something meaningful—albeit time-consuming and not exactly profitable. So your comment truly means a lot to me.
Ranked Choice Voting isn’t democratic reform; it’s elitist, exclusionary, and structurally anti-democratic. I’ve been writing about—and warning against—it for years.
In 2022, I was the only mayoral candidate to formally file for a manual recount, leading an effort with the Oakland NAACP to push the county BOS to agree to one. That effort ultimately fell apart—because county registrar Tim Dupois weaseled away, and we let them by not keeping the pressure on.
RCV routinely produces winners without a real mandate. In Oakland, we saw this most clearly when a mayor was elected with less than one-third of the vote. Systems that allow officials to govern without broad support inevitably lead to instability, public distrust, and recalls. And that’s exactly what has happened: RCV “wins” across Oakland and the Bay Area have repeatedly been followed by recall efforts.
The problem isn’t just outcomes — it’s process. RCV relies on a closed-source algorithm, which is a polite way of saying votes are counted in secret. Voters cannot independently verify the tally, campaigns cannot meaningfully audit it, and the public is asked to simply “trust the math.” That is incompatible with democratic transparency.
Worse still, RCV is effectively unrecountable at scale. In large elections, a full recount can take months or even years, rendering recount rights meaningless. The first full RCV recount in U.S. history — in Oakland in 2022 — resulted in the reversal of a school board election, confirming what critics had long warned: the system is opaque, fragile, and error-prone. Even the Wall Street Journal has documented these failures (article below).
On top of all this, to your point RCV demonstrably disproportionately harms working-class voters, immigrants, seniors, and communities where English isn’t the first language. Ballot exhaustion and error rates are higher in these communities, while highly educated, consultant-driven campaigns benefit. That is procedural inequality, not equity — and racist in outcome even if not in intent.
Seneca, thank you for your comments sharing your critique of ranked-choice voting. We would like to publish a shortened version of your comments in our next Letters to the Editor column.
(I posted this reply on the wrong comment earlier by mistake, so I deleted that reply and re-posted it here.)
There’s a lot of complex game theory embedded in Ranked Choice Voting.
If your first choice is a frontrunner—and there are usually only two—then bullet voting can make sense.
But if your first choice is a long shot, you need to rank at least a second choice who is a viable frontrunner—the safest hedge—otherwise you risk unintentionally helping elect someone like Sheng Thao.
The problem is that this level of strategic calculation is far too complex for most voters and, frankly, deeply elitist. It assumes time, information, and political fluency that many working people simply don’t have.
Yes! I see it now. My #1 may be the overall #5. This feels like NASCAR. I need to identify my “racing team” and support all the drivers on that team. Even if my favorite driver does not win, I need one of the drivers on the team to win.
I’d be happy to show it. We measured pothole service request closed per person per council district. It probably wouldn’t surprise you that D7 gets half the number of service requests per person closed than one or two other districts. The distribution seems to follow voter turnout.
It does, but IMO, the framing is defeatist and ignores that the same process for a charter change to mayor needs to happen to change anyway. Why not just get it all done? This is the opposite of vision and a can-do attitude Oakland needs in a new leader.
We can do BOTH of these. Mayor Lee hates RCV and is on record saying so. At least 5/8 council feels the same…so why the defeatist attitude? It doesn’t seem organic to me that Taylor has seemingly abandoned hopes of eliminating RCV.
Oakland needs leaders with courage and vision. Not more people scared of their own shadow.
1. Get rid of RCV
2. Follow SPUR charter reform recommendations exactly. It’s the best plan I have seen so far.
Seneca-- Thank you for your additional comment. We would be very interested to see documentation confirming this statement: "Mayor Lee hates RCV and is on record saying so. At least 5/8 council feels the same." Do you have that documentation on hand, or would you be so kind as to point us where to find it? As you know, Oakland Report is focused on the primary source evidence, and if such documentation exists showing such strong support on the current mayor/council for including a reconsideration of RCV in the charter reform debate, then we would be interested in potentially writing an article about it.
She said it during multiple forums for mayor. I believe at least one of on video. Many have heard her say it including NAACP leadership and others in forums. I’ll hunt down the quote.
I appreciate the commentary in favor of non-RCV elections with runoffs because I want my vote to count, and I am quite sure I would have a preference if I knew who the two final candidates would be. Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is supposed to capture more voters for the final selection between two finalists given that fewer voters come out for runoff elections. Theoretically, IRV/RCV is a fair process when voters are allowed to rank all the candidates. In practice, the implementation of RCV in Oakland disenfranchises an increasing number of voters as the field of candidates expands while the number of ranks remains fixed.
In the early years (e.g., 2010, 2014) voters were allowed to choose three candidates. Recently, the ranks increased to five. The Oakland Charter Article XI allows the City Clerk to decide how many ranks we get. Regardless of number of ranks allowed, unless you choose candidates who become finalists your vote does not count. In 2014 when Schaaf won her first mayoral race there were 104,834 total ballots cast by RCV in that election. However, the ballots of 25,455 voters (25%) did not count toward the final selection of mayor for three reasons: the field of candidates was large, mistakes were made in marking some ballots, and the ranks were limited to three. Although the final round of RCV went to Schaaf only 48% of the total ballots cast in the election for mayor went to Schaaf.
I support the Oakland Report’s focus “on primary source evidence” and recommend more fact-checking. Mr. Taylor is mistaken in his paragraph beginning, “The other three elections resulted in no clear winner in the first round…” I noticed that he cited data from a single precinct out of more than 250 for Jean Quan in 2010 and Libby Schaaf in 2014. For these archived elections round-by-round tallies/eliminations are in Pass Reports, not the RCV Results Table which contains precinct-level data. Overall, first round results were: 24.47% (Quan, 2010) and 29.48% (Schaaf, 2014).
Hello, thank you for your comment and for catching the error in the citation of RCV precinct-level results. That error was the editor's, not the author's. The author's overall point in the paragraph is still accurate -- but you are correct that we cited the wrong percentages. This will be fixed in the article shortly. We appreciate alert readers who check our work and let us know when we miss the mark. That is indeed why we provide primary source documents for readers to inspect. Thank you again!
This analysis makes an important connection between electoral systems and governance structures. When ranked-choice voting systematically elevates compromise candidates who may lack clear electoral mandates, pairing such a system with concentrated executive power creates governance vulnerabilities. The argument for council-manager government as a check against these systemic risks is compelling—distributed decision-making requirements and professional management oversight can mitigate the potential damage from electing officials who won through vote redistribution rather than majority support. Whether Oakland voters ultimately choose to reform their electoral process or governmental structure, this examination of how these systems interact provides essential context for understanding why governance reforms must consider the full institutional ecosystem, not just individual components in isolation.
It’s great to see Loren Taylor reconsider his earlier preference for a Strong Mayor system and now support a Council-Manager program for Oakland. We at the Oakland Charter Reform Project agree — but for different, almost opposite, reasons.
For us, the bad outcomes that arrive and derive from concentrated executive power in the hands of an unqualified, corrupt, incompetent, or immoral mayor are obvious and inevitable, regardless of whether the mayor is elected via ranked choice voting or straight-away. The long-term damage that a bad strong-mayor can foist onto the city is too great; the recall bar is too high; and four years is too long to wait when change is necessary. Witness our current Federal President.
The beauty of the Council -Manager system is that, if the city manager is doing a poor or unacceptable job — if the potholes aren’t being filled, if the graffiti isn’t being abated, if the 911 calls are delayed — the city council can turn on a dime, terminate that person, and bring in a new and better administrator within months, not years.
In that way, the council-manager system best evinces representative democracy: your directly-elected council is responsible for and capable of overseeing city operations, and if a majority of councilmembers believe that change is necessary, then they can make it so. That is not the case in a Strong-Mayor system.
This is why 99 out of 101 Bay Area cities have chosen the council-manager model, and Oakland should, too.
So in short, you agree. Sounds like the charter reform project has… the same exact reason as Loren for why council-manager is best to prevent concentrated power in the hands of an “unqualified, corrupt, incompetent, or immoral Mayor”.
The only difference he is calling out is that if we didn’t have RCV a strong mayor system would make sense because we can hold a bad mayor accountable through the electoral process… which we cannot do today with RCV in place.
Correct — and what I’m saying is that we’d favor a council-manager system regardless of whether Oakland used rank choice voting or not. It’s the best way to reduce corruption in cities.
The municipal government structure of Oakland is flawed, so the answer is to eliminate ranked choice voting? Can someone from Oakland Report please explain what one has to do with the other? And what is the actual point of going back to runoff elections?
Loren, really appreciate how you draw out the deeper dependencies in the governance system --- particularly when you get a bad mayor in a strong mayor system.
Reform needs to consider all those linkages and possibilities in designing a future governance. Otherwise you might simply move the brick wall to a new spot, or open up a new trap.
Charter reform seems like a good idea, but if you don't address the broader flaws in our system, it might lead to such a trap. These flaws amplify each other right now (in addition to our hybrid system and RCV).
Few are willing to say it because of the fear of political or social backlash, but I'll say it. It is my hope that these issues can also be tackled through a reform process.
1. Our city commission structure often places people without expertise, without sufficient time/resource, without accountability, and often with narrow or conflicted interests in positions of authority over our elected leaders through explicit veto power, or the power to delay decisions.
2. Closed-door negotiations between public unions and the city is a deep conflict of interest. Unions receive nearly 1-1.7% of the salaries of city employees (which amounts to more than $6M a year of taxpayer money), some of which is used to elect the politicians that approve those salaries.
--> Over $4M spent on political activity by these unions based in Oakland. (See here for filing docs summary: https://gemini.google.com/share/282e308acf84, and for example the SEIU filing, here: https://olmsapps.dol.gov/query/orgReport.do?rptId=862170&rptForm=LM2Form)
--> Effectively, unions are a city contractor allowed to contribute to candidates and then negotiate with them behind closed doors. Greater transparency is critical.
3. There is no state or other external requirement for the fiscal transparency that is essential to good governance. As we have seen recently, the city can delay financial reporting (or skip it) at well -- leaving the council in the dark and with limited options when things get tough.
4. There seems to be a notion that a city job is lifetime employment, regardless of employee performance, or of city needs. There are some amazing talents in the City of Oakland, and some deeply committed employees. But like every private or public organization ever, there are employees who don't perform.
--> If talented folks are not advanced based on merit, or if their every effort at service improvement is crushed by others' apathy, they get frustrated and leave. A merit based culture starts a the top -- and "the top" is selected and held accountable by the system of governance.
--> If the city cannot contract its workforce when needs change for finances change, we are doomed to wasteful, unsustainable governance.
5. There is a lack of any real accountability for long-term decisions -- e.g. spending decisions on contracts or pensions that won't impact current elected, but could sink the city years in the future. Whether it be road repairs (and $Ms in lawsuit payments for the lack thereof), or pensions, or broken contracts leading to decades-long lawsuits, we've seen those decisions play out repeatedly over the past 20 years. Unclear how to solve this, but those past decisions by electeds -- who never felt their impact -- are a large part of our current problems.
There were three of us that sat on the charter review committee that presented a dissension to the majority report. We never should have changed our form of government. It happened primarily because Jerry Brown didn’t want to attend council meetings. As for RCV, I have stopped ranking candidates and now only list one. I am tired of voting for mediocre candidates.
Leila, thank you for your comment. We would like to publish your comment in our next Letters to the Editor column.
We also would be very interested in seeing the dissenting opinion you mentioned in your comment. Do you by chance still have access to it, or can you point us to where we can find it?
I used to have a copy of the charter, the review committee’s report and the dissenting opinion but have Marie Kondo’d it… I did find this: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/plan-to-empower-oakland-mayor-suggestion-comes-3023607.php I thought there were three of us dissenting. One was a former city manager who lived in Crocker Highlands and the other was an attorney (Gary something). Richard Winnie (deceased 2011) chaired the committee and Zack Wasserman also was a member. I think Zack is still working at Wendel Rosen. https://www.linkedin.com/in/zackwasserman
This is a meaningful article and seems to conflate two issues - governance and ranked choice voting. I came from a strong mayor system in Atlanta, and I don’t think Oakland is prepared for the strength that a mayor has to exhibit to succeed in a strong mayor system. It is a productive system, but it is much more aggressive and contentious. Further, I don’t see the notion of mayoral veto being favorable in Oakland. I loved being part of a strong administration. I worked for the mayor. I advanced her agenda. I worked for an amazing mayor in Keisha Lance Bottoms, and I can’t wait until she is Georgia’s governor. There was a clear separation of powers. There was no such thing as a Section 218 violation because the administration would shut council down. I was protected from much of the council foolishness that I’ve experienced in Oakland, and it has been much more than a fake ethics complaint from a council member. I suggest Oakland pick one - strong mayor or council manager. Flip a coin. Pick a governance model. This “hybrid” model is lousy. Both choices are superior. Lastly, city attorney and city auditor need to be hired/appointed positions. Electing those positions is absurd.
Why not just get rid of RCV? This convoluted article completely ignores that possibility. City council can put a vote to get rid of RCV on the ballot for a special election with a simple majority.
Why not get rid of RCV and have a strong mayor?
Seneca, thank you for your comment. The article does express a preference to eliminate ranked-choice voting. It also notes that RCV has survived multiple challenges, and concludes that reverting to a council-manager government may be more feasible to achieve and could help improve Oakland's governance in the context of RCV.
Mr. Scott…I enjoy Gotham Oakland and have appreciated the evolution of your show even when I disagree with every word you say!! I did not experience RCV until moving to Oakland. I have found it to be confusing. You had a voter turnout graphic on one of your shows that I reference often (I hope it’s OK that I took a screenshot). Voter turnout is very high in D1 and D4. Conversely, voter turnout is not so good in D5, D6, D7. Is there a scenario where RCV has yielded a system that is racially and economically inequitable? The numbers you posted were staggering. It might explain why so many mayors come from D4. We have done a similar analysis at DOT with 311 calls. I can show mathematically that the inequity exists in pothole repair. I fear the same inequity may exist due in part to RCV. Lastly, I’ll pay for my own puppet if you use it on the show!!
Thank you, Josh—I agree. And thank you for watching Gotham Oakland. It’s a lot of fun to make, but it’s also mentally healthy for me. It’s hard to put into words just how much I know about this city’s inner workings. I’m often maligned by those in power because I won’t stop exposing the truth—so Oakland can move forward, heal, and thrive.
I’ve built strong sources on the inside over time, largely because I’m discreet and thoughtful about how I present information. What started as a hobby has grown into something meaningful—albeit time-consuming and not exactly profitable. So your comment truly means a lot to me.
Ranked Choice Voting isn’t democratic reform; it’s elitist, exclusionary, and structurally anti-democratic. I’ve been writing about—and warning against—it for years.
In 2022, I was the only mayoral candidate to formally file for a manual recount, leading an effort with the Oakland NAACP to push the county BOS to agree to one. That effort ultimately fell apart—because county registrar Tim Dupois weaseled away, and we let them by not keeping the pressure on.
RCV routinely produces winners without a real mandate. In Oakland, we saw this most clearly when a mayor was elected with less than one-third of the vote. Systems that allow officials to govern without broad support inevitably lead to instability, public distrust, and recalls. And that’s exactly what has happened: RCV “wins” across Oakland and the Bay Area have repeatedly been followed by recall efforts.
The problem isn’t just outcomes — it’s process. RCV relies on a closed-source algorithm, which is a polite way of saying votes are counted in secret. Voters cannot independently verify the tally, campaigns cannot meaningfully audit it, and the public is asked to simply “trust the math.” That is incompatible with democratic transparency.
Worse still, RCV is effectively unrecountable at scale. In large elections, a full recount can take months or even years, rendering recount rights meaningless. The first full RCV recount in U.S. history — in Oakland in 2022 — resulted in the reversal of a school board election, confirming what critics had long warned: the system is opaque, fragile, and error-prone. Even the Wall Street Journal has documented these failures (article below).
On top of all this, to your point RCV demonstrably disproportionately harms working-class voters, immigrants, seniors, and communities where English isn’t the first language. Ballot exhaustion and error rates are higher in these communities, while highly educated, consultant-driven campaigns benefit. That is procedural inequality, not equity — and racist in outcome even if not in intent.
Democracy should be simple, transparent, auditable, and accessible. RCV fails every one of those tests. It’s time to retire it — once and for all. https://www.wsj.com/articles/oops-we-botched-ranked-choice-voting-11673047465?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqc8rg01edwVQBtVvYOTaXWqaL9SjWXlYkLxTsx7VvR6ve4QOitXNF_P8Om72QY%3D&gaa_ts=6962ab6f&gaa_sig=zspmpWpR2Lq9VdCq8cUHFs26qXtj9C7OVQr3YRMP6YftZcTLIaf6beF3bB_-5OthxpG9Kox-vUfL7xDPPiXtgA%3D%3D
Seneca, thank you for your comments sharing your critique of ranked-choice voting. We would like to publish a shortened version of your comments in our next Letters to the Editor column.
(I posted this reply on the wrong comment earlier by mistake, so I deleted that reply and re-posted it here.)
Personally, I bullet vote. I wouldn’t begin to know how to differentiate between #2 and #3. I can determine my #1 though.
There’s a lot of complex game theory embedded in Ranked Choice Voting.
If your first choice is a frontrunner—and there are usually only two—then bullet voting can make sense.
But if your first choice is a long shot, you need to rank at least a second choice who is a viable frontrunner—the safest hedge—otherwise you risk unintentionally helping elect someone like Sheng Thao.
The problem is that this level of strategic calculation is far too complex for most voters and, frankly, deeply elitist. It assumes time, information, and political fluency that many working people simply don’t have.
Yes! I see it now. My #1 may be the overall #5. This feels like NASCAR. I need to identify my “racing team” and support all the drivers on that team. Even if my favorite driver does not win, I need one of the drivers on the team to win.
I use the “tour de France” but yes. Check this out: https://youtu.be/kiWq-L6rpRg?si=Upk4m4f6E_yMA94_
And I would LOVE to see your 311 research!
I’d be happy to show it. We measured pothole service request closed per person per council district. It probably wouldn’t surprise you that D7 gets half the number of service requests per person closed than one or two other districts. The distribution seems to follow voter turnout.
It does, but IMO, the framing is defeatist and ignores that the same process for a charter change to mayor needs to happen to change anyway. Why not just get it all done? This is the opposite of vision and a can-do attitude Oakland needs in a new leader.
We can do BOTH of these. Mayor Lee hates RCV and is on record saying so. At least 5/8 council feels the same…so why the defeatist attitude? It doesn’t seem organic to me that Taylor has seemingly abandoned hopes of eliminating RCV.
Oakland needs leaders with courage and vision. Not more people scared of their own shadow.
1. Get rid of RCV
2. Follow SPUR charter reform recommendations exactly. It’s the best plan I have seen so far.
Seneca-- Thank you for your additional comment. We would be very interested to see documentation confirming this statement: "Mayor Lee hates RCV and is on record saying so. At least 5/8 council feels the same." Do you have that documentation on hand, or would you be so kind as to point us where to find it? As you know, Oakland Report is focused on the primary source evidence, and if such documentation exists showing such strong support on the current mayor/council for including a reconsideration of RCV in the charter reform debate, then we would be interested in potentially writing an article about it.
Here ya go! https://eastbayinsiders.substack.com/p/barbara-lees-train-wreck-of-a-performance
She said it during multiple forums for mayor. I believe at least one of on video. Many have heard her say it including NAACP leadership and others in forums. I’ll hunt down the quote.
I appreciate the commentary in favor of non-RCV elections with runoffs because I want my vote to count, and I am quite sure I would have a preference if I knew who the two final candidates would be. Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is supposed to capture more voters for the final selection between two finalists given that fewer voters come out for runoff elections. Theoretically, IRV/RCV is a fair process when voters are allowed to rank all the candidates. In practice, the implementation of RCV in Oakland disenfranchises an increasing number of voters as the field of candidates expands while the number of ranks remains fixed.
In the early years (e.g., 2010, 2014) voters were allowed to choose three candidates. Recently, the ranks increased to five. The Oakland Charter Article XI allows the City Clerk to decide how many ranks we get. Regardless of number of ranks allowed, unless you choose candidates who become finalists your vote does not count. In 2014 when Schaaf won her first mayoral race there were 104,834 total ballots cast by RCV in that election. However, the ballots of 25,455 voters (25%) did not count toward the final selection of mayor for three reasons: the field of candidates was large, mistakes were made in marking some ballots, and the ranks were limited to three. Although the final round of RCV went to Schaaf only 48% of the total ballots cast in the election for mayor went to Schaaf.
I support the Oakland Report’s focus “on primary source evidence” and recommend more fact-checking. Mr. Taylor is mistaken in his paragraph beginning, “The other three elections resulted in no clear winner in the first round…” I noticed that he cited data from a single precinct out of more than 250 for Jean Quan in 2010 and Libby Schaaf in 2014. For these archived elections round-by-round tallies/eliminations are in Pass Reports, not the RCV Results Table which contains precinct-level data. Overall, first round results were: 24.47% (Quan, 2010) and 29.48% (Schaaf, 2014).
Hello, thank you for your comment and for catching the error in the citation of RCV precinct-level results. That error was the editor's, not the author's. The author's overall point in the paragraph is still accurate -- but you are correct that we cited the wrong percentages. This will be fixed in the article shortly. We appreciate alert readers who check our work and let us know when we miss the mark. That is indeed why we provide primary source documents for readers to inspect. Thank you again!
This analysis makes an important connection between electoral systems and governance structures. When ranked-choice voting systematically elevates compromise candidates who may lack clear electoral mandates, pairing such a system with concentrated executive power creates governance vulnerabilities. The argument for council-manager government as a check against these systemic risks is compelling—distributed decision-making requirements and professional management oversight can mitigate the potential damage from electing officials who won through vote redistribution rather than majority support. Whether Oakland voters ultimately choose to reform their electoral process or governmental structure, this examination of how these systems interact provides essential context for understanding why governance reforms must consider the full institutional ecosystem, not just individual components in isolation.
It’s great to see Loren Taylor reconsider his earlier preference for a Strong Mayor system and now support a Council-Manager program for Oakland. We at the Oakland Charter Reform Project agree — but for different, almost opposite, reasons.
For us, the bad outcomes that arrive and derive from concentrated executive power in the hands of an unqualified, corrupt, incompetent, or immoral mayor are obvious and inevitable, regardless of whether the mayor is elected via ranked choice voting or straight-away. The long-term damage that a bad strong-mayor can foist onto the city is too great; the recall bar is too high; and four years is too long to wait when change is necessary. Witness our current Federal President.
The beauty of the Council -Manager system is that, if the city manager is doing a poor or unacceptable job — if the potholes aren’t being filled, if the graffiti isn’t being abated, if the 911 calls are delayed — the city council can turn on a dime, terminate that person, and bring in a new and better administrator within months, not years.
In that way, the council-manager system best evinces representative democracy: your directly-elected council is responsible for and capable of overseeing city operations, and if a majority of councilmembers believe that change is necessary, then they can make it so. That is not the case in a Strong-Mayor system.
This is why 99 out of 101 Bay Area cities have chosen the council-manager model, and Oakland should, too.
So in short, you agree. Sounds like the charter reform project has… the same exact reason as Loren for why council-manager is best to prevent concentrated power in the hands of an “unqualified, corrupt, incompetent, or immoral Mayor”.
The only difference he is calling out is that if we didn’t have RCV a strong mayor system would make sense because we can hold a bad mayor accountable through the electoral process… which we cannot do today with RCV in place.
Correct — and what I’m saying is that we’d favor a council-manager system regardless of whether Oakland used rank choice voting or not. It’s the best way to reduce corruption in cities.
The municipal government structure of Oakland is flawed, so the answer is to eliminate ranked choice voting? Can someone from Oakland Report please explain what one has to do with the other? And what is the actual point of going back to runoff elections?