Chicken John on the SF Election.

Before we go into the thinking of all this, since I know so many of you skim, I’m gonna put my mayor picks up front here:



#1 Jeff Adachi

#2 Dennis Herrarra

#3 John Avalos



Ross Mirkirami for Sheriff



If you think it’s fun watching from the sidelines as the GOP scrapes the bottom of the barrel looking for someone who is not a nutjob like Ron Paul, not a drunk like Rick Perry, not a sexual assaulter like Herman Cain, not a disaster like Michelle Bachmann… the list goes on… who’s gonna recruit Lyndon LaRouche? As we watch in horror the freakshow parade across our screens as the Republican party has its adolescence and we get some good show, we got kinda the same thing going on here in SF. Watching the Republicans is kinda like watching animals in a zoo. We will select a mayor next Tuesday, and there are 16 candidates. And it’s a sideshow/shitshow.



First of all let me say that Ed Lee is a liar. He is a regent mayor ONLY because he promised he would not run, so that there would be on ‘open seat’ for this election. Ed is the bad guy in this drama. He is the rumpled overlord who is the wrong guy for the job. He’s a nothing. A guy that has no ideas and just keeps everything 98.6. He is not a good representation of SF, our values, our people or our tolerance.

He’s a dud.



But he’s probably gonna win. He probably already has, actually. Absentee ballots and all… And that’s really really sad. The reason he is likely going to win is because there are so many candidates. It’s a matter of the ‘aggregate’. Let’s say 250,000 people vote. There are 16 candidates. You have to get 50% of the vote (plus one vote) to win.



How people will vote in the #1 position:
Let’s say Ed Lee gets 30% of the vote.

Dennis Herrera gets 25%.

Leland Yee gets 20%.

John Avalos gets 15%.

Jeff Adachi gets 9%.

The other 11 candidates get the other 1%.



Let’s just say, to make the point. This isn’t how it will really go, but let’s just say it goes like this, so we can see how Ranked Choice Voting really works…



The first round of voting counts ONLY your #1 choice. They count up all the ballots’ #1 choices. If a candidate gets 50% of the vote (plus one vote) that candidate wins. We are supposing that the ‘aggregate’ is 250,000 voters. So if someone got 125,001 votes, they would win.



But that is not going to happen. What is going to happen is more like above. With the evil rumpled overloard Ed Lee the lying liar getting 30%, or 75,000 votes. So an “instant runoff” is triggered. And we look to people’s #2 and #3 choices to determine a winner, in a complicated way that I will explain below.



Ranked Choice Voting is also called Instant Runoff voting.



Runoff elections have occurred often in SF. In 1999 Willie Brown and Tom Ammiano had a run off election. 4 years later Gruesome Newsom and Matt Gonzalez had a run off. Run off elections costs millons and millions of dollars. Instant runoff voting costs no more then a regular election. You may remember that Jean Quan, the Mayor of Oakland who can’t seem to control her brutal police force was elected through Ranked Choice Voting even though she did not have more first or second place votes than her opponent Don Perata. Too bad that all the money Oakland saved on Ranked Choice Voting will go to her recall election… but I digress…



In looking at the #2 votes, it get a little complicated. So please just stay with me here… how we start counting #2 votes is by eliminating a candidate. And counting their #2 votes. So lets say there is a nudist running or something. He’s gonna get like 20 votes.

He gets the least amount of votes of any candidate for mayor. So we get rid of him, and we look to his 20 votes and see what we have.

Ahhhh… ten of the people who voted for the nudist decided not to take part in Ranked Choice Voting, and only voted for him in the #1 position. The ten other people all voted for John Avalos for #2. The aggregate just went down to 249,990 voters. The #2 votes for John Avalos just got added to his tally of #1 votes. But we still don’t have a winner.



So we eliminate the next candidate. And place that persons’ #2 votes. If your #2 vote gets eliminated, we count your #3. And we keep doing this, eliminating candidates and re-allocating their votes until one of the candidates gets to 50% of the vote (yes, plus one little vote).

All the while, the aggregate shrinks, and that 30% the lying scumdog Ed Lee has becomes 31%. 32%. 35%. 43%... until darkness falls… Ed will get very few if any #2 or #3 votes. He will win by the aggregate shrinking because of so many candidates.



Side note: if you don't vote for three different candidates and your candidate gets eliminated, or if your #2 and #3 candidates are eliminated before your #1 candidate, you will have what's called an Exhausted Ballot, meaning your ballot didn't count in the runoff portion of the election. Remember in District 10 last year when Malia Cohen won after 20 rounds? The real winner was Exhausted Ballots, with 9503 votes. Malia got 3879.



So back to next Tuesday – there are only really 5 candidates in this election:

Ed Lee

Dennis Herrera

Jeff Adachi

John Avalos

Leland Yee



There is a slight chance that Ed could lose. He could lose to Dennis. It’s somehow possible. It’s crazy, but it’s possible. I want it to be possible that John could win. But I’m going to give you my strategy, and you are welcome to embrace it, spit on it, yell at me, or write Chicken John as a write in candidate. For better or worse, here it is:



Jeff Adachi is the smartest guy in the room. Every time I see him, he’s the smartest guy in the room. The mayor of San Francisco should not be a rumpled idiot. We should have the smartest guy in the room leading us. I support Jeff Adachi for my #1 vote.



For my #2 vote, I vote for Dennis Herrera. Dennis runs a staff of 300 people. He’s a good guy. He’s not a jerk. He’s not an egomaniac. He’s fun. Funny. Full of life. He’s regal. Stately. I like him. I actually think that Dennis is going to get more votes then Jeff. But I don’t care, because if Jeff gets eliminated before Dennis, then it’s the same as voting for Dennis in the #1 slot. Same for John. I like John. I’ve done some things for his campaign. He’d be a good mayor. If he gets more votes than Dennis, Dennis will get eliminated. And my #3 vote for John will become a #1 vote for John (if both Jeff and Dennis get elimated).



If you vote for John Avalos and no one else, it’s like not voting if he gets eliminated. You MUST put Dennis on your ballot somewhere if you want to block Ed Lee. He has a chance, though a small one. This is my advice to you.



I personally do not like nor trust Leland Yee. He seems to be the sleazy politician type who says whatever the crowd in front of him wants to hear. He ran for his senate seat unopposed and went crazy with billboards and fundraising and flyers and mailers… he was running for mayor while he was running unopposed for Senate. That was kinda icky. I mean, he’s been in perpetual candidate mode, who’s doing his job?



David Chui is going to be the big loser in this campaign. It’s going to be so embarrassing for him to get less votes then Phil Ting, our assessor. I’ve got $20 that says ole Phil smokes David Chui…



Terry Baum the Green party candidate wins with the best slogan: “Let’s make San Francisco the town that everyone else thinks we are!”



Finally, Ross Mirkirami for Sheriff. If for no other reason, he will be the gentlest Sheriff in history. I don’t know why he wants that job, but if he wants it he can have it. The other people running are all cops. Don’t encourage them. Cops beat people up with sticks and shoot them in the face with rubber bullets. Fuckers. No cops for Sheriff. Ross for Sheriff. He’s not a cop.



You can vote any day at City Hall, you don’t have to only vote on Tuesday.



Go get ‘em…



Chicken