Board of Elections 'Discrepancy' Puts Mayoral Primary Vote in Disarray

[frazzled]

7. Ranked choice has never been used in such a big city

and not, I believe, with 13 candidates running for the same office. It's very different for races in smaller populations with maybe 2 or 3 or 4 candidates on the ballot.

The biggest problem, to me, is transparency. People can understand (and trust) hard numbers: candidate X gets this many votes (and/or percentage of total), candidate Y another number of votes (and a percentage of total). A simple recount can resolve any disputes.

With a complex ranked-choice contest, the mathematics are obscured to the public, and we'll get more and more distrust of the outcomes. And that is NOT a good thing for our democracy. I'm kind of glad that this is a clusterf**k. I don't want ranked choice to become the norm. I can't even imagine this being used nationally for, say, a Democratic primary across all the states.