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San Francisco uses ranked choice voting or IRV, not a two-round runoff. I should've used a different term to avoid confusion. Here's what I mean by a two-round

San Francisco uses ranked choice voting or IRV, not a two-round runoff. I should've used a different term to avoid confusion. Here's what I mean by a two-round system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system I don't think that the voting system has made SF 'essentially a one-party system', as tons & tons of cities across the US just use normal FPTP and are still very Democratic. Just as tons of rural states just use normal FPTP and are still very Republican. This is what I mean by, voting systems are overrated and just don't have the large effects that enthusiasts want them to have. It's a seductive argument for left-brained engineering types who are systems thinkers, but it's just not empirically true

garmaine 5y ago
California has a top-two primary system, not IRV, which as far as I can tell is the same as the "two-round system" you link to. So the primary is a free-for-all and the actual election has the top two polling candidates from the primaries, regardless of party affiliation. This was sold as a way of breaking the two-party duopoly, which it did, but not in the expected way. Instead of getting third parties or independents into that second spot, in heavily blue areas like SF they instead typically get the democratic vote split among two candidates, who go on to compete against each other in the general election. So now instead of third parties being locked by the mechanics of FPTP voting, they get third parties and republicans locked out! Went from a duopoly to a monopoly. (E.g. the last senate election in California was between Dianne Feinstein and Kevin de León, both establishment dems. Nancy Pelosi also faced a democrat in 2020.)