By Steven T. Jones

Political consultants and centrist activists have spent months predicting San Francisco's new ranked-choice voting system would be a disaster. So when a Nov. 3 software glitch delayed tabulation of second- and third-choice votes in the supervisorial races, the doomsayers dominated the news.

"The system is completely untrustworthy and therefore nothing is accurate as far as I'm concerned," second-place District 1 candidate Lillian Sing told the San Francisco Examiner in its Nov. 4 edition, reflecting her downtown backers' long-standing opposition to RCV.

Then, the very next day, it was over. After a minor software adjustment to account for the high volume of voters, the ranked-choice ballots were tabulated, and clear winners emerged: Jake McGoldrick, Ross Mirkarimi, Sean Elsbernd, and Gerardo Sandoval joined Election Day winners Michela Alioto-Pier, Aaron Peskin, and Tom Ammiano.

"Ranked-choice voting does work," Elections Department director John Arntz said at a Nov. 5 press conference.

None of the results will be official until all the outstanding absentee ballots are counted and the final canvas is completed in a couple weeks. And if there had been a closer margin in any of the supervisorial races, that would have meant we wouldn't yet know the winner – a fact consultant Jack Davis and others have used in recent weeks to bash a system also known as instant-runoff voting for its lack of instant results. But this is actually quite normal in San Francisco: it always takes a while to count the final absentee and provisional ballots.

Steven Hill of the RCV-sponsoring Center for Voting and Democracy sent out a press release trumpeting, "All seven races announced within 72 hours of the election – results were 'instant' after all. San Francisco has its Decembers back – no more December elections!"

Eliminating the costly, low-turnout runoff election is the main benefit of RCV, and the reason the consultant community and downtown players don't like it. Yet even some of the runner-ups were happy election season is over.

"I'd rather be waiting than out campaigning now and being targeted by the California Urban Issues Project," District 7 runner-up Christine Linnenbach told the Bay Guardian Nov. 4, referring to one of the many downtown-funded groups that backed Elsbernd in that race.

District 5 runner-up Robert Haaland told us he continues to support RCV, although he didn't like "some of the randomness in people's second and third choices," and he would like to see it modified so voters could rank more than just their top three choices.

Time will tell whether longtime opponents of RCV – such as Sing's backers, District 11 runner-up Myrna Lim, and David Lee of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee – file a lawsuit challenging RCV or the results of this election.

"I'm happy as a clam to not be out working until December. But now I might be working on fighting litigation," McGoldrick consultant Jim Stearns told us Nov. 4, when the software snag was still delaying results. "Everyone who loses is going to have a pretty good gripe, and everyone who wins will have confidence in the system."

Yet Hill and Caleb Kleppner from the Center for Voting and Democracy are confident RCV can withstand any legal challenges. True, some poll workers mistakenly told voters they had to fill in all three choices, and there was the software snafu at the end. But overall, Kleppner told us, "It went remarkably smoothly for a new system."

Rachel Brahinsky contributed to this report.

E-mail Steven T. Jones