Brown vetoes bill to broaden ranked-choice voting in California

San Francisco is one of four cities in California with ranked-choice voting. A bill to enable other cities in the state to adopt the voting system was vetoed in September by Gov. Jerry Brown. San Francisco is one of four cities in California with ranked-choice voting. A bill to enable other cities in the state to adopt the voting system was vetoed in September by Gov. Jerry Brown. Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Brown vetoes bill to broaden ranked-choice voting in California 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Legislation that would have allowed all cities in California to use ranked-choice voting, the system in San Francisco and three other Bay Area communities that lets voters rank candidates by preference and decide an election in a single round of ballots, has been vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Ranked-choice, also known as instant-runoff voting, gives voters the option of choosing multiple candidates in order of preference. After the ballots are first counted, the candidate with the fewest top-rank votes is eliminated and the next choices of that candidate’s supporters are apportioned among the remaining candidates. The process continues until one candidate gets a majority.

While the system can sidetrack a leading candidate who lacks second-choice votes, it also encourages voters to support the candidate they prefer, rather than a less-favored rival who has a better chance of winning. The system is less expensive for cities than the traditional primary and runoff elections.

California law allows the state’s 121 charter cities to adopt the ranked-choice system if their voters approve it. Only four have done so — San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and San Leandro — while the others hold two-round elections for local offices.

The 361 “general law” cities, those without self-governing charters, hold single-round elections in which the top vote-getter is declared the winner, needing only a plurality of the voters rather than a majority. That category includes such Bay Area communities as Antioch, Brisbane, Concord, Daly City, Menlo Park and Walnut Creek.

The legislation, SB1288 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have allowed any city to switch to ranked-choice balloting if voters endorsed it. The measure passed both houses on divided votes but was vetoed Thursday by Brown in a sharply worded message.

“In a time when we want to encourage more voter participation, we need to keep voting simple,” the governor said. “Ranked-choice voting is overly complicated and confusing. I believe it deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.”

Leno reacted with bewilderment. “Ranked-choice voting is very simple,” he said, and the point of his bill was “whether we, the state, should dictate to these general law cities how they should design their voting systems.”

Brown may have had other reasons for his veto. Mayor of Oakland from 1999 to 2007, he supported former state Senate leader Don Perata in the 2010 mayor’s race, the city’s first under the new system. Perata got the most votes in the first round but wound up losing to Jean Quan, a councilwoman who ran to Perata’s left and got more second-place votes from supporters of like-minded candidates. Perata, and some of his backers, said afterward that ranked-choice voting had unfairly cost him the election.

Groups seeking changes in the electoral system supported Leno’s bill and were dismayed by the veto.

Ireland uses ranked-choice voting to elect its president, and Australians elect representatives with that system, said Steve Chessin, president of Californians for Electoral Reform. “I can’t believe that the people in California are any less able to understand the system,” he said.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko