030 - Have It Your Way (with Josh Rosa of Better Ballot Sacramento)

It's all old hat at this point, but it bears repeating that Zohran Mamdani's historic nomination as Democratic candidate for New York City mayor is largely thanks to his groundbreaking policies for city welfare, as well as his commitment to social justice. Less examined, however, is the role of ranked choice voting in the success of his campaign. Today we sit down with Josh Rosa of Better Ballot Sacramento for a chat about what is ranked choice voting, and how it can change the electoral landscapes here in California.

Though ranked choice voting has been popular in Europe for quite some time quite recently, some municipalities across California have adopted it like San Francisco, Berkeley, Eureka, and Oakland... these places have seen better voter turnout, less money in politics (thanks to RCV's shorter campaign seasons), and a friendlier, more collegial election process.

Throughout the rest of California, however, most local elections are decided in the primary, with extremely low voter turnout — locking democracy behind party membership. When local races do go to a runoff, they required to essentially restart their entire electoral campaign. This effort easily doubles the amount of money that they need to raise and spend to follow through on the general election campaign.

Josh also takes us through the current state of ranked choice voting implementation throughout California, highlighting the work that Better Ballot Sacramento, Cal RCV, and Fair Vote are all doing to help implement ranked choice voting in the state of California. In Sacramento's case a large part of the city council members agree that ranked choice voting would be a huge improvement on the current state of affairs.

Note: this episode was recorded at New Helvetia, a worker owned brewery in Sacramento. Some background noise may be apparent.