U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg ruled last week in favor of San Francisco's ranked choice voting system, which has been in effect since 2004. Sunset district resident Ron Dudum filed the suit, calling the system unconstitutional, after he narrowly lost to Ed Jew during the 2006 election. The judge concluded that while the system does "exert some burden on voting rights, it is not severe."

For those who vote and still don't understand it, the system goes like this (per the Examiner): "voters rank the top three candidates they would most like to see in office. When votes are counted, any candidate who gets more than 50 percent of first-choice votes is the winner. If no one gets that many votes, the candidate who got the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated and the votes of people who ranked that person first then go to their No. 2 choice." We know... complicated. [Examiner]