Ajwang Rading

A map of the 16th District, which includes Saratoga.

This May, the Congressional primaries were conducted in District 16, home of Saratoga and in the heart of Silicon Valley. Previous Democratic House representative Anna Eshoo, 81, had decided to retire from her position after three decades in office, leaving the position vacant for other candidates. 

The primary race to replace Eshoo was staggeringly close, with the final two candidates, both Democrats, emerging as Sam Liccardo and Evan Low. 

Low won the spot narrowly over third-place candidate Joe Simitian, who received Eshoo’s endorsement, by only five votes. 

One concern that arose following the primaries is that both District 16 candidates have remarkably similar policies and agendas. So, does the general election really matter when there is no Republican on the ballot? 

The voting margins between the final two candidates are also within a 5% difference — Liccardo got 21.1% of the vote compared to Low’s 16.6%. Ultimately, the general election is going to boil down to how the candidates’ personalities and backgrounds appeal to voters, not so much policy or philosophical differences. 

On one hand, Liccardo was the previous mayor of San Jose and has experience working on Bay Area-specific policy. He is focused on a wide variety of issues, from climate change and environmental protection to gun control. 

One of his major focuses has been housing. He piloted efforts like the San Jose Bridge program, which employed unhoused citizens to clean the city in exchange for housing and pay. He also spread the prevalence of quick-build family housing, which can be easily built to replace motels and abandoned lots. 

Liccardo also previously worked as a prosecutor. He graduated from Harvard Law School and has been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. He’s also a native Saratogan and a Bellarmine Prep alum. 

On the other hand, Low, 10 years younger at 41, was born in San Jose, and is a fourth generation Californian. He, too, attended Harvard, in addition to De Anza College and SJSU. In 2009, he was elected as the youngest Asian-American mayor in the US. 

Low has slightly less legislative history — he grew up in the classic Asian childhood with parents that urged him to become a doctor or engineer, and pursue a job that “pays more.” 

Low is also openly gay and has been an active supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, even serving as the chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus. Because of this rapid rise in representation and visibility, he was named one of “Top 25 People who will change Silicon Valley.”

 Given that Low’s legislative priorities are essentially identical to Liccardo’s, the upcoming elections are less of a test of policy, and more of a test of character. 

In the grand scheme of things, though, who the candidates are as people won’t have a massive impact on the efficiency nor effectiveness of any policymaking that occurs on the district stage. Given that both candidates are Democrats, they’ll face the same roadblocks to execution if they’re pursuing the same ends. If they both have the same ideas and goals, what’s the point of pitting them against each other?

Though California is majority Democrat, an effort to increase competition in district elections would incentivize newer and better thought out policies to appeal to the public. Empirically, competition increases the prevalence of societally beneficial policies as a whole, in ways that prompt voting. 

Importantly, district elections are greatly affected by partisan and sometimes illegal gerrymandering. District lines are redrawn every 10 years by the party in power, based on the Census. Often, groups draw the lines in a way that skews the vote toward their party, and prevents the opposition from winning.

This is key, because it may prevent certain districts from being winnable at all by the opposition. In return, anti-competitive behavior reduces the quality of policies being passed. 

In order to increase this competition, states should consider adopting a ranked choice voting (RCV) system over the traditional plurality system. In an RCV election, voters must rank candidates from most to least favorable. In each additional round of voting, candidates are eliminated based on their average rank, until the final round of voting is left with the top two or three candidates. 

For one, RCV pushes voters on either side of the aisle toward voting for their party’s main candidate more than they would in a normal, plurality vote. This is because a plurality vote requires the candidates to be narrowed down within a single round of voting, which prompts disagreement within the party about a political candidate (like the Republican party in the federal elections this year). 

This majority cohesion would be useful in a place like Saratoga, where strong Republican candidates are discouraged from running, due to the immediate expectation of losing.

Further, RCV increases the likelihood that minority candidates are elected into the office. In plurality elections, parties are forced to stick with candidates that appeal to their majorities, where the candidate may not represent an overshadowed minority population adequately. This can be especially problematic if the city/state has a large general population of minority voters.

This requirement of appeal to voters is also useful in terms of ensuring that more moderate candidates are elected. For RCV to be successful, candidates are forced to appeal to a wider range of voters, as people in all areas may determine whether or not the candidate makes it to the final race. Voters must rank additional candidates besides their immediate preference, so candidates that represent a “compromise” will be elected more frequently.

Our highest priority should be increasing the competitiveness and diversity of our elections all over the nation. Whether it be in our own district elections, or on the federal stage, diversity and competition are both factors that need to be closely monitored and prioritized, for the best policy making to occur. Ranked choice voting is one smart way to achieve this goal.