Felix Ling

I’ve had a keen interest in RCV and proportional representation (aka ProRep) due to my lack of representation as an Asian-American agnostic Libertarian. So, I’ve been advocating for electoral reform for almost 20 years, mostly on social media (see https://twitter.com/perfctlyGoodInk and https://www.quora.com/profile/Felix-Ling-1) and comments at various blogs and publications.

I co-chaired the Alternative Voting Committee for the national Libertarian Party in 2021 (final report available here: https://tinyurl.com/lpaltvote). I also ran the Twitter account for CalRCV for two years after their launch meeting, growing it from several hundred followers to over a thousand, and I also briefly contributed to the CfER Twitter before that. I served as a board member and CFO for CfER this past year, contributing my thoughtful ideas, keen reviewer’s eye, and my detailed note-taking.

Outside of CfER, I also serve as a board member and Treasurer for ProRep Coalition, playing an instrumental role convincing the Libertarian Party of California as well as CfER itself to join its coalition. I also helped recruit several high-profile figures to join ProRep’s advisory board and began managing its Twitter account a few weeks ago.

Although my background is in economics, I’ve read a fair amount of political science research, particularly within comparative politics. I’m a financial advisor in Orange County (formerly an economics lecturer and software engineer), married to a registered Green, and we’re raising two biracial boys.

I would be honored to serve again as a board member if you will have me.

Phill Courtney

Let’s end the two-party duopoly!

After voting for George McGovern in my first presidential election, I worked within the Democratic Party until the early nineties. By then I could see that they were just one branch of the over-all corporate party that actually runs Washington through their hired hands in both major parties.

In 1991 I joined the Greens, wishing to be a member of a party that actually represented my political values. I have never regretted that choice, especially now as Democrats embrace policies I strongly oppose. My commitment to the Greens has even resulted in two congressional campaigns in 1998 and 2002.

However, I have never seen that getting people to join the Green Party is “the solution” to our political problems. The perverse power of our two-party, winner-take-all system is amazingly effective at neutralizing dissent. It makes even friends, who are passionately opposed to war and capital punishment, vote for candidates who are supporting just that.

Our best hope to end this dilemma is to change our system of electing people to office—a system that allows people who do not support the status quo to get people who speak for them into the halls of power in Washington D.C.The best bet for doing that is proportional representation. This is the reason I want to work with Californians for Electoral Reform.

Please elect Phill Courtney to the CfER board.

Lorelei Moosbrugger, Ph.D.

Lorelei is a political scientist and lecturer in Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her expertise is in the political consequences of electoral systems. Lorelei joined the Board last year because she believes that single-member district plurality elections are probably the worst way to elect representatives – they limit choice to one of two big parties, reduce voter turnout, minimize incentives for voters to be informed and foster tribalism. To make matters worse, primaries empower the extremes and gerrymandering prevents more moderate voters from holding their party accountable at the polls without defecting to the other side.

She is also on the Advisory Boards of RanktheVote.us and California’s ProRep Coalition in order to contribute to the growing movement working to improve the quality of our democracy by changing the way we vote. She is focused primarily on empowering college student communities anxious and ready for change.

Paula Lee

As CfER’s Vice President, I remain an active and involved CfER board member.  Living in Sacramento near the Capitol, I have been active in CfER legislative efforts and am on standby for the next legislative push!  As background, I joined CfER and the League of Women Voters to advocate for proportional representation. I am serving on the advisory board for California’s ProRep’s coalition. My contribution to CfER and California reform efforts has been my continued focus on educating & advocating for Ranked Choice Voting and Proportional Representation within the LWV resulting in a position all Leagues in CA can use to support PR/RCV.

I co-led 2 League of Women Voters  national campaigns that resulted in national electoral reform studies and official national LWVUS positions that support:

• National Popular Vote Compact
• Proportional Representation 
• Alternatives to plurality voting like Ranked Choice Voting

As a Sacramento LWV leader (Pres.), we have launched an educational campaign to build support in Sacramento for RCV, laying the groundwork for a 2026 RCV Charter amendment.  As an organization I believe CfER should continue building relationships with the voting rights community highlighting PR as a voting rights remedy & option to districts. Hope to be one of your very top choices!

C.T. Weber 

C.T. Weber is active with the Peace and Freedom Party and is a  long-time supporter of proportional representation (PR). He founded  Volunteers Organizing Toward Electoral Reforms (VOTERs) in the early  1980s. Its purpose was to raise awareness of PR. VOTERs launched an  initiative for a list system of PR which failed to gather enough  signatures to qualify for the ballot. However, it did raise the awareness of  PR in California and the country, Later after what is now called FairVote was founded, VOTERs was limited to southern California. The organization dissolved when C.T. moved to northern California.

C.T. has also been a long-time union organizer, steward, and elected leader (including four terms on the California State Employees Association, Board of Directors). As President of SEIU Local 1000, District Labor Council 784, he served on the SEIU 1000 State Council and was a delegate to the Sacramento Central Labor Council (Sac CLC). He is currently a delegate to the Sac CLC representing California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) where he serves as a vice president.

C.T. has a Bachelor’s degree in History and a Master’s degree in Public  Administration from California State University, Long Beach. He has been active in the peace, and social and economic justice movements for over 50 years, during which time he co-founded several alternative institutions including the Long Beach Free Clinic, a free store, a soup line for unemployed, a crash pad for the homeless, and free legal services.

Dave Kadlecek

Though I have worked for proportional representation since early on in CfER’s predecessor organization NCCPR, my primary political activity is in the Peace and Freedom Party. I believe that those who are affected by decisions should make those decisions collectively and democratically. That’s why I’m a socialist, to expand the scope of democracy to the economic decisions now made by the few owners, and that’s why I support proportional representation, to make “representative democracy” (where decisions cannot be made directly by all those affected) genuinely Representative. Though some details are different now, I see CfER as having the same two main tasks now as over the last decade, using available opportunities to propagandize for the concept of proportional representation, and working to defend, expand and improve the use of ranked choice voting in California.

Threatened and actual lawsuits under the California Voting Rights Act give us opportunities to promote proportional representation as a solution to problems under public discussion. We may not win proportional representation now, but aggressively promoting it now may make the wait for that victory shorter. The incremental improvements we have already achieved with the implementation of instant runoff voting in several cities and proportional RCV in Albany need to be defended from the attacks they face, expanded both to use in more cities and in other types of local governments, and improved to allow more candidates to be ranked on each ballot.

Dave Robinson 

I have worked with CfER for about 20 years, including some years of board service. Early on, I helped CfER broaden its mission to include single-winner ranked-choice voting (RCV). I built and maintain demochoice.org, which hosts free single- and multi-winner RCV polls for small groups around the world. While serving on the student government at Stanford University (where I first connected with CfER), I led an effort to change the election of its president from a two-round runoff to RCV. This increased graduate student voter turnout about tenfold, and is still in use. Alumni with RCV experience now serve in Congress and other leadership positions. I campaigned door-to-door during the ballot measures for RCV in San Francisco and Albany, have served as a poll worker for RCV elections in Oakland, and have tabled at party conventions and similar events.

More recently, I have helped CfER advocate for newer voting machines that support more rankings, which are now in use in San Francisco and Alameda Counties. I have helped maintain the CfER website for many years, including its recent conversion to WordPress, and less obvious back-end security upgrades. My recommended near-term priorities for CfER are to: (1) preserve and expand use of RCV at the city, county, and district level; (2) improve the practice of RCV through upgrades to equipment, procedures, and voter education; and (3) gain legal recognition of proportional representation methods as options for general law cities and as remedies to California Voting Rights Act complaints.

Joan Strasser

Joan Strasser is running to serve a fifth term on the Board of Directors. She has been active in the proportional representation movement since the mid-nineties.

She has participated in three Bay Area IRV campaigns, a local League of Women Voters study group on IRV, has tabled to educate about proportional representation at street fairs and and several Democrat and Republican state party conventions, as well as at Junior States of America events.

She has been active in various activities helping to maintain the groups funding and infrastructure. Joan was also randomly chosen as a participant in the What’s Next California Deliberative Poll, at which she had opportunity to educate her fellow participants on instant runoff voting and proportional representation.

Steve Chessin

I have served twenty-eight years on the Board of CfER, including twenty-four as President or Co-President. I would like to serve again. I also serve on the California Democratic Party State Central Committee and the Santa Clara County Citizens Advisory Commission on Elections (CACE).

I have worked on the following since our last AGM:

• Drafted a bill (AB 1227) that allows Santa Clara County to use RCV in its elections, and helped with its successful enactment into law.
• Helped with the passage of the Redondo Beach RCV charter amendment, and convinced the Redondo Beach school board to stay in the City Charter so they can consider PRCV at a later date.
• Helped educate the Burbank City Council on both PRCV (STV) and cumulative voting as ways of resolving their CVRA situation.
• Gave a talk on RCV at a senior living center, and participated in a debate on RCV for a community organization.
• Testified to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors on the importance of establishing an Elections Commission.
• With the help of CfER’s intern interviewed San Jose City Council members to “take their temperature” on RCV.
• Prepared the agenda for our monthly board meetings and facilitated the meetings themselves.

I have worked hard with the other members of the Board to continue our educational, electoral, and legislative efforts on RCV and PR. I would like the opportunity to continue on the Board. I hope you will list me as one of your top preferences.

Thank you.