Voice for Democracy
Newsletter of Californians for
Proportional Representation
March-April 2001
Commissions and Conferences
The last two months have seen a flurry of Electoral Reform
activity with congressional and state-wide bills for a variety of Electoral
Reform Commissions and multi-partisan conferences at various parts of the
country on all aspects of Election Reform. We highlight the recent conference
in Los Angeles. A National summary is on page 3. Also a call for nominations to
the Board is on page two – The Editor
L.A.
Electoral Reform Conference
by Casey
Peters
Over 100
people gathered at Loyola Law School on Saturday, March 24, from noon to 4 p.m.
to explore possible changes in American elections. The event was
videotaped for broadcast by Adelphi Communications as well as by JusticeVision.
Pertinent literature was provided
by such groups as African American Voter Registration Education and
Participation Project, Alliance for Democracy, Asian Pacific Islander American
Vote!, Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, California Clean Money
Campaign, California IRV Coalition, Californians for Proportional
Representation, Center for Voting and Democracy, Global Exchange, Los Angeles
Metropolitan Alliance, Pro-Democracy Campaign, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and
Education Fund, Rock the Vote, Sierra Club, etc..
Touch-screen
voting machines were exhibited both by Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder
Conny McCormack, by Voting Solutions Inc., and by Global Systems, showing off
an Irish ranked election enumerating candidate preferences by touch-screen
voting.
The program was introduced by Loyola
Law School Professor Bob Benson, whose reputation precedes him. Adelphi
Communications vice-president Bill Rosendahl, the event moderator, gave an
impassioned plea for people to get involved in democratizing our elections.
Before the panel was presented, statements for improving the rights of voters
in the wake of last year's disturbing miscount in the presidential election
were read by Stephen Kaufman, assistant to Congresswoman Maxine Waters an LA
election attorney who is heading up the Democratic Congressional Caucus Task
Force on Electoral Reform, and Larry Sokol, special assistant to California
Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg who wrote AB1515, the current IRV bill. Bill
Rosendahl introduced Medea Benjamin, last year's California Green Party nominee
for US Senate, and Santa Monica's Green Mayor Mike Feinstein.
The first panelist to speak was Conny McCormack, who related her experiences (noting that while well acquainted with hanging chads, had never heard of dimpled or pregnant chads until after Election 2000). She expressed an openness to accommodating new elections systems to bring better representation to the voters of Los Angeles County. Next, John Anderson spoke about how we need to go beyond replacing unreliable voting machines and look at Instant Runoff Voting and Proportional Representation. His eloquence and wit enlivened both the audience and the rest of the panel. State Assembly Member Robert Pacheco, who is a Republican, spoke about the difficulties of being in a minority party in the legislature, but promoted his bills for electoral reform. Next, L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky was sharply critical of the role of the commercial media in distorting fair elections.
Finally,
Mark Ridley-Thomas reiterated the argument that African-Americans had been
excluded in the 2000 elections. He pled the case for local involvement to
empower taxpayers.
If you want to help build the movement for ELECTION REFORMS, please respond by emailing to kcpeters@ix.netcom.com (see page 3 for other local contacts – Editor)
Call for Nominations for the Board of
Directors of CPR
We will be electing our nine-member
Board of Directors at our Annual General membership meeting in May (see other
article). While I expect
that many of the current Directors will run for re-election, we are always
looking for people who want to increase their level of activity
with CPR. Also, we elect our Board using PR (we practice what we preach!)
and PR only works if the election is contested.
The Board itself meets once every
two months, for about 3-4 hours each time, in locations set by the Board
members. (This could change, as we
transition to a fully statewide organization. We could go to an all-day
quarterly meeting, or have more meetings via conference call. It will be
up to the new Board to set its meeting schedule and process.)
Board members are encouraged (but
not required) to get involved with some area of interest, such as membership
development, outreach, communication, chapter coordination, finance, lobbying,
or education.
Candidates may be
self-nominated. To nominate yourself, send your name and a statement of
up to 250 words to CPR Elections, c/o Steve Willett, 6422 Irwin Court, Oakland,
CA 94609. You may also send your name and statement via email to
stevew@initcomp.com.
Nominations and statements must be
received by April 14th, 2001, in order to guarantee appearance in the ballots
that will be mailed to all
members prior to the AGM. (If you use US mail, we recommend you mail your
statement by April 7th, 2001, to guarantee timely delivery.)
So consider running for the
Board. It's fun, and you get to help set the direction of the PR
movement! Members from Southern California and newly active members are
especially encouraged to run.
--Steve Chessin
Reserve these dates!
Saturday, May 12, 2001 - Annual General Meeting of Californians for
Proportional Representation and Sunday, May 13 CPR Retreat – both
in Oakland. Details will come to members with the ballots and on our website
Introducing
Cal IRV
by Dave Robinson
This message is intended to bring Cal
IRV to the attention of those who didn't know it exists, but would like
to. Please look at our web page to
learn about the structure and agenda of the group: http://www.calirv.org
Please also read, and subscribe to,
our monthly email newsletter at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/InstantRunoffCA-news Questions? You are welcome and encouraged to contact me at
dbr (at) Stanford.EDU
LOCAL CHAPTERS ROUNDUP
South Bay Chapter
tabled at the California Libertarian Party convention in San Jose February
17-18. They passed a by-law
amendment switching their officer elections from multiple-round run-off to
instant runoff, and then suspended the rules so they could use IRV in
the current election! Credit for this goes to Ed Tessier, and Rob Latham.
East Bay activity: Next meeting is Thursday April 25, 7-9 5843 Chabot, call 510-658-3085. We've met with the Berkeley City Clerk to start the IRV feasibility study process with an eye towards her making a report to the council this September. Look for something on the ballot Fall 2002.
Oakland's special election process is underway and will demonstrate touchscreen voting. With measure I's language calling for use of IRV when feasible, this should smooth the way for IRV implementation in the future.
Local Chapters and Contacts
San Diego
County Contact is Edward Teyssier, 858-546-1774/email at edward@k-online.com
Southern
California Contact is Casey Peters (213)-385-2786/email at proprep@hotmail.com
Monterey County
Contact is Nat Lerner (831)-442-1238/email at natscottl@yahoo.com
South Bay
Chapter Contact is Jim Stauffer (408)-432-9148 /email at jstauffer@igc.org
San Francisco
Chapter Contact is Betty Traynor (415)-558-8133/email at btraynor@energy-net.org
East Bay
Chapter Contact is David Greene (510)-658-3085/email at dmgreene@igc.org
(new email)
Sacramento County Contact is Pete Martineau (916)-967-0300/email at
petemrtno@aol.com
El Dorado
County contact is Paula Lee (530)-644-8760/email at paulalee@jps.net
North Bay
Contact is Wayne Shepard (707)-5520-5317/email at paldebits@juno.com
Vice-President
of Local Chapters is Rob Latham
510-632-1366 x116/email at freeca@msn.com
Do you want the eNewsletter?
Send your name and e-mail address to membership@fairvoteca.org if you wish to receive this newsletter by e-mail instead of on paper. (This will save us time and cost and you will get your newsletter quicker)
************************************************
Voice for
Democracy is published
by Californians for Proportional Representation (prior to May 2000 Northern
California Citizens for Proportional Representation). Our web site at
http://www.fairvoteca.org may have more current information. Please submit articles
or letters for publication to: c/o Nat Lerner, Voice for Democracy, 68 Penzance
Street, Salinas, CA. 93906-1339 or e-mail to natscottl@yahoo.com
************************************************
Nationwide summary from Rob Richie (Director, Center
for Voting and Democracy)
It has been an
exciting first quarter of 2001! Legislation has been introduced on instant
runoff voting in a dozen states and in Congress. Bills on proportional voting
systems have been put forward in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois and Congress --
including a new version of the Voters' Choice Act to once again allow states to
use proportional voting systems.
We have also joined with other a
range of other civic groups to study and advocate improvements to our electoral
process – a process so clearly exposed as lacking in last year's elections.
"Insider" Commissions and task forces have formed to study and
propose reforms that will begin with recommendations about new voting equipment
and methods of voter education, but are certain to explore more fully the significance
of the franchise and how to increase voter participation. The US Senate has
just completed two full weeks debating campaign finance reform and is nearing
passage of a package. Activists and grassroots reformers are mobilizing around
more ambitious reform agendas that prominently highlight proportional
representation and instant runoff voting.
June 29th -July 1st
there will be a major pro-democracy conference in Philadelphia, with several
workshops on proportional representation and instant runoff voting. We have
organized 4 regional conferences this year that have cumulatively gathered more
than 350 people and are co-sponsors of a May 4th New York City event on proportional
representation. We also have generated steady media coverage. Our new articles
have appeared this year in numerous publications, including the American
Prospect, Tompaine.com, the Southern Regional Council's "Voting Rights
Review" and the Progressive magazine, while longer pieces will be in
Harvard's Asian American Policy Review and a new book "Challenges to
Equality: Poverty and Race in America" (ME Sharpe, April 2001). CVD
advisory board members have new books that are remarkable contributions to
informed debate about election systems: Douglas Amy's "Behind the Ballot
Box: A Citizen's Guide to Voting Systems" (Praeger, 2000) and Kathleen
Barber's "A Right to Representation: Proportional Election Systems for the
21st Century" (Ohio State University Press) -- both are available in
paperback and essential additions to the bookshelves of election system
reformers and scholars.
Perhaps just as importantly, more
people with no association with our Center are advocating voting system reform.
New articles linked from our website include powerful pieces by Jim Cullen,
Lani Guinier, Jim Hightower and Miles Rapoport and powerful newspaper
editorials in favor of instant runoff voting from USA Today, the St. Petersburg
Times and Trenton Times.
There are important new reports on
our site as well, including ones on diversity (and lack thereof) in state and
federal legislatures and on competitiveness and turnout (and yes, lack
thereof!) in Congressional elections. Find out if your state is among the five
(only one with more than three seats) where fewer than half of House seats were
won by non-landslide victory margins - and how it ranks in voter turnout,
accuracy of how votes translated into seats, representation of women,
representation of people of color and more.
To receive frequent postings about news around the country and world, please subscribe to cvdclips by sending a message to cvdclips-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Contact our national field director Dan Johnson-Weinberger at djw@instantrunoff.com to see if there is a listserv in your area.
Voice for Democracy
CPR
P.O. Box 128
Sacramento, California 95812