Voice for Democracy
Newsletter of Californians for Proportional
Representation
March-April
2002
Prop A wins! 
From Steve Chessin, President of
Californians for Proportional Representation:
First, CONGRATULATIONS! San
Francisco's Proposition A passed by 56% to 44%, and many CPR members
contributed time and/or money to ensure this victory. San Francisco may now become the first city in California to
actually use Instant Runoff Voting in its elections, either this November or at
the latest November 2003. (Why, you may
ask, does an organization with Proportional Representation in its name support
IRV? Aside from IRV being a good reform in itself for single-winner elections,
IRV gets voters used to ranking their choices and election administrators used
to handling and counting ranked ballots, all of which will be necessary in
order to implement Choice Voting, the only form of pure PR that can be
implemented at the local level in California.)
Also, Proposition 41 passed, making $200 million available to counties (in
a 3:1 matching ratio) to help them replace punch-card equipment with touch
screens or optical scanners, both of which can easily accommodate the ranked
ballots necessary to both IRV and Choice Voting.
While CPR doesn't endorse candidates, I do note that the Democratic
nominee for Secretary of State, Kevin Shelley, is on record supporting IRV, the
first major party candidate for this office to do so. Also, the Democratic nominee in the new 39th Congressional
District, Linda Sanchez (sister of 47th CD representative Loretta Sanchez) is a
PR supporter. We are making visible
inroads into at least one of the major parties.
Secondly, our Annual General Meeting is fast approaching. The date has been set for Saturday May 18th,
with the Board retreat Sunday May 19th.
We'll have more details in a subsequent mailing.
One of the things we will do at the AGM is hold elections for our Board of
Directors. Elsewhere in this newsletter
you will find a "Call for Nominations". Please consider increasing your level of participation in CPR by
running for the Board.
Finally, I want to apologize for not having a President's letter last
issue. I wrote it, I just forgot to
email it to the editor! Mea culpa. (It was mainly an exhortation to help with
Prop A.)
--Steve Chessin
Inside:
Call for Nominations – IRV action in Oakland and Riverside –
Web poll – A logo – Next steps
Call
for Nominations
We will be electing our nine-member Board of Directors at our Annual
General membership meeting in May.
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 in person every three months, and by conference
call in the in-between months. 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 13th, 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 6th, 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.
East
Bay News
On March 5, Oakland again gave a nod to IRV when it passed Measure H,
which provides for a special election to fill a mayoral vacancy. Like last
year's Measure I for City Council vacancies, Measure H again calls for
turnout-increasing measures like preferential voting (IRV) to be considered.
Measure I's passage resulted in a Special Elections task force which has
recommended that mail-in ballots and/or IRV be used to increase turnout for
council vacancy special elections. On March 14, Oakland's Rules Committee will
vote on this recommendation; if it passes, the City Attorney and Clerk will be
directed to draft the appropriate ordinances and legislation to realize these
recommendations.
Berkeley's city clerk reports she will complete the IRV feasibility study
by this May, allowing the council there ample time to put it on the November
ballot if they so choose.
Riverside News
The Riverside IRV Coalition is sponsoring an educational forum on
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). The event will be Tuesday March 26th, 1-5pm,
at the Riverside Central Library (3581
Mission Inn Ave.). Panelists include Riverside County Registrar Mischelle
Townsend, Moreno Valley Councilmember
Bonnie Flickinger, and Dan Johnson-Weinberger from the Center for Voting
and Democracy. Councilmember Flickinger, a Libertarian, was
in a four-way tie for second place for last week until the final tally left her
out of the runoff election by less than
50 votes.
The purpose of the forum will be to explore the use of IRV in Riverside
City and County elections. Riverside County has been a pioneer in the
use of electronic voting systems,
making IRV easy to implement. Two
Riverside City Council members have
expressed a strong interest in IRV but will unable to participate the forum due to a conflict with a City Council
meeting.
Seating is limited, so please contact Charlotte Fox of the League of
Women Voters at (909) 302-0180 or at
lottiefox @ cs.com for reservations.
New Preference Voting Web Poll
This website allows you to vote in some sample preference voting polls,
view nice graphs of the results, and even create your own poll. It is an
open-source, cross-platform package that is easy to set up on other servers and
is designed to process large numbers of ballots efficiently.
It uses CVD's specification for preference voting, neglecting the parts
relevant to write-ins and duplicate rankings, which are not allowed in the web
poll. New features will be added in the
next few months, including pie charts and ballot authentication.
We want to make this system both comprehensive and user-friendly. Please try it, and have your friends and
family try it, too. If you find anything confusing or strange, or if you have
general suggestions, please let us know (email demochoice@directrep.org). We hope to convince high-traffic websites to
use this system.
Here
is the “Voter Voice” logo mentioned in the previous issue. The logo appears in full color at
http://www.directrep.org/votervoice.jpg.
At the Annual General Meeting in May, CPR will consider resolutions to
change our name and statement of purpose to reflect the principles of a
republic: all voters deserve a voice in government, chosen from diverse
options; and decisions should reflect a majority of voters.
Next Steps
With the success
of Props A and 41, and with momentum for IRV in several other cities and
counties, we are swimming in new opportunities to make progress. It will be a challenge for us to keep up
with the action! We need to make sure
that equipment purchased with Prop 41 funds is compatible with ranked
ballots. This will require research and
interaction with many state and local officials. We need to watch the San Francisco Department of Elections and
help educate San Francisco voters to make sure that Prop A is implemented
smoothly. We need to build on our
success to bring IRV to charter cities that already have momentum, like
Berkeley and Oakland, and that already have adequate equipment, like
Riverside, Santa Barbara, Fresno, and Eureka. We are at a stage where every bit of time, effort and money that
you can contribute to this effort can make a big difference. Let’s keep it up!
Dave Robinson, this issue’s editor
Local
Chapters and Contacts
|
San Diego Area |
Edward Teyssier |
(858) 546-1774 |
edward @ k-online . com
|
|
Los Angeles Area |
Casey Peters |
(213) 385-2786 |
cp @ pcmagic . net |
|
Monterey County |
Nat Lerner |
(831) 442-1238 |
natscottl @ yahoo . com |
|
Santa Clara County |
Jim Stauffer |
(408) 432-9148 |
jstauffer @ igc . org |
|
East Bay |
David Greene |
(510)526-5852 |
dmgreene @ igc . org |
|
SF County |
Betty Traynor |
(415) 558-8133 |
btraynor @ energy-net .
org |
|
Sacramento County |
Pete Martineau |
(916) 967-0300 |
petemrtno @ aol . com |
|
North Bay |
Wayne Shepard |
(707) 552-5317 |
Pauldebits @ juno . com |
|
El Dorado County |
Paula Lee |
(530) 644-8760 |
paulalee @ softcom .
net |
Voice for
Democracy is published
by Californians for Proportional Representation.
Please submit
articles or letters for publication via e-mail to
vfd
@ directrep . org.
©2002 Californians for Proportional Representation
Californians
for Proportional Representation – PO Box 128 – Sacramento, CA 95812
Voice for Democracy
CPR
P.O. Box 128
Sacramento, California 95812