Reviewing the situation, in the fall of 2006 we got the California Assembly Veterans Committee to write a voting bill. It would give overseas military and civilians a better chance of having their election runoff votes count. Now registrars, in case of a runoff, have to design and send out a runoff ballot and get it back in time to be counted. It's especially difficult and time consuming to reach military in battle zones, as they move about more, and mail is slower. Our bill would send both a regular and a candidate ranking ballot for the regular election, eliminating a runoff ballot later. We got freshman Assembly Member Paul Cook, Republican from Southern California, to author the bill, named AB 1662. During its passage through the Assembly, it required significant amendments, which CfER activist Bob Richard worked out and wrote drafts, as neither Cook, his staff nor legislative staffs understood the intricacies of the bill's operation. Three other states already use the ranked ballot for overseas military, and our first version was based on those bills, which don't accurately match California's voting framework. Bob, Steve Chessin and I testified to committees on the need for the bill. It passed all Assembly committees and the Assembly floor without a single nay vote. (Who could vote no to a bill that supports our troops?) In July last year, AB 1662 got to the California Senate, first passing its rules committee with no nays.

The next committee, Senate Appropriations, was another story. Its staff comments said "This bill could result in significant reimbursable costs to counties to prepare a special runoff ballot ... There are currently no voting systems with instant runoff capability that are certified by the Secretary of State ... In the event the ballots needed to be hand tallied, cost would be approximately $490,000 statewide." There is no data to substantiate that number, and the runoff ballot is not an IRV ballot. It simply asks the voter to rank all candidates so the registrar can easily determine the runoff choice. There is no data from county registrars as to how many overseas ballots there are, which would indicate that in fact there are very few.  Even so, every effort must be made to have every vote counted. Our cost estimate is less than one tenth of the Senate Appropriation staff's estimate. Bob had worked with various committee staff on costs. Senate Appropriations staff didn't call for killing the bill, but making it pass to the next year's session, where most "two year bills" are killed. So our bill was not scheduled for further hearings. Then it was "gutted and amended" to become a bill to give prison guards a 7% pay raise. This pay raise version of AB 1662 was not voted on, either in committee or on the floor. CfER was later assured that our AB 1662 would return in '08.

It did. An amendment by Assembly Member Cook to "gut and amend" the pay raise bill back to our original bill was submitted on April 1. It will be sent to the Senate Appropriations staff. CfER and Cook will work with staff to convince them that our much lower cost estimate is much more reliable, and that regulations are not needed, as the rankings are not IRV. We will return to testifying to Senate committees, and look forward to the governor signing AB 1662 in September.