I'd like to welcome CfER founder Jim Lindsay as our new newsletter editor, working with Bob Richard, who will continue to handle printing and mailing. They plan to produce three newsletters a year. I want to thank Bob for staying on as publisher, and for his work as editor the past three years.  Producing a newsletter is hard work, and is a lot for one person to do all by himself.  Having Jim take over the editor's job should help immensely.

Since we haven't had a newsletter since last summer, I need to bring you up to date.  If you haven't heard, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed AB 1294, our bill to let general law cities and counties use IRV and Choice Voting.  You can read his veto message at

(If that URL is too long to type, go to http://www.leginfo.ca.gov and click on Bill Information.  Then type in 1294 in the search box, select Search, and scroll down to the bottom of the page you get.)

Our other bill, AB 1662, that would let military and overseas voters use ranked ballots in elections that might go to a runoff, got stuck in the Senate Appropriations Committee.  We hope to get it unstuck this year

Since our meetings with the Governor's office seemed favorable towards AB 1294, we're not sure why he ended up vetoing it.  It probably had something to do with the fact that only one Republican, State Senator Tom McClintock, voted for it.  That has prompted us to increase our outreach to registered Republicans.  We had very positive experiences tabling at the California Republican Assembly convention last November, and the California Republican Party convention this past February.  We expect to obtain speaking engagements with local Republican organizations throughout the state as a result.

In the meantime, I want to publicly thank Rob Dickinson for all the hard work he did in managing AB 1294 for CfER (we all owe him a vote of thanks; this is the furthest any CfER bill has gotten to date), and let him know that we all share in the disappointment of the Governor's veto.

In more positive news, San Francisco is on track to conduct their fourth IRV election this November.  Board member Rob Dickinson and I, along with Steven Hill, attended a demonstration of Sequoia Voting System's optical scan equipment for IRV.  We also saw how their software performs the tally, and verified it with a hand count of ballots.  They seem well prepared to conduct San Francisco's IRV elections this November; all that's needed now is the certification, which is tied up waiting for Federal qualification.

In another positive development, twenty-five people showed up to testify in favor of IRV at a meeting of the Los Angeles City Council's Rules and Government Committee meeting on March 5th; no one testified against it.  Among those supporting IRV were California Board of Equalization Chair Judy Chu and State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas.  We are asking that the City Council place an IRV charter amendment on the ballot this November.

Our Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held from 1:30pm to 4:30pm Saturday, May 10 at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Davis, so mark your calendars.  We will be electing our Board of Directors at the meeting; see the AGM announcement on page 2 for details.