Repair California, the movement to call a state constitutional convention, is holding town hall meetings all over the state to publicize its plan to amend the state constitution to allow the voters to call constitutional conventions, and to ask the voters to do exactly that as a companion ballot measure at the same election. CfER has endorsed this campaign. For the latest event schedule, visit www.repaircalifornia.org/events.php.

At press time, the Long Beach City Council has scheduled a vote on the next step toward putting IRV for city elections on the ballot. Activists there are pretty confident that the council will send the issue to its Charter Review Committee. See the Spring, 2009 issue of Voice for Democracy for background on Long Beach, Los Angeles and Pasadena.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science has long used Choice Voting to select the five nominees for each Academy Award, but then chosen the winner by simple plurality. Next year, because they are increasing the number of nominees to ten, they will fix that, at least for Best Picture, by using IRV to select the winner.