October / November 2018 Newsletter
[President's Note: We had some
technical difficulties producing the October Update, and by the
time we got them resolved we decided to delay it to include the
results of the November election. My apologies. As staff says
below, we plan to have a full newsletter in December. --Steve]
To read past newsletters in a
browser, click here.
The California Voting Rights Act
(CVRA) is meant to provide a way for under-represented minority
communities to get representation on council and school boards.
The problem is that district elections don’t always create more
representative outcomes, especially when housing segregation
patterns do not place communities in the same area of a city.
Multi-Winner Ranked Choice Voting, on the other hand, has a great
record of electing minority candidates, and does not require
dividing the city into districts.
Fort Bragg, Sunnyvale, Monterey, Redwood City, and the Palo Alto
Unified School District are under pressure to divide into
districts to comply with the CVRA. Do you live in or near any of
these cities? Do you know anyone that lives in those cities?
If so, here are two things you and your friends can do to help:
(1) Contact your City Council (or, for Palo Alto, the school
district) and ask them to:
(a) negotiate more time with
the potential CVRA plaintiff so that they can...
(b) set up a citizens
advisory committee to study electoral methods and make a
recommendation as to what would be best for the jurisdiction. Both
CfER and FairVote will be happy to provide people to help educate
the committee, any council members or staff, or any school board
member.
(2) If you don't know how to do
the above, or are not comfortable doing it, but would like to
help, please contact Pedro Hernandez at
pedro@fairvote.org
and tell him what city you live in, and that you'd like to help.
As we write this, it is Veteran's
Day, Monday, November 12th. The 2018 Elections were excellent for
Electoral Reform, particularly for the movement for Proportional
Representation and Ranked Choice Voting. Here is some quick info
for you.
* In Maine, RCV was used to elect a Senator and members of the House
of Representatives for the first time ever!
Maine
RCV Review
* More to come later -- RCV is
used in even more places in the USA, including Cambridge,
Minneapolis, and other jurisdictions.
In December, we'll be bringing
you a full issue of Voice for Democracy.
-- CfER Staff
