Voice for Democracy Fall 2002 Newsletter of Californians for Electoral Reform Questionnaires Mailed to California Candidates! IN THIS ISSUE: Candidate Questionnaires President's Letter Local Chapters & Contacts ------------------------ Candidate Questionnaires ------------------------ CfER mailed the following questions about electoral reform issues to California candidates for state office (from Assembly to Governor, about 300 of them) and Congressional office (about 170 of them). If you attend candidate forums between now and Election Day (November 5), or election night parties, please consider sharing one or more of these questions with the candidates, the media, and voters: FOR FEDERAL CANDIDATES Many states have difficulty satisfying the conflicting requirements of the Voting Rights Act and recent Supreme Court decisions declaring that race cannot be used as a primary factor when drawing districts. The use of proportional or semi-proportional systems in multi-member districts would allow states to satisfy both the VRA and recent Supreme Court decisions, yet 2 USC 2c prevents states from using the multi- member Congressional districts required to make proportional and semi-proportional systems work. 1. Do you support legislation that would allow states to use proportional or semi-proportional systems to elect their Congressional delegations? Many states and localities are considering replacing plurality elections and/or two-round runoffs with Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as a way to obtain (or maintain) majority winners while reducing election costs and preventing low-turnout second elections. However, not all voting equipment can easily accommodate the ranked ballots that IRV requires. 2. Do you support legislation requiring all equipment purchased with federal funds to handle ranked ballots? 3. What are your views on an election system that allows the winner of the Presidential contest to come in second in the popular vote, as happened in 2000? 4. What are your views on an election system that allows the winner of the Presidential contest to have less than a majority of the popular vote, as happened in 1992 and 1996 (as well as 2000)? FOR STATE CANDIDATES Many communities that currently use two-round runoffs are considering Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as a way to maintain majority winners while reducing election costs and eliminating low-turnout second elections. However, there are no procedures for conducting IRV elections in the Election Code nor in Secretary of State regulations, and general law cities cannot switch to IRV without adopting a charter. Also, not all voting equipment can easily accommodate the ranked ballots that IRV requires. 1A. Do you support legislation requiring all equipment purchased with Prop. 41 funds to handle ranked ballots? 1B. Do you support legislation requiring the Secretary of State to develop regulations on conducting IRV elections? 1C. Do you support legislation to allow a general law city to adopt IRV by a vote of its people? Special elections to fill vacancies in state legislative and Congressional offices are expensive, and tend to have low turnouts. The expense is doubled when a runoff is required. IRV could satisfy the majority requirement of special elections in just one election. 2. Do you support legislation requiring, or at least allowing, IRV to be used in special elections to fill vacancies in state legislative and Congressional offices, similar to AB 1515 (Hertzberg)? IRV would eliminate the "spoiler effect" in closely-contested partisan races. 3A. Do you support legislation requiring the use of IRV in single-winner races, including statewide offices (both partisan and non-partisan)? 3B. Do you support legislation requiring the use of IRV to determine the winner of California's Presidential electors? Many school boards are elected at-large. At-large elections tend to dilute minority voting strength and may be subject to Voting Rights Act challenges. The traditional solution of single-member districts can be cumbersome for a school district, and may not be able to satisfactorily provide representation when the protected groups are not geographically concentrated. Proportional and semi-proportional voting systems, such as Choice Voting, Cumulative Voting, and Limited Voting, allow for proportional representation without the need for single-member districts. 4. Do you support legislation allowing school districts to use Choice Voting, Cumulative Voting, and/or Limited Voting in their elections? Many city councils are also elected at-large, and suffer from the same problems as at-large school boards. While general law cities may divide themselves into districts, they cannot use a proportional or semi-proportional system without adopting a charter. 5. Do you support legislation to allow a general law city to adopt Choice Voting, Cumulative Voting, and/or Limited Voting by a vote of its people? ------------------ President's Letter ------------------ We have a lot of catching up to do. It's been too long since we've produced a newsletter, and I apologize for the delay. First, it is with regret that I announce that Nat Lerner has decided to step down as newsletter editor. Nat faithfully edited the newsletter for more than four years, and saw its transition from a quarterly publication to a bimonthly one (that is, every two months). Filling Nat's shoes will not be easy, as evidenced by the delay in publishing of this issue. We may be forced to return to quarterly publication until we can find a permanent replacement (any volunteers?). I thank Rob Latham for volunteering to edit this issue. Speaking of volunteers, we are looking for people who want to help with maintaining the web site, recruiting new members, and coordinating volunteers, as well as helping to produce the newsletter. If you would like to assist in any of these tasks, please contact me at 650-962-8412 or via info@fairvoteca.org. Our joy over the victory last March in San Francisco is dimmed slightly by the failure of a statewide IRV initiative in Alaska in August. Apparently not enough voter education had been performed prior to the election, and the proponents had underestimated the "when in doubt, vote no" effect. Getting an initiative passed is a lot of hard work, which must start long before the measure goes on the ballot, long before the first signature is collected, even long before the language is officially submitted. Alaska is an object lesson for all of us. In between the San Francisco victory and the Alaska defeat, an interesting story took place in Santa Rosa. It shows how much progress we've made in the education arena. While most of us were focused on San Francisco's Proposition A campaign, Santa Rosa started quietly reviewing its charter. Santa Rosa has a seven-member City Council, elected at-large for four year terms on a staggered basis. One problem they've been wrestling with is the west side's traditional lack of representation on the Council. Although some citizens suggested that the Charter Review Committee (CRC) establish districts, the CRC was resistant to the idea. At a meeting in April, UC Berkeley professor Bruce Cain introduced the CRC to the concept of cumulative voting as a way out of their dilemma. Some citizens latched onto the idea, and at least one CRC member was strongly interested in pursuing it. Our Santa Rosa members lobbied the CRC, and a slim majority of the CRC ended up rejecting districts and suggesting cumulative voting to the City Council. The City Council itself, after much discussion, decided to reject both districts and cumulative voting, keeping the existing plurality at-large system instead. However, that cumulative voting was seriously considered by the Charter Review Committee in the first place is an important step forward. (I am reminded of a quote by Ghandi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win!" Well, they've stopped laughing at us.) On other fronts, Santa Clara County is moving forward with acquiring touch screen voting equipment, the first step to implementing IRV for all County elections. The County's Request for Proposals (RFP) included the requirement that any new equipment must accommodate IRV, and two of the three vendors who responded to the RFP were actually able to show an IRV ballot at the required public demonstration. A pilot involving just 25 precincts will occur this November, with full deployment by November 2003. The 2004 elections will be completely touch screen; if those are successful, I hope to see IRV implemented in time for the 2006 elections. Turning to internal matters, a new Board was elected at the Annual General Meeting May 18th. Most of the old Board was re-elected. We do have one new Board member, Larry Shoup of Oakland, and we welcome him to the Board. The other Board members are Dave Kadlecek, Rob Latham, Paula Lee, Pete Martineau, Casey Peters, Dave Robinson, Marda Stothers, and myself. New officers were later chosen: I continue as President, Paula Lee is our new Executive Vice President, Marda Stothers takes over as Treasurer, Rob Latham rotates to Secretary, and I also wear the Chief Financial Officer hat. Discussion of the name and mission statement started at the AGM and continued at the retreat. There was clear consensus that the new name should be Californians for Electoral Reform (CfER). Californians for Proportional Representation remains as a project of CfER, as does CalIRV. Consensus on the mission statement was less clear. There was consensus that the mission statement should explicitly mention proportional representation and instant runoff voting. A majority also wanted to move to a principle-based mission statement. However, there was no consensus as to what those principles should be. We spent a good hour and a half at the retreat attempting to craft those principles, based on the feedback received in the advisory ballot measure, and came to the realization that the thing that binds us together as an organization is our support for PR and IRV. Different people have different reasons for supporting PR and IRV, and no one set of principles could satisfy everyone. So we dropped the idea of including principles in the mission statement and came up with this: "The primary purpose of this organization is to promote the implementation of election methods such as instant runoff voting and forms of proportional representation." The principles will show up in our literature, and we will stress different principles as we reach out to various groups. --Steve Chessin President, Californians for Electoral Reform ------------------------- Local Chapters & Contacts ------------------------- East Bay David Greene (510) 526-5852 dmgreene@igc.org El Dorado County Paula Lee (530) 644-8760 paulalee@softcom.net Los Angeles Area Casey Peters (213) 385-2786 democracy@mail2world.com Monterey County Nat Lerner (831) 442-1238 natscottl@yahoo.com North Bay Wayne Shepard (707) 552-5317 pauldebits@juno.com Sacramento County Pete Martineau (916) 967-0300 petemrtno@bigfoot.com San Diego Area Ed Teyssier (858) 546-1774 edward@k-online.com SF County Betty Traynor (415) 558-8133 btraynor@energy-net.org Santa Clara County Jim Stauffer (408) 432-9148 jstauffer@igc.org Voice for Democracy is published by Californians for Electoral Reform. Copyright (c) 2002. All rights reserved. P.O. Box 128 Sacramento, CA 95812 Phone: (510) 527-8025 E-Mail: info@fairvoteca.org Web: www.fairvoteca.org Our Mission Statement... The primary purpose of this organization is to promote the implementation of election methods such as instant runoff voting and forms of proportional representation.