I must confess that, after a great start, I had very little involvement with the effort to promote Measure O, the instant runoff voting measure on Oakland's ballot, but the stalwarts who persevered with the campaign brought it in at 67.41 percent of voters in favour.

One of the advisors on the campaign will be known to some of you Down Under. Lynne Serpe was the national coordinator for the New Zealand campaign to get the single transferable vote system approved for use in local elections. She is currently the Deputy Director of the New America Foundation's political reform program.

Two other cities and a rural county in the US also voted in favour of IRV on November 7. Lynne is quoted in a press release from the New America Foundation as saying:

"What was interesting about the four victories for IRV was that they happened in four very different locations. Oakland is a very diverse and working-class city; Minneapolis is a Midwestern values city; Pierce County is mostly a rural county with large numbers of independent voters; and Davis is a smaller, university town. Yet in every place Instant Runoff Voting provided a unique solution to problems with representative government and democracy."