Choice voting bill endorsed
Council sends a message to California Assembly

By Claire St. John/Enterprise staff writer
Published April 13th 2007 in Davis Enterprise (CA)
In November, voters said yes to Measure L, an advisory vote that told the City Council that Davis voters are interested in the concept of choice voting or ranked voting.

Since then, choice voting has made scant appearance at the council level, mentioned now and again as something that really should have a firm date on the long-range City Council calendar.

But at a special meeting Thursday night, the council may have gotten the choice voting ball rolling by unanimously passing a resolution in support of Assembly Bill 1294, which would allow local jurisdictions to use the voting methods without charter city status.

The special meeting was called in anticipation of AB 1294's hearing, just hours before the next council meeting Tuesday.

For Davis, which is a general law city and subject to state guidelines for city governance, the passage of AB 1294 could get choice voting - sometimes called ranked voting or instant runoff voting - into Davis polling stations faster than using a lengthy charter discussion, public vote and implementation.

Jerry Adler, a former and former member of the city's Governance Task Force, which overwhelmingly recommended choice voting for Davis, said he was pleased with the thrust of the bill, but worried by its dense text.

Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Asmundson agreed.

�I'm in support of AB 1294, but not with this complexity of language,� she said.

The council agreed and passed a motion to ask for clarity from the bill. It also agreed to send a member or two to the Assembly Elections Committee hearing, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Fifty-five percent of voters in the November election said they would be interested in choice voting, allowing voters to rank candidates by preference.

If the first candidate doesn't get enough votes, he or she is eliminated, and the second choice is counted, then the third, fourth and so on until each candidate has broad support. Voters can rank as many candidates as desired.

Davis elects its representatives under an at-large plurality system. Two or three seats are open in each Davis City Council election, and voters may cast that many votes. The candidates with the most votes win the open seats.

Councilman Lamar Heystek, who in May will travel with nonprofit FairVote to Scotland to observe a choice voting election, said the city is responsible for land-use planning and municipal finance decisions, and should be responsible for how it votes as well.

�I think this is another area where the city deserves purview, and I think the bill allows that purview,� he said.

- Reach Claire St. John at [email protected] or 747-8057.
IRV Soars in Twin Cities, FairVote Corrects the Pundits on Meaning of Election Night '09
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers.  Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections;  the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.

And as pundits try to make hay out of the national implications of Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections, Rob Richie in the Huffington Post concludes that the gubernatorial elections have little bearing on federal elections.

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