September 7, 2007 -- The September 5 Novato Advance includes this article about a Novato resident who wants the city to switch from a council elected at large to one elected from districts.

District proponent Gary Scheppke argues that the current system results in too many council members from one part of town and too few from another part of town. He may well be right, but there's a much better solution to this problem. We'll get to that in a moment.

Novato is not alone. Such geographical concentration of office holders is a common occurance in cities with at large elections in which voters have as many votes as there are seats to fill. This method has several names: at-large plurality, vote for N, block voting, and (here's an academic mouthful) the multiple nontransferable vote (MNTV).

But geographic concentration is only one manifestation of the problem. If the community is divided on a set of issues, and candidates run as members of slates, then block voting results in the largest slate getting all the seats instead of its fair share. When there are more than two slates, a minority of voters can choose the entire council, leaving most voters without any representation at all. That's why it's called "block voting".

District elections have defects too. Critics point out that they encourage office holders to put the interests of their neighborhoods ahead of the city as a whole. For us, the important point is that folks who think alike and want the same policies don't necessarily live in the same neighborhoods. District elections give geography a special status vis-a-vis political philosophy, economic interest, ethnic and lifestyle communities, and anything else you can think of.

There's a third option, one that lets voters themselves decide whether they want representation based on neighborhood, on political views, or on any mixture of factors. It's called "choice voting", and has been used continuously in the Republic of Ireland since 1921 and in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1940 -- among other places.

Using choice voting, the council is elected at large, just as it is now in every city in Marin. But instead of just voting for 2 or 3 candidates, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. The candidates who get elected represent segments of the community roughly in proportion to their numbers.

Choice voting is the multi-seat sibling of instant runoff voting (IRV), which is used in San Francisco and has been adopted by the voters in Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Clara County.

Just as in IRV, candidates who don't have enough support to win are eliminated one by one, and their votes reassigned to each voter's next choice. That way, votes aren't wasted on candidates who don't win.

In addition, when a candidate gets more support than she needs to win a seat, some of that support is reassigned to each voter's next choice. That way, votes aren't wasted on candidates who don't need them because they have already been elected.

As many votes as possible count for a winner. In other words, as many voters as possible get representation on the city council or board. The only limitation is the number of open seats. If there are two open seats, the smallest cohesive group that can be represented is one-third of the voters. With three open seats, the smallest cohesive group is one-quarter, and so on.

The counting process sounds complicated when you describe it in words, but one picture is worth a thousand words and these Flash animations are priceless. Note: these demonstrations are from Canada, where choice voting is called by it's academic name, the "single transferable vote (STV)".

Last fall, the voters of Davis adopted an advisory measure supporting choice voting for their city council. Many readers of this page are members of KPFA-FM. The Pacifica network uses choice voting for all board elections, national as well as local.

Current state law allows Novato to switch from at large to districts, as long as the voters approve a ballot measure. It also allows the city to switch from an appointed to an elected mayor. Again voter approval would be required.

AB 1294 would allow Novato voters to adopt choice voting on exactly the same basis as district elections or an elected mayor. It would also allow Marin County voters to adopt IRV for county offices (none of which are elected at large). It would not require anybody to use IRV or choice voting.

On September 12, the Legislature sent AB 1294 to Governor Schwarzenegger for his signature. We urge you to contact the Governor's office and ask him to sign it. See CfER's action page for details.

For more on both IRV and choice voting, visit FairVote.org as well as surfing this site.

Last revised September 13, 2007