AB 1294 passed in the Assembly Committee on Elections and Redistricting on April 17th and passed through the Committee on Appropriations on May 9th. The bill passed in the full Assembly on June 6th.  The bill then moved to the Senate, where it passed out of the Senate Elections Committee on July 10th and out of Senate Appropriations just this week on Monday (8/27). It will come before the Senate floor any day now.

In addition to the successful votes above, we are also very pleased that a number of other legislators have signed on as co-authors of the bill, including Assembly Members Mike Davis, Loni Hancock, Jared Huffman, Betty Karnette, John Laird, Fiona Ma, and Lois Wolk, in addition to the principle authors Gene Mullin and Mark Leno.

This bill is important in that most local jurisdictions are not able to use ranked voting systems under current law, and this bill would permit them to do so. Today only charter counties or charter cities can use IRV, but over three-fourths of cities and counties are general law jurisdictions and don't have these options. Over half of Californians live in a general law city, a general law county, or both. AB 1294 would give these jurisdictions these additional options, but would not mandate that any jurisdictions use these systems. In other words, it is simply permissive and gives local governments the tools they need to respond to the wishes of their voters.

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) ensures that the winner of a single-winner election has the support of the majority of voters in a single election. By eliminating the need for a costly runoff election it saves local governments a lot of money -- about $1.6M per election in San Francisco alone. IRV also eliminates vote-splitting and spoiler effects, both of which undermine the public's confidence in the political process. Finally, IRV helps promote positive, issue-based campaigns with less negative campaigning because candidates will seek 2nd and 3rd choice votes in addition to 1st choice votes.
San Francisco has used Instant Runoff Voting extremely successfully for three consecutive elections, and all academic and survey research shows that the results have been excellent. San Francisco voters understood IRV extremely well, used it effectively, and overwhelmingly prefer it to the old two-round runoff system that they had used for decades.

One of the arguments that legislators are finding particularly compelling about the bill is the potential for dramatic improvement in voter turnout as a result of using ranked voting, especially among minority communities. San Francisco saw an estimated effective tripling of voter participation overall as a result of using ranked voting (and being able to combine two elections into a single election), and as much as a quadrupling of turnout among minority and low-income neighborhoods. Significant improvements seem likely in other jurisdictions as well, and also for local elections which coincide with the statewide primary and general elections. For an analysis of how IRV led to significant improvements in voter turnout in San Francisco, see: http://www.sfrcv.org/reports/turnout.pdf

2) IRV has an extremely successful track record in its usage in San Francisco

All of the available research and surveys of the usage of IRV in San Francisco support the fact that every single demographic in the city -- defined by where they live and their race, age, gender, party and political philosophy -- preferred IRV to the old runoff system. In fact, voters prefer IRV by a three-to-one margin over the old system. Over 87% of voters said that they understood IRV perfectly well or fairly well, and voters two-to-one perceived the instant runoff voting system as more fair than the prior two-round runoff system. So from the standpoint of voter acceptance, ranked voting has proven exceptional in the last three elections in San Francisco. And in addition to this local usage, over 25 million people worldwide use IRV and have done so for many decades, showing that this is not something on the bleeding edge, but rather a proven system gaining acceptance in California and other states.

3) IRV can save local governments considerable money

There is a significant potential for cost savings by eliminating the need for expensive runoff elections, often elections with single-digit voter turnout. San Francisco alone saves around $1.6 million per election, which is real money when we are talking about local government budgets. In Los Angeles County, they had a recent runoff election for local government offices that cost $5 million dollars and only had 6% voter turnout.

4) Cities and counties deserve the opportunity to use the electoral systems that best address their unique needs.

Currently, only charter cities have this opportunity, and it should be extended to all local governments. Giving general law jurisdictions the right to improve their election procedures would open up valuable new opportunities for them to achieve more representative democracy and better government. Allowing local jurisdictions to demonstrate improvements to their electoral processes allows the whole state to benefit and see what works best.

5) Our current voting systems suffer from a variety of deficits.

These include vote splitting and spoiler effects, and unequal representation. Spoiler and vote splitting effects can allow a candidate to be elected where the majority of people would prefer a different candidate. Our winner-take-all electoral systems ensure that a significant percentage of the population is denied representation, and this ultimately undermines the political system. In particular, minority communities suffer the most, and the Choice Voting system allowed by this legislation provides for much greater opportunities for representation than are afforded under our current at-large winner-take-allsystems.

6) The lack of uniform election code support for these improved electoral systems is a significant obstacle to cities and counties and other jurisdictions that want to use these systems.

AB 1294 addresses this need. In addition, City and County officials and/or local Registrars are not put in the difficult positions of having to make up such procedures themselves.

7) AB 1294 is broadly supported.

Rob Dickinson
Executive Vice President
Californians for Electoral Reform
Email:

Web: www.cfer.org
Phone: 650-365-6025
Mobile: 650-544-5925