January 26, 2006

Assembly Members Joseph Canciamilla (D-11) and Keith Richman (R-38) have introduced legislation to create a California Citizens' Assembly modeled on what was done in British Columbia last year.

Read the measure, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 28 (ACA 28), and track its status here.

This development is extremely significant for the electoral reform movement in California. Marin Ranked Voting will maintain this links page to help you keep up-to-date on the progress of the Richman/Canciamilla bill.

The members of a Citizens' Assembly are recruited by drawing names at random from voter registration lists, then selecting members from among those who express an interest to insure a balance of men and women, ethnic groups, and geographical areas. Potential members are allowed to opt out, but no one can opt in. After listening to testimony from both expert witnesses and the general public, the Assembly formulates proposals which are submitted to the voters for possible adoption.

According to early reports, the mandate of the Citizens' Assembly proposed by Canciamilla and Richman would be extremely broad, and would include all aspects of how we elect both the legislature and the state's executive officers. The Assembly would likely be able to consider IRV for executive offices, multimember districts and proportional voting for the legislature, the size of the legislature, redistricting, term limits, and campaign finance reform.

This mechanism for designing electoral reform proposals was first used in the Canadian province of British Columbia in 2004. It has not been used in the United States, but it resembles, in some respects, a state-wide civil grand jury.

Details of the selection process will not be known until the bill is introduced, but press reports suggest that the proposal will call for 160 members, one man and one woman from each of the state's 80 assembly districts, perhaps with 10 additional members selected to provide demographic balance.

The authors have said that if their bill does not pass the legislature, they will support a petition drive to place it on the ballot as an initiative.