By Bob Richard

August 30, 2007 -- This afternoon AB 1662 joined roughly 200 other bills for an extended sojourn in the Senate Appropriations Committee suspense file. It will be considered again next year.

AB 1662 is CfER's bill that would use ranked ballots to increase the number of overseas absentee voters who are able to return their runoff election ballots in time to be counted. For more on the bill, see this fact sheet and this earlier article.

We -- author Assembly Member Paul Cook's staff and CfER activists -- simply don't know why the bill wasn't voted out of the Appropriations Committee. We thought we had cleared up the confusion about cost and equipment requirements that resurfaced in the committee's staff analysis on August 22. And we received positive feedback from the Senators' offices we talked to during the last couple of days. We're surprised by this outcome.

The good news is that we have several months to keep working on the bill. The (somewhat) bad news is that we have to start by finding out who stood in the way and why.

I listened to the entire hearing and, I have to say, there's a lot about the suspense process that I didn't learn. It's clear that all the decisions are made in advance; not a single bill was defeated on a vote. The many bills (including ours) that weren't going to be sent to the floor simply weren't mentioned. The public part of the process serves only to document each vote for the record.

The other day, though, I did find this informative description of the suspense process, written by Frank Russo last May.

AB 1662 had been placed on the Appropriations Committee suspense file at the August 22 hearing because committee staff misunderstood the cost implications.

Stayed tuned.

Bob Richard is Marin County Coordinator for Californians for Electoral Reform (CfER).

Last updated August 30, 2007