By Bob Richard

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

The November 30 meeting was attended by six members. We heard reports
on the following:

*** Conversations with Marin Registrar of Voters Michael Smith on
November 17 and 21 were very productive. He did dwell on a variety of
other election issues that complicate the lives of registrars and
compete with IRV for attention and resources. He also talked about IRV
in terms of administrative complexity. But he (1) offered to consider a
Board of Supervisors resolution that contains language intended to meet
the objections of the California Association of Clerks and Election
Officials (he is a board member of CACEO); (2) offered to help start
conversations between CfER activists and other registrars who have
objections to ranked voting; (3) offered to have us review equipment
RFPs before they go out to prospective vendors; (4) seemed willing to
participate in brainstorming ways to make implementation and
administration easier for election officials; and (5) said he thinks IRV
is a good concept. He noted that the registrar in San Francisco, John
Arntz, is now saying that IRV is "quite do-able" once the initial
implementation is over.