California Bill to Use Ranked Choice Voting in Special Legislative Elections

California State Senator Ben Allen has introduced ACA 18. It would allow the Governor to order that particular special legislative and congressional elections used ranked-choice voting. This would end the wasteful and time-consuming process that exists now, in which virtually every California special election requires two rounds.

Many California special elections are in districts that are entirely within one county, especially Los Angeles County. It is easier to use ranked choice voting if all the votes are being cast in a single county. Thanks to Rob Richie for this news.


Comments

California Bill to Use Ranked Choice Voting in Special Legislative Elections — 14 Comments

  1. Democratics in SF, who make up the largest voting civic group, love the one party system that Rob Richie and supporters of ranked choice voting RCV in single winner districts have implemented in SF and other locations.

    The United Coalition correctly prohibits all plurality voting and single-winner voting districts be they yes/no votes or RCV in single-winner districts.

    The United Coalition only uses pure proportional representation PPR and PPR works fine.

    http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.hml

  2. Senator Ben Allen is Democratic so being from California’s largest political civic group, he likely wants the one party system implemented state-wide.

    The United Coalition uses only pure proportional representation, and mathematician Mike Ossipoff (Peace and Freedom) and I James Ogle (Republican), have opposed Rob Richie’s work on RCV in single winner districts since 1993 but he blew us off and created conflicts instead.

    The United Coalition has never and will never accept Rob Richie’s work but we did try to connect several times but we were rebuffed.

    The only acceptable voting system is pure proportional representation PPR.

  3. It is SCA 18. Benjamin Allen is no mere Assemblydroid.

    The main provisions appear to be to permit the governor to appoint replacement legislators and to let a legislator being recalled to run in the recall election.

    Under the replacement provision, the governor could choose an appointment subject to approval by the board(s) of supervisors of the counties covered fully or partially by the district. If they disapprove there would be a special election.

    So Crooked Old Man Brown could appoint an arch-liberal in a Republican leaning district. The boards of supervisors in the multi-county district would reject the appointment, and force a special election. Crooked Old Man Brown would delay proclamation so that the election would be as late as possible.

    Or Crooked Old Man Brown would appoint a Democrat in a Republican district in a Democratic county, and the board of supervisors would rubberstamp it.

    IF a special election were by IRV, it would be up to Crooked Old Man Brown to decide whether or not to use IRV. 34 of the 44 single-county assembly districts are held by Democrats, so even without Crooked Old Man Brown’s thumb on the scales, there would be more opportunity for IRV elections in Democrat leaning areas.

    Of the 21 special elections since Proposition 14, 11 have not required a runoff. 10 of 21 can hardly be cited as “virtually every”.

    The 10 special elections requiring runoffs had an average of 10.4 candidates (24, 17, 13, 11, 9, 8, 6, 6, 5, 5).

    The 11 special elections that did not require runoffs had an average of 3.9 candidates (8, 6, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1).

    Races with large number of candidates are the least viable for resolution under the deficient equipment of IRV3 which is widely (universally?) used in California. The elections will essentially devolve in plurality elections. And in the elections where there was a majority, IRV doesn’t matter.

    If you wanted to use IRV for special elections, you would require use of paper ballots that permit voters to rank all the candidates by placing a numeral next to the candidates name. Make the elections, all-mail, so you eliminate the expense of polling places, and likely have higher participation since voters will receive a ballot, it would also be feasible to put a voter’s pamphlet with each ballot. Since all the ballots will be collected at a single location in each county, it would be trivial to truck the ballots to a single location. Since there is a single race, the ballots can be hand-counted. If there are multiple races, hand counting is more problematic since you have to redistribute the ballots. The votes could be hand counted by citizen tellers.

    Exhausted ballots would be used to determine whether the process stops. If the number of exhausted ballots plus the votes for the last-place candidate is greater than or equal to the voters for the second to last place candidate, then counting is terminated. This avoids penalizing voters who don’t rank enough candidates, or were unsuccessful in predicting who the front-runners would be. There would be a new election with the continuing candidates.

  4. Candidate rank order lists of other candidates made public — perhaps more than 1 list – esp who is top of list.

    Condorcet with AppV tiebreaker — RCV properly done.

  5. JR, in the IRV elections in SF, the voter doesn’t write in numbers. The paper ballots allow the voters to create a black line to connect two sides, and depending on which boxes get connected, the mark determines a numeral.

  6. @JO,

    Nobody would have designed a ranked ballot the way San Francisco did. If anyone were told to rank ten items, they would either make a numbered list, and filled in the items.

    1. Bozo the Clown
    2. Donald Duck
    3. Mickey Mouse
    4. Gary Johnson
    5. Jill Stein
    6. Evan McMullin
    7. Donald Trump
    8. Hillary Clinton

    Clinton, Hillary 8
    Clown, Bozo 1
    Duck, Donald 2
    Johnson, Gary 4
    McMullin, Evan 6
    Mouse, Mickey 3
    Stein, Jill 5
    Trump, Donald 7

    They had some old equipment, and wanted to implement IRV. Voters make all kinds of errors. Nobody would vote:

    1. Bozo the Clown
    2. Bozo the Clown
    3. Bozo the Clown
    4. Bozo the Clown

    Or

    Clown, Bozo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

    Or

    1. Bozo the Clown
    2.
    3. Mickey Mouse
    4.
    5. Bozo the Clown

    Or

    Clinton, Hillary
    Clown, Bozo 1 5
    Duck, Donald
    Johnson, Gary
    McMullin, Evan
    Mouse, Mickey 3
    Stein, Jill
    Trump, Donald

    But they do that with the confusing San Francisco ballot mechanics.

    Paper ballots with ranked choices are easy to count. They’ve been doing it for a century in Ireland.

  7. See the percentage of ballots without added choices after even 3, 4, 5 plus choices.

    How about counting a mere 140,000,000 ballots for USA Prez with about 15 candidates ???

    NO Problemo ??? – See ex Gov S in one of his Terminator movies.

  8. Let’s say that a team of four can count one ballot in 5 seconds. That is 600 per hour, with two five minute breaks. In a six-hour day that is 3600 ballots. That only requires 155,556 counters for a single day.

  9. Cost per counter per hour — who make zero errors ??? — and the Total Cost ???

  10. How about having 10, 20, 30, etc. numbered boxes/ovals under each name — with all mail paper secret ballots ???

    Use each number ONE time for each office.

    IE Scanners convert ballot into rank order codes for each office — for Condorcet math.

    More computer child’s play — with 100 percent national security.

    Spare the eyes/brains of those team of 4 counters.

    Cost per ballot ??? — esp if a ballot gets beat up and a new ballot has to be redone.

  11. $12/hour. These will be citizen counters, chosen like a jury. Paper ballots are stacked and then audited/counted. There are groups of four to improve accuracy. Total cost for the first round $15 million.

    Later rounds are much quicker since there are fewer ballots to be redistributed.

    You can also use scanners with handwritten OCR as is used in Scotland. This might best be done with a system that projects ballots, so that observers may scrutinize the process. You don’t have to pay those observers.

  12. Everyone who supports CA State Senator Been Allen’s (Democratic) proposal should be aware that his plan will create a one-party system in every place where is it used, only the biggest civic group will win, just like in SF where is is used and SF Democrats hold 100% of the seats and the voters need not consider other civic groups since the cannot win.

    I first spoke about pure proportional representation (PPR) at BAN headquarters in 1993 when I accessed the ballot for Gov. with the Green Party.

    But they backed NOTA.

    Google derived from my name in 1997, but they don’t want you to know, so I am a lier to everyone who uses Google, they may never admit how they got their name.

    Now our top candidate in the United Coalition is running for State Senator in CA SD 26, Ben Allen,’s seat, but those who support the one party system being promoted by BAN, COFOE, FairVote and others, they welcome the candidacy and proposals by Ben Allen and so Libertarian Mark Herd’s campaign for PPR is valueless to them.

    The One Party welcomed the competition but only PPR can unite us all as one so our priority is Mark Herd (Libertarian) and we are happy to replace those in the Libertarian Party as supporters of PPR and the United Coalition.

    http://www.internatiinal-parliament.org/ucc.html

  13. Cost per vote in current systems — 1 vote per office or N votes (esp. N judges in area) ???

    Cost per vote in SF — 3 max RCV votes (legis and exec) ???

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