Mission Viejo, a California city in Orange County, had decided to use Cumulative Voting to elect all five of its city councilmembers in the 2020 election. However, on September 18, the California Secretary of state ruled that Cumulative Voting is not legal in California for general law cities.
Under Cumulative Voting, if there are five seats to be filled, a voter has five votes, but he or she can spread them around so as to give two votes to one candidate, and three votes to another candidate, if the voter votes for only two candidates. The voter can even give all five votes to a single candidate.
No city in California has ever used Cumulative Voting.
CV = one more defective *reform* method due to usual suspect math MORONS.
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PR pending Condorcet.
Since when does a CA SOS have any judicial power to *rule* on anything ???
A STONE AGE TYRANNY regime now in CA ???
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IE CA SOS too lazy/poor – unable to go to a CA Court ???
If I recall correctly, Mission Viejo is under a superior court order to adopt cumulative voting. (The terms of the order were mutually agreed by the city and the voting rights plaintiffs.) How does the Secretary of State’s opinion affect the validity of that order? Would it matter whether or not the judge changes her or his mind based on what the Secretary of State is saying?
While the California Voting Rights Act creates a “safe harbor” for jurisdictions that choose single-member districts, it also gives the courts some latitude to approve other solutions. The Secretary of State is saying that the authority of the courts under the CVRA is constrained by the “general law” provisions of the Government Code. I’m not so sure.
BR-
https://voiceofoc.org/2018/07/mission-viejo-likely-first-california-city-to-use-cumulative-voting/
JULY 2018
I don’t see anything in the CVRA that permits use of anything other than single-member districts, even if it would not remedy the supposed fault. Apparently, there was a ruling in Santz Clarita that cumulative voting violated state law. The lawyer in the Mission Viejo case said that Santa Clarita was fighting use of cumulative voting and had the backing of Alex Padilla. He distinguished that from the case in Mission Viejo where the city had “voluntarily” agreed to cumulative voting.
The SOS is based on state law requiring general law cities being limited to plurality voting.
Jim, relevant parts of the current statute (amended most recently in 2015 to create the “safe harbor”) include:
Section 14028 (c) “The fact that members of a protected class are not geographically compact or concentrated may not preclude a finding of racially polarized voting, or a violation of Section 14027 and this section, but may be a factor in determining an appropriate remedy.”
Section 14029 “Upon a finding of a violation of Section 14027 and Section 14028, the court shall implement appropriate remedies, including the imposition of district-based elections, that are tailored to remedy the violation.”
Unless the word “including” in 14029 means “including and limited to”, I don’t see how this doesn’t give the courts some latitude, especially in the context of 14028(c).
Armies of statist lawyers writing byzantine election laws or what ???
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PR and Appv and TOTSOP
@BR,
The “safe harbor” is in EC 10010, and was passed later. There was a proposed revision in 2015 that was vetoed by Brown. Safe Harbor is somewhat of a misnomer. A plaintiff has to give warning. If the city within 45 days agrees to switch to district voting and works on maps with the prospective plaintiff, they can’t be sued, and get off with $30,000, rather than $7 figure liability if they fight it.
14029 is unchanged from 2001, and is ambiguous as to whether there are other options besides district voting.
As Demo Rep noted, cumulative voting is a really horrible system which requires coordinated gaming of the elections.
The safe harbor is actually in EC 14027, which begins “An at-large method of election may not be imposed or applied […]”. If you have pure district elections, you can’t be sued under the CVRA.