On August 17, California held a special election to fill the vacant State Senate seat, 15th district. The unofficial results are: Republican Sam Blakeslee 48.8%; Democrat John Laird 44.1%; independent Jim Fitzgerald 5.1%; Libertarian Mark Hinkle 2.0%.
This is the seat that is vacant because former State Senator Abel Maldonado left to become Lieutenant Governor.
One more minority rule winner.
NO special elections are needed for legislator vacancies.
Each candidate / incumbent legislator should be able to find a rank order list of replacements during a term of office.
Legislative body to fill any vacancy if no list replacements qualify.
Demo Rep, I have a better suggestion. In this case, Blakeslee would be elected but, if he dies, follow the voter’s will and go with the runner-up. And so on.
Had this special election been held under the terms of Proposition 14, only Blakeslee and Laird would have been on the special general election ballot.
Better yet, would be to conduct all legislative special elections by mail using IRV. Since you would have only a single contest on the ballot, it would be trivial to count by hand. Since it is a by-mail election, all ballots would be delivered to a central location in each county. Voters could be empaneled in an election jury to actually count the ballot.