On July 3, the California Assembly Elections Committee passed SB 212. It lets all counties and cities use ranked choice voting for their own elections. Currently only charter counties and cities can do that. Thanks to Steve Chessin for this news.
On July 3, the California Assembly Elections Committee passed SB 212. It lets all counties and cities use ranked choice voting for their own elections. Currently only charter counties and cities can do that. Thanks to Steve Chessin for this news.
Condorcet = RCV done correctly.
Richard:
1) Does this bill specify which versions of Ranked Choice Voting would be permitted to use in California?
2) Since broader voting forms are being permitted, does this bill as written allow any of the roughly 5,500 School and other Special Purpose Districts to also choose to use Ranked Choice Voting in their elections?
@Deemer,
The bill would permit all manner of school districts, including community county districts, to use RCV, in addition to general law (non-chartered) cities, and counties. There are extensive changes to the Education Code that the bill provides to permit a school district to adopt RCV. Governance of the myriad of special districts might require similar changes scattered throughout several codes.
Before a government entity could adopt RCV there would have to be a plebiscite. For school districts, county election officials would have to certify that they could handle RCV (actually this is inverted, the election officials would certify just before the election that they could not handle RCV.
There is not the same procedure for cities. I think cities are responsible for their own elections, though they masy contract with county election facilities.
@Deemer,
The bill provides for IRV in single member districts, and STV for multimember bodies.
The bill requires full ranking, unless “not feasible” (wink, snicker).
If California permitted equal ranking, you have a quasi-approval ballot. (1) those you want; (2) those who were acceptable; (3) those who were tolerable; (4, implied) those who are unacceptable.
It would also be useful to treat inactive ballots as being for the continuing candidate with the fewest votes. If this prevents elimination of more candidates, then have a rerun with all elected or continuing candidates.
But for the defective ballots, the voter might have ranked additional candidates. Since the state prevented clear expression of voter intent it must be presumed that the voter was denied that opportunity.