On October 11, a U.S. District Court in Alabama approved a settlement of the lawsuit Alabama State Conference of NAACP v Pleasant Grove, n.d., 2:18cv-2056. The city had been sued in 2018 over its method of electing city council members, which were at-large. The plaintiffs said this method made it difficult for black candidates to be elected. Pleasant Grove is near Birmingham.

The city and the NAACP settled the lawsuit. In the future, voters will use cumulative voting. Every voter will have five votes, and five city councilmembers will be elected. Voters will be free to cast one vote each for five different candidates, or cast all five votes for one particular candidate, or any other combination. Here is the settlement document, which lists the other jurisdictions that already use cumulative voting in Alabama. Cumulative voting avoids the need to split jurisdictions into districts. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.

Tunisia held a presidential election on September 15, 2019. Just prior to that election, presidential debates were held over three days, with all 26 candidates on the ballot invited into at least one debate. At the election, no one polled as much as 50%, so a runoff was held October 13. At the runoff, one of the independent candidates, Kais Saief, was elected. See the wikipedia article about the election.

On the evening of Sunday, October 13, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 212. It would have allowed non-charter cities and counties to use ranked choice voting for elections for their own officers. Here is his veto message.