On Saturday, October 7, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1227, which lets Santa Clara County, the most populous county in northern California, use ranked choice voting for elections for county offices, which are all non-partisan.
This appears to be the first time that Newsom has signed a bill that promotes ranked choice voting. In the past he has repeatedly vetoed bills letting non-charter cities use RCV. Thanks to Jim Lindsay for this news.
On October 6, the New York Times published an article about Cornel West’s decision to run for president as an independent instead of as a Green. Unlike almost every other major media story, the New York Times story, written by Charles Homans, stated that Jill Stein most likely did not “spoil” the election for Hillary Clinton. He wrote, “The number of votes received by the (Green) party’s nominee, Jill Stein, in three battleground states would have been enough for Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump in the election – although exit polls in one of the states, Michigan, found that only a quarter of Ms. Stein’s voters said they would have otherwise have voted for Ms. Clinton.”
Michigan in 2016 was the closest of all the states that Trump carried. Homans could have added, but he didn’t, that the same exit polls showed that 14% of the Stein voters otherwise have voted for Trump. When one does the math, one sees that Stein did not change the outcome in any state.
The article is probably behind a paywall for most BAN readers, but here is a link.
Here is a post on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Thanks to Independent Political Report for the heads up!
On October 5, 2023, a new Mayor (Paul Young) was elected in Memphis, Tennessee. There were 17 candidates in the race, and Mr. Young was the top vote-getter, receiving 28% of the vote. Since 2008, Memphis voters have approved Ranked Choice Voting, rejected the repeal of RCV in a referendum, and rejected an amendment to the City Charter that would have mandated Plurality Voting.
Nonetheless, Plurality Voting was used in this election, because Ranked Choice Voting has been banned in The Volunteer State by the Tennessee General Assembly, which is dominated by the Republican Party.
Here is the story from FairVote.
I posted earlier this week about a paper from the American Enterprise Institute asserting that conservatives should more carefully consider electoral reforms. Here is the link to that study.
On October 5, 2023, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the decision of the US District for the Middle District of Tennessee that the state’s ban on distribution of applications for absentee ballots is constitutional.
This is the link for the decision: Lichtenstein v. Hargett 6th Circuit decision.
