FairVote Minnesota Continues Its Work Promoting Ranked Voting!

Keep up the good work, Minnesota!

http://fairvotemn.org/node/2155

Sacramento Bee Article Regarding California Voting Rights Act

The Sacramento Bee ran an article today about cities and school districts being targets for California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) lawsuits. Here is my comment on the article:

The most important reform cities and school districts can implement is PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION THROUGH RANKED VOTING. Councils and school boards should be elected by ranked ballot (i.e., single transferable vote, STV) to ensure that everyone is represented in proportion to their percentage of the population. This is the way elections have been conducted in Australia and Ireland for nearly 100 years and is the perfect remedy for alleged violations of the California Voting Rights Act. See ***http://fresnorankedvoting.blogspot.com*** or ***www.cfer.org*** for more info.

Fresno City Charter Review Committee Established

Good news! The Fresno City Charter is being reviewed for the first time in 20 years! This is what I posted in response to the news story (http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/07/26/2478665/fresno-city-charter-review-committee.html) about the committee in the Fresno Bee:

The most important reform the city could implement is PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION THROUGH RANKED VOTING. The council should be elected by ranked ballot (i.e., single transferable vote, STV) to ensure that everyone in Fresno is represented in proportion to their percentage of the population. Also, increasing the number of city councilmembers to 9 or 11 would increase the likelihood that all Fresno citizens (young, old, women, men, white, minority, wealthy, poor) are adequately represented. See ***http://fresnorankedvoting.blogspot.com*** for more info.

Instant Runoff Voting Unanimously Declared Constitutional By Appellate Court

http://www.theninthcircuit.com/2011/05/23/ninth-circuit-upholds-three-candidate-irv-election-system/

This is great news! Ranked voting is clearly constitutional and this decision should encourage more jurisdictions to start using it, especially as a remedy (or preventative measure) for alleged CVRA (California Voting Rights Act) violations!

Response To Anti-IRV Article Regarding Hawaii

Here is my response to Rebecca Mercuri's article about IRV in Hawaii:

There is nothing shocking or controversial about instant runoff voting (IRV). It simply means using a ranked ballot so it can be determined who would win a runoff election without having to conduct a second election.

The author is aware of the organization FairVote (http://www.fairvote.org/), so I'm surprised that she makes several errors in her statements about ranked voting.

For example:

(1) The author's concerns about electronic voting are legitimate. However, a person can be against electronic voting and still support IRV. Ranked voting does not require a computer, and even if a computer is used, the election results can be manually verified by a hand count of the ballots.

(2) IRV is not the same as "proportional representation" (PR). It is true that one method of PR involves ranked ballots, like IRV, however, IRV is used to elect one winner (e.g., in single-member districts), whereas PR is used to elect multiple winners (e.g., in multi-member districts or an at-large city council election).

Let's hope that Governor Abercrombie does NOT veto this bill.