SENATE ELECTIONS, REAPPORTIONMENT & CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS COMMITTEE

Informational Hearing

Instant Runoff and Ranked Choice Elections:

Will They Lead to a Better Democracy?

October 25, 2005

Oakland, California

Senator Debra Bowen, Chair

SENATOR DEBRA BOWEN, CHAIR: We will begin our hearing this morning. I’m Senator Debra Bowen, chair of the Senate Elections, Reapportionment & Constitutional Amendments Committee. And you should see the other guy. I believe that Senator Battin will be joining us, and perhaps a couple of other people.

But we are going to have a discussion today and learn more about the status, history, impediments, and ramifications of alternative voting systems including, instant runoff voting and ranked choice voting, which we will call IRV and RCV. I think we’re going to need ____________ listening to this hearing ________ for which I apologize.

These are elections….

(Audience interrupts, not being able to hear)

So we’re going to have a discussion today about the status, history, impediments and ramifications of alternative voting systems such as, instant runoff voting and ranked choice voting which are systems that are slowly but surely gaining popularity in California.

I wanted to hold this hearing in Alameda County, particularly, because there are three cities here, Oakland, San Leandro, and Berkeley, that have approved the use of such a system.

And as I’m sure most people in this audience knows, San Francisco has already held a ranked choice election in November of 2004, and will hold another two weeks from today. State law does not allow California’s 370 general law cities, it’s 44 general law counties, or any special district, to conduct elections using these methods.

San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro, did not have to wait for Sacramento to give them permission, they are charter cities, so they have the luxury of being able to change their voting system and do whatever they want, at least on this particular issue.

Both Assemblywoman Loni Hancock and I have authored bills to give general law cities, counties, and special districts, the ability to choose an IRV or a ranked choice system. But those measures haven’t quite made it into law yet.

I’m looking forward to a discussion today. And if there are people who are not on the agenda who would like to address the committee, we would love to hear from you at the end. There will be a public comment period. And we don’t have to record who you are under the Patriot Act, but it helps us to know if you’d like to speak just so that we can anticipate how many people we’ll have. And if you would let the sergeants know, they’ll have a signup sheet.

And let me call up the first panel and then I’ll turn proceedings over to Assemblywoman Hancock. Our first panel is Hector Preciado, Theis Finley, Goro Mitchell. Those are our first three panelists.

And I want to welcome Assemblywoman Hancock who has really been a leader on this issue. I’m very glad you could be with us.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER LONI HANCOCK: Thank you so much, Senator Bowen. I want to really thank Senator Bowen for having this hearing. I know that there is great interest in the Bay Area in IRV. And, in fact, I think I carried a bill my first year in the Legislature, and then we really realized it was premature in a lot of ways because we were waiting to see what happened in San Francisco, and what some of the ramifications were. So this will be a very interesting hearing for me and I’m really looking forward to listening and learning from what you all present.

And Senator Bowen has consistently, in our last session and before, raised a lot of the interesting and complex issues about how we make our democracy better and more transparent; how we deal with the initiative process and other things. So, it’s wonderful to have you here and working for assembly districts, Senator Bowen. And hopefully we’ll learn a lot today from everyone here.

SENATOR BOWEN: Alright. Good. I think we may continue. Let me start with Mr. Preciado.

HECTOR PRECIADO: Good morning, and thank you for allowing to come in and offer some testimony. The Greenlining Institute, we’re a multi-ethnic public policy and advocacy institute. Obviously with the name itself, we advocate on behalf of low-income and minority communities throughout the state and the nation depending on the issue, this being one of them.

I’d like to begin by reading a prepared statement I have. And I’ll indulge to any questions, or be part of the panel discussion here with the other distinguished guests.

Greenlining believes that a just and democratic society requires an informed and educated citizenry participating fully and equally in the democratic process. Yet for millions of ethnic minorities in the United States, political participation is unequal, and representation is far from full. For example, in California no single ethnic group can claim a majority of the population, yet the electoral process is still commanded by wealthy white citizens, corporate interests, and other well financed interest groups, not the majority of citizens who are people of color. It is imperative that approaches to federal and state government reforms increase minority political participation and representation.

Minorities must contend with many factors that dilute their voting strength and weaken their participation in the democratic process. These factors include, a modern day poll tax where political access is determined by the frequency and size of campaign contributions to elected officials and candidates; an initiative process that responds to a largely white electorate and that is unfavorable to minorities and low-income communities that lack wealth and income comparable to whites; a redistricting process that produces safe gerrymandered partisan seats that nullifies minority voter impact and results in uncompetitive elections, thereby making elected officials unresponsive to constituent demands; a non-representative judiciary that is increasingly hostile to civil rights and equal opportunity provisions in the law and in public policy; an overburdened and under-funded voting systems that threaten the ability of more minorities to exercise a franchise of voting and making certain that every vote counts.

Minority communities are disassociated from politics and from the political choices that determine needed public investment in their communities such as, schools, healthcare, transportation, housing, etc. A result of this disassociation is a distrust of government and its ability to effectively respond to the needs.

To make government more responsive to minority communities the Greenlining Institute is executing a minority voter outreach and education campaign designed to invigorate minority community interest and activity in the following terms: Campaign finance reform, initiative reform, redistricting reform, judicial independence, and more importantly why we’re here today, election reform.

Alternative voting systems like, instant runoff voting and rank choice voting, will lead to a better democracy because the advantages of these systems will increase minority participation and representation in California politics. These advantages include: majority rule, elimination of spoilers, wider range of voter choice, a cheaper second ballot (meaning no second runoff election), less negative campaigning, and more political participation.

On the issue of ranked choice voting: Ranked choice voting provides the fairest representation for minority groups. Electoral scholars believe choice voting to be the most effective in maximizing voter choice, government responsiveness, party representation, and ensuring against wasted votes. Choice voting has been used in Ireland, Australia, and on many municipal levels in the United States, including New York City, Cincinnati, Peoria, and Cambridge.

In choice voting a voter ranks candidates in order of preference and the votes are then tabulated in a series of rounds. If a candidate in the first round meets the threshold for election, then that candidate’s remaining votes are redistributed to the other candidates based on voter’s second choices. This process continues until all the seats are filled.

Choice voting is the most effective proportional representation system because it is used to elect candidates rather than parties, which makes officials more directly accountable to the voters. This system is also more effective in protecting against splitting of the minority vote than other candidate based semi-proportional systems such as limited and cumulative voting.

The last thing, I want to end by saying that while districting has become a hot button issue in California, the proposal for an independent panel of retired judges to draw district lines will do little to improve our system of representative democracy in the state. Single seat winner take all elections limit minority representation, increase voter apathy, and diminish the accountability of legislators. Multi-seat ____ district with a choice voting system will increase minority representation throughout the state. Choice voting is the most optimal proportional representation system because it maximizes voter choice and minority representation.

Thank you.

SENATOR BOWEN: Thank you. Mr. Finley.

THEIS FINLEY: Madam Chair, Assemblymember, I’m the policy advocate with California Common Cause. I apologize if some of my remarks will reiterate what Hector has said. He raised some good points, and unfortunately, those are the good points, but I think I can add a little bit.

On behalf of our 40,000 California members, we support ranked choice voting. This allow voters to express their true choice, but also promotes more robust political debate, opening up the fields to third-party candidates. Too often voters are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, or they either choose to not vote at all because they don’t feel a wasted vote is a vote worth making. We think that IRV or ranked choice voting will change the circumstance by bolstering the candidacies of third-party candidates and minority candidates and women candidates. As a voter, ranking candidates is a very intuitive process.

I have a study that came from San Francisco from the 2004 ranked choice voting election, and almost 90 percent of voters said that they understood the new system very well or fairly well. And the same study also said that by a ratio of 5-1, voters preferred this method compared to the old method with the December runoff. I think this is the only study that I know of that looked at the San Francisco election, and because of the recent phenomenon, we don’t have a lot of empirical data on these elections, but I think this is a very important study.

In addition, an interesting finding was that more voters felt that this gave them an opportunity to vote for a candidate that they really liked, as opposed to just a candidate who satisfied. And I think that is really the key finding in this study.

In addition, I agree it would save time and money by reducing the need for additional elections and also voter fatigue. For example in San Diego, we saw they had six elections in the last, I think, twelve months between primaries, special, recall, municipal elections. The money we could save by sample ballots and training poll workers could be used to better educate voters, do more voter outreach. And in addition, having fewer elections could reduce voter fatigue so we could even have more participation. I think given that California ranks in the bottom nationally in terms of turnout rates, we have to embrace any reforms that could increase turnout and also promote more participation in the electoral process.

And as I eluded to, IRV presents much promise to traditionally low voting communities, minority communities, immigrant communities by bolstering the candidacies of candidates from those communities, and this would hopefully in turn increase turnout in those communities.

So essentially for all those reasons California Common Cause and Common Cause nationally, supports IRV and RCV voting.

Thank you.

SENATOR BOWEN: Thank you.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: Senator Bowen, can I ask a quick question?

SENATOR BOWEN: Absolutely.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: Could you give the statistics on turnout rate in California? I was not aware that our turnout rate was among the lowest.

MR. FINLEY: We’re on the bottom fifteen nationally. I have it in the census but I don’t have the actual percentage. _____ bottom fifteen in terms of out of states.

SENATOR BOWEN: So there’s a new report just out by the Election Assistance Commission at the federal level that gives….I spent some time with it on the plane on Sunday night. It has all of our turnout rates, the rate of provisional ballots. I was actually surprised to see that California is, I believe, it’s fourth among the states in the number of provisional ballots cast. And in many states __________ high number of provisional ballots, there’s a much higher number of provisional ballots that are counted. So we’ll link to that Elections Assistance Commission report on our website and make sure that anyone who’s here who wants a copy can get it. It’s a federal government report.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: I would be very interested in looking at that. Because here we are, we’re 45^th in funding for education and we’re down at the bottom in some other things. I had no idea that our voter turnout was also down toward the bottom. So I’d be very interested in seeing more of those statistics.

MR. FINLEY: I’ll be happy to send you a report. It might be that Senator Bowen has a different report that has different figures.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: _________

SENATOR BOWEN: Well, the Elections Assistance Commission just did the first ever national survey of voting statistics, although they caution that some jurisdictions completely failed to report—some states—and others reported, for example, that with electronic voting equipment that they had a zero error rate. So it’s not clear that the statistics are entirely reliable, but it is the first time that we have had a national picture of who votes, in what percentage, number of registered, so it’s the beginning to understand better __________.

MR. FINLEY: Right. And more importantly, no matter where we rank, it’s always good to increase voter participation regardless of what it is.

SENATOR BOWEN: I think that’s probably the most salient point. It’s just that we have more room for improvements ________ expected.

MR. FINLEY: Thank you.

SENATOR BOWEN: Okay. Mr. Mitchell.

GORO MITCHELL: Good morning, Chair Bowen and Assemblymember Hancock. My name is Goro Mitchell. I’m the executive director of the Community Development Institute in your sister city of East Palo Alto, California. And the Community Development Institute is a leadership development program that also incubates twenty other nonprofits throughout the Northern California area.

And I’m really here to talk about what our situation is in East Palo Alto as it relates to representation on the city council of East Palo Alto.

East Palo Alto is a relatively new city and it is a city that is 94 percent people of color. And I appreciate the minority thing, but the new politically correct term is people of color community. And East Palo Alto was actually incorporated in 1983, and this is maybe 100 years after the neighboring city. So we have this long rich legacy of seeking self determination for especially people of color in East Palo Alto.

The vision of the founder of CDI is actually the architect of the incorporation movement in East Palo Alto. And really the vision that he had was that East Palo Alto and its people of color in East Palo Alto could have self determination; could control their taxes; control their police forces; and educate their young people. So it is kind of within this vision that we have been seeking ways to promote full representation in East Palo Alto, because East Palo Alto is a general law city. It uses an at-large election system. And we have a problem.

And the problem is, that in East Palo Alto although Latinos make up almost 60 percent of the population, we had a 16-year gap between Latino representatives on our city council. So it was not until __________ was elected in 2004 that we had a Latino city council person. And it’s not that Latinos didn’t run, it’s just the kind of problems with the at-large election system, because all the Latinos make up 58 to 60 percent of the population. Whether Latino or not, citizens, can’t vote, or under the age of eighteen.

And I’m not here speaking on behalf of the Latino community. This is just an example of the flaws that are inherent to these at-large election systems in this kind of unique environment in the context of East Palo Alto, which is a people of color community. So you’ll have this traditional context of African Americans seeking elective office in the South ______________ majority people of color ________ we have some disparity in representation.

So, I’m really here in support of choice voting and IRV. That is a great mechanism, a method to promote full democracy in East Palo Alto and similar cities throughout California. So we are in support of that.

SENATOR BOWEN: What do you think would happen differently in East Palo Alto if you had a….your instant runoff were ranked choice voting system?

MR. MITCHELL: Well, clearly if you had a Latino candidate or a Green Party candidate that had 15, 20 percent of the election, __________ representation on the city council. And we looked at choice voting as well as cumulative voting, as well as options for East Palo Alto to promote this ________ provision of __________.

So we strongly encourage you to articulate our views to other senators and other folks in the Senate, that we, in East Palo Alto, are very supportive of ______________ to choice voting.

SENATOR BOWEN: And do you have districts, or do your council members run at-large?

MR. MITCHELL: This is at-large. It’s an at-large system.

SENATOR BOWEN: So theoretically, you should be able to, even without ranked choice voting, you should be able to have the benefit of what some people are calling a multi-member district along with the downside of that which is, that everyone has to spend the campaign money to campaign all voters.

MR. MITCHELL: It’s really not clear whether we can actually _______ in going through the voting in East Palo Alto and all cities in California. We’ve done some research. We called the Secretary of State’s office and they said it should be fine. It’s kind of a modified at-large election system and that it really would have ___________ that’s used because it doesn’t….and my understanding was the multi-member district ______________there has been editorials and articles in newspapers that we should have ____ single member districts, which may not be possible in general law cities.

SENATOR BOWEN: Welcome, Senator Battin. Question?

SENATOR JIM BATTIN: Thank you. I’m sorry. I just flew in, and I missed most of your testimony. But what I did catch, I just want to ask a question about. You said that you had the Hispanic population in East Palo Alto—65 percent?

MR. MITCHELL: It’s 58 to 60 percent.

SENATOR BATTIN: Okay. Sixty percent. And you don’t have any Hispanics on the council?

MR. MITCHELL: We do. We have one that we elected in 2002.

SENATOR BATTIN: And you elect them at large? You don’t have wards or districts?

MR. MITCHELL: No________at-large.

SENATOR BATTIN: So why? Is it because you have too many Hispanic candidates that are running and they dilute the vote, and you think people are voting based on ethnicity?

MR. MITCHELL: Well, one of the biggest variables is, and probably most important variable is, documentation and having the legal right to vote. The age of the Latino population is about 25 percent under eighteen. So that diminishes the voting strength. And also, of course….

SENATOR BATTIN: Well, those are two separate things. The representation of, I mean, you representing the people that represent everybody, but you’re elected by the people who have the legal right to vote. Which means that they’re in the country legally and that they’re of age. So that’s the universe that we can only talk about. We can’t talk about anything else.

MR. MITCHELL: Really, there’s only been one case in the last four elections, city council elections, where _____________.

SENATOR BATTIN: I’m sorry, say it again. There was?

MR. MITCHELL: So there’s only been one case where you had three Latinos running for office where you can have Latinos diluting Latino ________.

SENATOR BATTIN: Really?

MR. MITCHELL: So the other ones have been one Latino running and then you have special cases. We elected ________ in 2004, where we had an open seat that was vacant, so it was a special election.

SENATOR BATTIN: So let me just ask another couple of questions. Not knowing the city, do the incumbents serve for a long time?

MR. MITCHELL: No.

SENATOR BATTIN: So there’s a lot of turnover on the city council. I don’t see a lot of turnover, but normal turnover; ever few elections somebody will decide they’re not going to run anymore.

MR. MITCHELL: Anecdotally ____________

SENATOR BATTIN: So you have usually then, what, one or two seats open that are non-incumbent running for reelection?

MR. MITCHELL: Yes.

SENATOR BATTIN: You have one or two.

MR. MITCHELL: In our last election we had three.

SENATOR BATTIN: That were open seats?

MR. MITCHELL: Right.

SENATOR BATTIN: You didn’t have any incumbents running for reelection and there were three open seats. And of that, there were no Latinos that were elected?

MR. MITCHELL: There were actually two.

SENATOR BATTIN: Two that were elected, or two that were open?

MR. MITCHELL: There were two open seats _________.

SENATOR BATTIN: Okay. I’m just trying to, I mean, there’s a lot of different nuances and there’s a lot of different scenarios that have….the elections have outcomes. Sometimes there’s just incumbents that aren’t going anywhere. There’s sometimes that you have an apathetic voter base. I’m just trying to get a handle on…

MR. MITCHELL: (off mike)_____________ But the choice voting remains a lot easier for groups, Pacific Islanders, Latinos, and other folks to actually achieve office in the city council _________. So that’s really my ________. ___________ related to incumbency and open seats and such, but this clearly will make it a lot easier. A 16-year gap is too long not to have a large ethnic group represented in the community. And so we want to make it easier so that we have all these different groups represented in our city. Because we are founded on the principles of justice and equity.

SENATOR BOWEN: Ms. Hancock.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: How would it make it easier? I have to say, it’s hard for me to track that statement. Could you just walk me through a candidacy?

MR. MITCHELL: So for example, say you have this issue of plumping. So if all Latinos, I mean, vote for one candidate, say under cumulative voting, or choice voting, then you’re guaranteed, even if you were 15 or 20 percent of the electorate, to have someone there. If folks all vote for the same candidate…

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: If they bullet vote.

MR. MITCHELL: Right.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: Because then they don’t end up getting the cumulative number of votes, do they? They get one vote but they’re just not giving their other votes to other candidates, they’re second or…

MR. MITCHELL So are you talking about under choice voting? So the second and third…and so I don’t understand the question. Can you repeat it?

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: I’m trying to understand how it particularly helps minority sites. Because I can’t track it through the ranked choice voting. And if you only bullet your vote, why that helps you and guarantees you a seat.

MR. MITCHELL: The threshold of participation is what you’re talking about. Go ahead, sir.

MR. FINLEY: Well, I think one way is if you have more then one candidate from whatever group and those two candidates split the vote of that community. Then through the ranked choice voting once one of those candidates is eliminated, then the votes that that candidate had might go to the other candidate from that same group.

SENATOR BATTIN: You make the assumption that people vote and blocks that way.

MR. FINLEY: Of course. I mean, that’s an assumption that we’re all making.

SENATOR BATTIN: Number two, one of the questions I asked was, how many in this particular case, how many Latino candidates have you had and I think the answer was, you said, a couple. So I don’t know how that theory helps. I don’t know how East Palo Alto makes the example.

MR. FINLEY: Right. If this system encourages more Latino candidates, for example, then that would address that issue.

SENATOR BOWEN: (off mike) Well, I think actually you really helped me understand it. It’s the splitting. Let’s use a simpler example that only has two variables—gender—men and women. And we often have a situation in a primary when you have, let’s say, two women and one man. And you’ll have some number of people who, for whatever reason, vote for one of the women, but then their second choice is the other. You’ll have others who don’t do that. But you’re saying that that marginal candidate, their first choice drops out, that then basically they’re still in the mix _________ and that’s the essence of what we’re talking about.

MR. FINLEY: And I think Senator Battin is correct. If there’s no split of the electorate, then this would not have as much of an impact.

MR. PRECIADO: And if I may add one thing too, and I think this issue applicable throughout the state, not just the city of East Palo Alto, in the interest of IRV and ranked choice voting, the fact that, and you brought up a good point Senator Battin, that not everybody, you don’t vote necessarily in blocks, even in minority communities. You see the Latinos, in every election, you see the way that they vote. They vote Republican; they vote Democrat; they vote African; they vote all across the board. You can’t just lump us into one. But I think the important thing is, is that under this system there are certain things that allow for other candidates to reach out to certain communities that they wouldn’t ordinarily reach out to, and I think that’s some of the benefits for the Latino community. That regardless of whether you have one Latino running for office, or two, or three at the very most, unfortunately for other factors, is what ends up being the case, you still have candidates that are reaching out to other communities because they potentially get those second choice votes. And because you do that, they’re exposing themselves to communities that ordinarily they wouldn’t even campaign to because they would dismiss it as “this is not my base, this is not my voting base and I’m not going to reach out to them.” Whereas, under this system they’re encouraged to do so whether or not ______________ substitute candidate but it gives us that hope, that promise that you potentially have this kind of thing happening. _____________ potentially, the minority community for people of color to _____________ not just in the city of East Palo Alto.

SENATOR BATTIN: So instead of talking about groups, let’s talk about an issue. So what I’m hearing is, is that if someone had a unique take on an issue that was just kind of a curiously odd, unique issue, and that’s what they’re all about, and enough people said, “Oh yeah, I don’t think he should be on the council, but that’s kind of an interesting idea and someone checked and it’s number two,” that person will end up on the council. Even though that wouldn’t be the issue that people would want representing, and that person didn’t have anything else to offer, it’s just on this one unique issue. You would have people running for second place.

MR. FINLEY: If people give you their second place vote, as a voter you have to know that that’s your second choice and then that’s how the system works, and that could be who ends up going to city council.

SENATOR BATTIN: I mean that’s right. I mean, so what you’re going to have is tactics. You’re going to have people say, “Mark me down for number two. I want to be two.” Or, “I’ll run with you on the block, you be number one, I’ll be number two…..You be number one, I’ll be number two….You be number one, I’ll be number two,” I don’t know which one of you guys are going to be elected to the council, but I do know that if I’m number two on all three of those slates, I’m going to be elected to council. I don’t know if that’s giving you representation—that’s just giving you a tactic.

MR. MITCHELL: I mean, even in an at-large system there may be a candidate, there’s three people running, I mean, three seats open. There may be a candidate that you don’t feel as strongly about, okay, and you still vote for that person because there’s three seats that need to be filled. And I mean, so it’s really kind of the same idea. That _________ at-large system, you’re going to vote for your top three. And it’s almost like ranking. So it’s really kind of the same difference, in my opinion.

SENATOR BATTIN: Then why are you advocating, if it’s the same difference?

MR. MITCHELL: Because in this system there’s more of a chance that the second place person, if they have a small constituency, will give in….

SENATOR BATTIN: See, that’s where I’ve got to be convinced. I just don’t…

MR. MITCHELL: Well, it’s not 50 percent plus one.

SENATOR BATTIN: I don’t get the math. I mean, I get the math. I’m elected. I have run many campaigns, and run many campaigns, and I know the business of campaigning, and I know how you do it. And so I take that and I apply it to this. I take real world and I apply it to the theory that we’re talking about and the result I get does not match yours.

SENATOR BOWEN: I’ll tell you what, we’re going to have the director of elections from the city and county of San Francisco next, so I think that’s probably the place to go to ask for, how does this really work, because it’s actually been done there. So, that’s probably the best place to get that answer.

So, any other questions of this panel? Alright. Great. Thank you very much.

Let me ask John Arntz and Elaine Ginnold. John Arntz, the only election official in California to have actually conducted a ranked choice voting election which generally received glowing reviews. And you have something else coming up in a couple of weeks, so thank you very much for taking the time to be here. Perhaps __________ means that you are supremely well organized for the next election, and therefore, you can spend your time two weeks before to be with us. Anyway, would you talk to us about what your experience was and how it worked?

JOHN ARNTZ: Thank you very much. Sure. I didn’t prepare anything for the meeting today, so I really welcome questions from the _______. We had ranked choice voting last November, as Senator Bowen indicated, and overall it went very well. It wasn’t easy. Every step of the way was a challenge. There were a lot of things that we thought we planned for well enough, but we realized that…

AUDIENCE INTERRUPTION REGARDING SOUND

MR. ARNTZ: So in the end, it did run very well for us in San Francisco with the ranked choice voting. It was a huge challenge. It was a challenge both operationally, politically, financially, but in the end we got it going. And now that it’s been established, it’s something that I think we’ll continue to do and fine tune the process as time goes on.

SENATOR BOWEN: How was the decision made to use ranked choice voting in San Francisco?

MR. ARNTZ: The voters adopted a charter amendment in 2002 to mandate that our most local offices would be conducted using the ranked choice method. So it was adopted into our charter. It became law. And I think what was different with San Francisco then the cities here in Alameda County and even Santa Clara County, is that there was a date specific when the ranked choice voting must take place, which was by November 2003. However, our vendor was unable to develop a ranked choice system and get it certified in time for the November 2003 election, so that’s why the first ranked choice contest took place in 2004.

SENATOR BOWEN: Did you have to purchase new voting equipment in order to use ranked choice voting?

MR. ARNTZ: No. We had our existing equipment modified. The precinct tabulators that we sent out to the polling places were modified to include what’s called “firmware,” which is sort of like the thinking chip on the system. And also, the central count machines, the software, was modified so that they could process the ranked choice ballots. Even though it sounds very simple, one thing, it was very expensive to do that. And I think one point that I would like to make is, that the ranked choice approach needs to be uniform, I think, as it goes into different jurisdictions otherwise the costs will remain high with each implementation.

San Francisco had election systems in software for its election last year, and so they developed the ranked choice for us for 2004.

Now, we just sent a letter of intent to award a contract to Sequoia after an RFP process, so now Sequoia is going to develop a ranked choice approach for our local elections. So now you have two vendors that will have had developed something for San Francisco. But then, if you go into a different jurisdiction and ask them to do something else for ranked choice voting, even if it’s just a small difference in the approach to tabulating the ballots, they’ll have to go back for certification and go through the whole process, and that will increase the costs.

SENATOR BOWEN: So you’re suggesting that, for example, the Secretary of State developed protocols, if you’re going to do ranked choice voting these are the system requirements. That way, any vendor’s system will be useable for any jurisdiction.

MR. ARNTZ: That would be ideal. And also, it would be helpful for the counties. Because I think when it comes to implementation of ranked choice voting, the counties, they don’t know exactly what they’re being faced with. It’s something new.

And you see today just in the few people you have before you, there’s a lot of ideas about this. And the registrars are being faced with these ideas, and they have their own pressures to run elections, and it creates uncertainty. So the more uniform approach there is, I think the more smoothly the implementation will be, wherever you want it to be. But also, it makes the life of the registrars a lot simpler, because they have something that they can follow. Right now, I felt this way, I felt that I was out on a limb for a couple of years trying to make this happen.

SENATOR BOWEN: What kind of steps did you take towards both voter education and poll worker training, as well as work with your own employees who are going to be responsible for the system? I mean, I can remember when we went from dump terminals to PCs in my assembly office and the transition, ___________ how good the new system is, the transition is always painful.

MR. ARNTZ: Yeah. And really, I think you hit the main point. I mean, almost the hardest transition was with our staff, because everything starts with our staff. We had to actually educate them with ranked choice voting, and not just where they understood it, but they could explain it, where they could then implement it throughout the city. And that was a challenge because they have run elections for many years in a certain way and here was something that was very different. And I think we saw it with the earlier speakers, is that ranked choice voting is very difficult to explain. It’s easy to show. I think it’s something that you can show visually. We tried to explain that it’s very difficult, and that’s one thing we realized. And so, we had to actually think of a lot of different ways to explain it to our staff so they could understand it, and then explain it, and then implement it. And when it came to outreach and poll workers, the ranked choice voting largely became our focus. We want to have outreach to voters regarding registration, absentee voting, and things like that. And the poll workers, they have to deal with provisional voting, setting up the polling place, closing the polling places. But we spent a lot of time in educating the poll workers and the voters just about ranked choice voting. So, it became our focus. The ranked choice voting in a lot of ways was the central point for the department for almost two years.

SENATOR BOWEN: Were you able to draw on the experiences of other countries that have used ranked choice voting, or is that just so distant that it wasn’t useful?

MR. ARNTZ: Not really. Australia has some sort of preference of running a ranked choice voting, and I know Ireland, and that was one thing that kept coming in my direction, “Well, they do it in other places, why can’t you do it?” And they just have different approaches to elections there. They have different laws. They have different traditions than we do, and they don’t translate easily.

UNIDENTIFIED: (Inaudible)

MR. ARNTZ: Yeah, exactly. And people think differently about elections there. I mean, San Francisco, for instance, the thinking about elections is much different than, let’s say, Butte County.

SENATOR BOWEN: We won’t ask you to explain that.

MR. ARNTZ: Well, take my word for it. So you just said look within California where there’s differences about elections, and you think about trying to take things from other countries and implement it into San Francisco or California, I don’t think it applies that easily. And I really think that if you want to implement ranked choice voting, you have to look at the jurisdiction in which it intends to be implemented and consider the circumstances, and consider what it would take to make it successful.

SENATOR BOWEN: How many different languages do you produce ballots in, in San Francisco? And voter pamphlets?

MR. ARNTZ: Three.

SENATOR BOWEN: Three. So did you do the education for ranked choice voting in all of those languages?

MR. ARNTZ: We did. And we really tried to focus on the minority language communities too, to make sure that they understand the formatting of the ballot—how to mark the ballot when they received it. And really, a lot of the concern was from the minority language community to that, that ranked choice voting would disenfranchise people because they were unfamiliar, perhaps, with voting. They didn’t want to seem like they didn’t know how to vote, and so we really tried to focus on those groups.

SENATOR BOWEN: You know, I had an interesting conversation with the woman who is head of the Elections Assistance Commission in Washington, D.C. last week and she told me that in jurisdictions when they switch to touch screen voting, that the jurisdictions demographically that were poorer and had the most minority members, have the greatest success rate with the ballots because people actually spent the time when they set up training sessions and community forums to learn the equipment. And in the communities that were much higher wealth, everyone’s attitude was, “Oh, it’s just another gadget. I don’t need to learn how to do it. I know how to do everything electronically.” And as a result, the error rate was much greater, which is actually the opposite of what I would have thought.

But I’m curious about where you went at the community level and how you did outreach so the people would feel comfortable with it, because it’s a big shift in the first time you do it.

MR. ARNTZ: Yeah, it is. And we went as far as standing on street corners and handing out information in places in town to make sure that people had an idea that ranked choice voting was going to come their way. We advertised in Spanish and Chinese newspapers. We had paid advertisements on public radio and television stations that were in Chinese and Spanish and English. We had citywide mailings that we sent out. We met with community groups. We included ourselves in their meetings as much as possible. The city actually provided grants to community groups that work with individuals in certain communities so that these groups would include the ranked choice message when they went out and did their own outreach.

And really, outreach is absolutely critical. Without it, the ranked choice wouldn’t have been successful. And the one thing I have learned about the outreach for the ranked choice voting, is that the outreach is critical just for elections generally. And often, I think what happens with elections is, is that the outreach is the last thing that entities want to fund because they think it’s not essential. And really, if you’re trying to increase voting awareness, if you want to increase turnout, the first thing you should look at is how successful the department’s outreach program is and how well it’s funded. And I think that if you were to use ranked choice voting or go to touch screen or whatever, the success of the department, and the success of voting, will come down to the success of its outreach and the funding that’s provided it.

SENATOR BOWEN: Questions?

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: I do have one question, Senator Bowen. San Francisco is a little unique, in being a city and county. Can you see differences; and how would you need to have, for instance, in Alameda County, every city agree to do it; or would it be too complicated; or could you do it city by city?

MR. ARNTZ: You can do it city by city. I mean, I think so. I think it’s best on a countywide basis. I really do. And even if all the cities….see, this was just pure speculation on my part because I don’t have other cities in my county. But I think that you can have various cities within a county running the ranked choice method and not the entire county running the ranked choice method. But I think the county has to set up the program. I think the county has to be able to be that central voice and the touchstone for information and for procedures. And I think it would make it difficult for the county if it didn’t do it that way, because what’s going to happen is, the various cities are going to create their own approaches to it in some way. And maybe they’ll have the same laws, but the procedures will be different in some way. And issues are going to come up.

And whenever there’s a challenge to elections, what’s attacked are the procedures for that election. And so let’s say you have a close race in a ranked choice city, what’s going to be attacked, are the procedures. And if you have all these different procedures in all these different cities, it’s not going to seem uniform, and it’s not going to seem like people really had a handle on the situation. So, Senator Bowen mentioned about the state creating the protocols and guidelines, definitely for the counties, but I think the counties should create protocols and guidelines for the cities as much as possible.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: So then cities could opt in, maybe, at different times.

MR. ARNTZ: Right. And that creates a big challenge for the counties though, because, I mean, they’re not set up for that. And I can see a county saying, “Well, if one or two cities are going to have ranked choice voting, let them develop it, and then I’ll help where I can.” But in the long run, I don’t ______being successful ______ makes a county’s job more difficult.

SENATOR BOWEN: Well, some of that is just a function of the way….and this varies so much from state to state. Actually, in some other states in the country the elections are not run at the county level, they’re run at the township level. So, I think Michigan has….I’m sure it’s Michigan, but one of the midwestern states has 682 jurisdictions that separately run elections in counties. Those jurisdictions are the most likely to use lever machines and punch cards, because of the economics of what it costs to do another kind of system.

But I think we in California are really stuck in our county mindset despite the fact that in many cities the city elections are not consolidated with the general election. So, there are many cities who run their own municipal elections, at least in Southern California.

ASSEMBLYMEMBER HANCOCK: In Northern California too.

SENATOR BOWEN: So we have a complete mixed bag. It’s as though we historically threw into this Santa Claus’s bag all of the various ways that we did elections, and we are just beginning, with how the America Votes Act, to sort it out and set some kind of national standards; look at accuracies; look at provisional voting; and try to make the system work in a more ordered manner. So this is one piece of it. And I’m sure that we would have some city personnel, city elections officials, who would object to having counties provide their software for them. Although, they perhaps would not object if it were paid for. So, I’d be curious to ask the League of Cities what their view on that would be __________ interesting response.

How are you doing the voting in this upcoming election where you have a mix of traditional and instant runoff? Do you have anything on your local ballot?

MR. ARNTZ: Yeah. We have three local offices, and then we have local and state measures. So we don’t have the mix yet. So the ballots that the voters will have will be all ranked choice for contests of any of the measures. So you don’t have like, let’s say, a community college board raise where you would mark a bit differently than you would our rank choice cards. So we haven’t really crossed that bridge yet.

SENATOR BOWEN: In ’04 you had mixed vote, right? You had state and then you had some traditional…

MR. ARNTZ: Right, well….

SENATOR BOWEN: Assembly, for example, would not have been in this.

MR. ARNTZ: I’m sorry. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

SENATOR BOWEN: And you didn’t find that voters had difficulty with the mix, or if they did, they didn’t tell you?

MR. ARNTZ: Well, we really, like I said, focused on the ranked choice portion of our elections, so we had the poll workers actually put the rank choice card on top. Because in San Francisco, since we had three languages, and we had a lot of measures, a lot of candidates, we actually had, I think, a four card ballot in November 2004. And so, when the poll workers give the voters their ballots, or when voters received their ballots in their ST envelopes, it’s not just one card, it’s four cards. It’s four really big cards too.

SENATOR BOWEN: Is this an ___________ ?

MR. ARNTZ: Yeah, right. So we had the poll workers actually hand the cards out with the ranked choice card on top and tell the voters “Here’s a ranked choice card.” Then in the ST envelope we put the ranked choice card on top with their brightly colored inserts saying “Here’s a ranked choice card.” And so, we really try to draw off the fact that a different style, a different formatted card, is being presented to them.

SENATOR BOWEN: Did you have any trouble in the polling places with having people get the order confused, or people have to actually move from one ballot to another? I never voted in a system where I had more than one.

MR. ARNTZ: No. We’re kind of used to it. In every election we have multiple cards. And I really was concerned about having spoiled the ballots on election day, and I ordered extra ranked choice cards for that reason. Because, I thought voters are not going to understand how to mark this card and they’re going to spoil a lot so I shipped a bunch more off to the polling places. But it really didn’t take place.

I think that we focus so much on every step of the way, it wasn’t like we just sent out something in the mail and said, “Well, that’s it. I’ve done outreach for ranked choice voting.”

I mean, every step of the process right down to the poll worker on election day, we’re trying to tell the voters about ranked choice voting, how to mark the cards, and how it was different. So we didn’t really….I didn’t really experience a lot of voters having frustration on not marking the ranked choice or other cards correctly.

SENATOR BOWEN: Okay. Any other questions? Alright. Thank you very much for joining us.

Our next panel is Kriss Worthington, who is the Vice Mayor of the city of Berkeley. And, Pat Kernighan from the Oakland City Council, who may not be here yet. I understand the council is in session, perhaps until noon.

Thank you for joining us.

KRISS WORTHINGTON: Thank you, Senator Bowen, for your outstanding leadership on election reform issues. And I also want to thank our own representative, who we love and treasure dearly, Loni Hancock, who represents Oakland and Berkeley, and does an outstanding job, I must add.

In terms of instant runoff voting, I see it as simply an incremental improvement in the election technology. And partly in response to some of the questions from Senator Dunn, it is not a panacea. Instant runoff voting will in no way guarantee that we have racial diversity, or economic diversity, or gender diversity. It will not stop the governor from vetoing all the wonderful bills that the Legislature passes, and it won’t solve our budget crisis. But what instant runoff voting will do, is open a door of possibility. It will reduce government waste of enormous amounts of money on the local level.

The question is not are we going to have runoffs, because we have runoffs. In fact, four out of nine members of our city council were elected through runoffs at great expense to the city of Berkeley. A district runoff costs us, I think, about $100,000. A citywide runoff costs us about $300,000. And we could have saved all of that money from all of those runoffs if we were allowed to do instant runoff voting.

Now, I usually win my elections by about a 2-1 margin, and I’m very happy about that. But instant runoff voting in Berkeley, won 72 percent. I’ve never gotten 72 percent, and I don’t believe any member of our city council has ever gotten 72 percent of our current elected officials. It is phenomenally popular to our residents.

Our city council, when they first heard about it, voted it down. But now that the city council knows a lot more about it and has studied it for years, we have a unanimous vote of our city council that we want instant runoff voting, and we want it in the next election.

So once people grapple with this, they actually can change their opinions when they see, first of all, how popular it is to the voters, and second of all, how practical it is in affecting, for instance, allowing the people who run the election to not have to work from September to November at break neck pace. And then, when they’re like, just to breathe a sigh of relief, like “Okay, I can get back to my normal life and not be frantic,” having a runoff election means those same people have to go a whole other month at break neck pace doing a runoff election, which is enormously stressful on the staff people. So there are practical benefits financially, practical benefits to our staff people, there are practical benefits in terms of, in a way, instant runoff voting is a form of campaign finance reform in that the cost for my one month runoff was nearly the same amount of money as the cost of my entire election. Because you’re down to the crunch and people are like “Okay, well, I’m one of the top two so I’m going to spend every penny I can.” So I had to go out and raise, practically, the same amount of money for my runoff as I did for my original election. And that, of course, reinforces the power of money, and how important it is to get money, when if we had instant runoff voting we could get the results earlier and you wouldn’t have to be indebted to so many more people giving so much money to your campaign.

Another impact, I’ve actually lived in cities that use this form of government i