Californians for Electoral Reform (CfER) letter on SCA 14
Californians for Electoral Reform
PO Box 128, Sacramento, CA 95812
510-527-8025
www.fairvoteca.org
14 November 2003
Senator John Vasconcellos
State Capitol, Room 5108
Sacramento, CA 95814
Dear Senator Vasconcellos:
It is with pleasure that I inform you that the Board of
Directors of Californians for Electoral Reform (CfER) has
voted to endorse SCA 14, the Political Reform Act of 2004.
It is the mission of CfER to promote the implementation of
election methods such as instant runoff voting (IRV) and
forms of proportional representation (PR), and as SCA14
would enact IRV for statewide elected officials, we support
it. We have no position on the many other reforms in the
bill.
We do have the following concerns with portions of the bill,
however:
1. As written, the language concerning “None of the above”
is incompatible with the language concerning instant
runoff (Section 3.7 (a) and (b), respectively). The
two can be made compatible, however, and we would like
to work with you in doing so.
2. While we agree that IRV for legislators elected from
single member districts is an improvement over
plurality elections for those officers, we believe that
PR is even better, and would like to see language that
would at least open the door for some form of PR. For
example, the following language (taken from the
recently-submitted Majority Rule, Minority Rights
Initiative) would do so:
Seventh-That Section 6 of Article IV thereof is
amended to read:
SECTION 6. For the purpose of choosing members
of the Legislature, the State shall be divided
into {- 40 Senatorial and 80 Assembly -}
districts to be called Senatorial and Assembly
Districts. {- Each Senatorial district shall
choose one Senator and each Assembly district
shall choose one member of the Assembly. -} {+
Any legislator elected from a single-member
district shall be elected by a majority of
voters casting a ballot for that office. Any
legislator elected from a multi-member district
shall be elected by proportional representation
in accordance with California law. +}
Tenth-That Section 1 of Article XXI thereof is
amended to read:
[(1)(a), (b), as you have them, and (c), with
changes beginning with (c)(1).]
(1) {- Each member -} {+ Members +} of the
Senate, Assembly, Congress, and the Board of
Equalization shall be elected from {- a
single/member district -} {+ districts designed
to maximize accurate representation of the
voters of California +}.
(2) The {+ ratio of the +} population of {+ a
district to the number of legislators elected
from that district shall be reasonably equal
for +} all districts of a particular type {-
shall be reasonably equal -}.
[(3), (4), (5), and (6) as you have them.]
We note that, even when districts are created by an
independent redistricting commission, single member
districts are either competitive or representative, but
not both. Even with IRV, up to 50% less one voter of a
district could feel unrepresented by the winner. PR
solves that problem, making every district both
competitive and representative.
3. The part of Section 5 that adds 5(b) to Article II may
be unconstitutional. The courts have consistently
ruled that a state can neither force a party to include
nor prohibit a party from including non-members as
voters in their primaries. It’s up to each party to
decide if it wants to let unaffiliated voters vote or
not, and it’s doubtful that 5(b) would survive a
constitutional challenge.
4. It seems unwise to explicitly mention political parties
by name in the Constitution. Perhaps the reference to
“The Democratic and the Republican Caucuses” in section
10 should be changed to “The two largest party
caucuses”.
5. We see no reason why the IRV provisions could not be
applied to Federal offices as well as State offices.
We also see no reason to not allow for the option of PR
for House members once Federal law itself does so (2
USC 2(c) currently mandates single-member districts).
We are grateful to you for raising the level of debate on
IRV and other electoral reforms, and look forward to working
with you on this legislation.
Sincerely,
Stephen A. Chessin, President
1426 Lloyd Way
Mountain View, CA 94040
(650)-786-6200 (work)
(650)-962-8412 (home)
