California Election Reform

Draft law to add better election methods to California Elections Code

I aim to define several election systems so that any of them may be used in elections in California. I want to leave open the choice between several systems because the tradeoffs between theory and practicality will not be clear untill all have been tried. The law should be stated that the elections official in charge (secretary of state, etc) shall be able to choose the method that seems to fit the demands of technology, culture and theoretical virtue of the various systems. All of the systems defined and approved of by law shall meet certain minimum theoretical merits.*

The Draft as I have it defines "Approval Voting", "Yes/No Vote", "Instant Runoff Normalized Rating Election", "Virtual Round Robin Tournament" and "Instant Runoff Voting". To do: multi-seat methods. Comments welcome

California Elections Code is quite long. It's about 2 MB of plain text and apparently not available from the state in a handy download.

Back to bolson's Election Reform page

I handed a copy of this to my State Assembly candidate (the old one was a lame duck). Maybe you should see what your legislator thinks of it. Or, better yet, read up on your state's laws and adjust the wording to match better, and then see what your lawmaker thinks of it.

* This means the old standard, Single Vote, is out. If I had my way, Instant Runoff Voting would also not be in there, but I expect it to be too hard to explain why. It has gained some name recognition and thus current political realities will require it. Of course, since I'll make sure better systems are also defined, there will easily be room in the future to simply not use IRV.