IRV Advances in Long Beach City Hall

Yesterday, Long Beach’s Budget Oversight Committee took the first step to recommend Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) to the full city council.

Please attend and testify at the next committee meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 8th, at 3:30 pm (City Hall Chambers, 333 W Ocean Blvd, Long Beach 90802).

The Press-Telegram just published an article about yesterday’s meeting:

Instant runoff voting

City Clerk Larry Herrera outlined for the committee several ways that his department plans to cut election expenses – saving $160,000 by having fewer polling places, reducing the size of sample ballots and having vote-by-mail voters pay for their own stamps.

However, the biggest systemic change to save money would come from the use of instant runoff voting, which Herrera said would save $3.72 million over an eight-year election cycle.

In instant runoff voting, voters rank the candidates starting with their first choice to win. If no candidate gets the majority of the votes, then the candidate who received the fewest number of first-choice votes is eliminated, and voters who chose that person have their second-choice votes count toward the other candidates.

The process continues until one of the candidates has a majority of the votes to win the election.

Two committee members, DeLong and Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, voted to bring the issue back to the committee next week to recommend that the full council approve the idea. The voting system would require a City Charter change approved by voters.

Councilman Patrick O’Donnell said next week is too soon and that more information is needed before moving ahead on such a major change.

“I don’t want to go down this path to save money,” O’Donnell said. “I want to go down this path because it helps democracy.”

paul.eakins@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1278

The full article can be found here. Please leave a comment here to show your support for IRV.