Political Reform: Year in Review

Political reform has already made waves in 2010. This week, the Huffington Post published an opinion piece by gubernatorial candidate Tom Campbell and me on how Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) can solve California’s special election crisis.

•  In Los Angeles, IRV remained a hot topic. In January, we released a detailed report on LA elections that explains how IRV can help solve the problems of high costs and low voter turnout.  Since that time, LA’s two newest councilmembers, Paul Koretz and Paul Krekorian, both announced their support for IRV, as did LA City Attorney Carmen “Nuch” Trutanich.

• Thanks to this progress, the mainstream media continued to print supportive IRV articles. The LA Daily News published an opinion by Councilmember Jose Huizar explaining why IRV is right for LA, as well as a recent opinion piece we wrote on the Council District 2 special election.

• In just one year, four Long Beach councilmembers (Suja Lowenthal, Gary DeLong, Robert Garcia, and Val Lerch) came out in favor of IRV. As a sign of their commitment, they coauthored a motion to bring IRV to the Charter Amendment Committee, the first step towards putting IRV on the ballot.

• After IRV was successfully sent to a study session, the Long Beach Press-Telegram wrote a favorable editorial on the benefits of IRV. Soon after, they gave IRV front-page Sunday coverage. In addition, the Long Beach Business Journal published a thorough analysis of IRV.

• On a statewide level, IRV became part of the political conversation. We released a report on how IRV can fix special elections, and the LA Times published a piece by our Political Reform Director Steven Hill that proposed IRV as an alternative to the top-two primary. In the Daily Breeze, Assemblymember Ted Lieu and I wrote an article on how IRV would reduce election costs. And lastly, California Progress Report recently published our piece on the negative aspects of special runoff elections.

•  Outside of California, voters in St. Paul, Minnesota adopted IRV, while Minneapolis used IRV for the first time.

• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science announced it would use ranked choice voting for the Oscars’ Best Picture award, giving national attention to IRV. In USA Today, my colleague Blair Bobier discussed why governments should follow in the footsteps of Hollywood and adopt IRV. More recently, the New York Times wrote a piece explaining how and why the Academy will now use IRV.

• IRV was not the only political reform issue making strides in 2009. We made presentations to the cities of Hermosa Beach, West Covina, and Montclair about a form of IRV called choice voting. In response, Hermosa Beach came out in favor of a bill that would allow more cities to adopt forms of ranked choice voting.

• We were also thrilled with the passage of AB 30, a bill that will now allow 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote in California.

• During the debate about calling a Constitutional Convention, New America’s Steven Hill published a piece in the LA Times about how to best select Convention delegates.