Another Special Election Merry Go-Round

If you look at state economic statistics and the consistently worsening projections as each month of revenue collection goes by, you would recognize that, even if the positive talks on closing the current budget gap result in a deal, the possibility - even probability - of another deficit requiring a revision could take hold as early as this winter. That's what happened last year, and if anything the economy in the state has softened since then. At this time, the value of having a fully seated Senate and Assembly, due to the need for 54 Assembly votes and 27 Senate votes to move anything, becomes even more pronounced. Right now, we are down one Assembly seat owing to Curren Price's move to the Senate (owing to Mark Ridley-Thomas' election as LA County Supervisor last November). The CA-10 race could leave another opening if Sen. Mark DeSaulnier or Asm. Joan Buchanan emerge victorious. And in Los Angeles, an opening on the City Council may cost the Assembly another seat for a period of time.

Los Angeles voters showed a profound disinterest in the civic election in March when just 18% turned out, but there was a virtual stampede of candidates this week to run for the San Fernando Valley seat of former City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who won the race for city controller.

The slate of 14 candidates for the Sept. 22 special election reflects the varied geography of the 2nd District, which stretches from Studio City and Sherman Oaks at its southern border, through Van Nuys, Valley Glen, North Hollywood and Sun Valley to the rugged reaches of Sunland-Tujunga at its northern edge [...]

With just two months to raise money, a number of City Hall watchers are eyeing several strong contenders: former Paramount Pictures executive Chris Essel; state Assemblyman Paul Krekorian, a Democrat who lived in Burbank until moving this spring to Valley Glen; and Los Angeles Unified School District board member Tamar Galatzan.

Krekorian, who is an assistant majority leader, moved into the Council District but not out of his own Assembly District (Valley Glen is on the edge) to pursue this seat. If he wins, it probably wouldn't take effect until December 8, assuming that he doesn't reach 50% +1 on September 22. AD-51 (Curren Price's old seat) will have a new Assemblymember by November 3 at the latest, but Joan Buchanan or Mark DeSaulnier could reach the US Congress on the same day, and Krekorian might move to the LA city council and vacate AD-43 soon after. By the time all these special elections shake out, we'll be well into 2010.

All of this shows the need to modernize our system of filling special elections, which always seem to be more widespread in California. Wendy Greuel was elected City Controller back in March. There's little reason to drag out the search for her replacement this long. And if we had Instant Runoff Voting for the first round, we would not need to wait two months for an additional round, paralyzing state and local government and costing the state money in setting up additional elections. In the case of federal and state legislative elections, this is particularly perverse, since the way in which runoffs occur (with the top vote-getter in each party) almost always become useless races where the ultimate victor is well-known from the beginning.

Special Election Delays Make Yacht Party Happy Campers

CapAlert gets around to covering the issue we covered on Wednesday - how legislative vacancies on the Democratic side embolden the Yacht Party and make it more impossible to pass a decent budget. What amazes me is that they get a Yacht Party leader to go on the record about it:

To this day, Ridley-Thomas' seat remains unfilled. Democratic Assemblyman Curren Price of Inglewood finished first in the primary last week and is expected to take his place in the upper house after a May 19 runoff.

Of course, that will create a vacancy in the Assembly, which will likely last until early October by virtue of the state's election-scheduling laws.

"Every vote we pick up, it is exponential for the Republicans," said Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines. "It gives us a lot of ability to move the debate and navigate to issues that we care about."

This is Yacht Party logic - they actually think a vacancy is a PICK-UP for them. It's the logic of an extortionist. No sane person other than someone trying to exploit would agree that a less-than-full legislature for years on end makes sense from a public policy standpoint. That's why we could significantly reduce the time of the merry go-round AND save millions of dollars in special election costs by instituting Instant Runoff Voting for special election seats.

But the Yacht Party has no intention of fixing the policy. They want to laugh as they see legislators walk out the door.

In Northern California, Rep. Ellen Tauscher has accepted an Obama post in the state department, though still faces the confirmation process.

Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, has already declared for the seat, and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, is said to be considering a run.

"Joan Buchanan should run for Congress," said a laughing Villines, hoping for yet another vacancy in his house. "She'd be an excellent congresswoman."

"It creates a better dynamic than having the ability of the liberal-controlled Legislature to just steamroll its own desires," Villines said.

A better dynamic in the sense of being a fake dynamic, where the elected will of the voters is not reflected in the ability of the legislature. I can't think of a better argument to repeal two-thirds than these two quotes.

Ending The Special Election Merry Go-Round

Assemblyman Ted Lieu, who joined Calitics yesterday for an online town hall, has an op-ed with Gautam Dutta of the New America Foundation arguing for an election reform he will soon combine with a bill, to institute instant runoff voting for all special elections in California.

Here’s the root of the problem. On March 24, 2009 barely 6 percent of registered voters showed up for a special election to fill a vacancy for California’s 26th Senate District. In an area with almost 1 million residents and 400,000 registered voters, only 23,000 civic-minded citizens decided who would replace former State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas (newly elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors).

How much did this special election cost? A whopping $2.2 million of our tax dollars – nearly $100 per voter – according to the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder / County Clerk.

Unfortunately, we’re not even close to being finished. Since no candidate won a majority, we must hold a second election that will cost even more money. Because this is a heavily Democratic district, it is certain the Democratic nominee, Assemblymember Curren Price, will win. Yet Mr. Price must wait two months for a second election before he can be sworn in as State Senator.

Far from being “special”, special runoff elections cost millions of tax dollars to administer — at a time when governments have been forced to lay off schoolteachers and workers.

Obviously, the Assemblyman is making the fiscal responsibility argument for combining low-turnout special elections through IRV. But there's another crucial argument to be made - the irresponsible delay in proper representation in the legislature. Mark Ridley-Thomas was elected to the LA County Board of Supervisors in November, and his replacement won't take office until May. That's unacceptable, and especially so in California, where the Yacht Party uses the conservative veto to hijack the budget process. With a faster resolution of the Ridley-Thomas seat, for example, Republicans would have one less vote to use as leverage for the budget.

And this is more acute in the case of special elections for Congress in CA-32 and CA-10. Imagine, for example, if Sen. Gil Cedillo wins the Solis seat. He could be replaced by a sitting Assemblymember, which is the logical scenario. Then THAT Assembly seat needs to be filled. By the time all the special elections and runoffs are complete, we're well into 2010.

Enough. Instant runoff voting is a perfectly acceptable way to divine the will of the people without the need for a separate runoff election. The aforementioned Mark Ridley-Thomas has called for a feasibility study into IRV for these special elections. Lieu and Dutta explain:

With IRV, voters get to rank their choices, 1, 2, 3. If your first choice cannot win, your vote automatically goes to your second (i.e., runoff) choice. It’s like conducting a runoff election, but in a single election. If IRV had been used last night, the election for the Senate district would be finished.

IRV has already been adopted by San Francisco, Oakland, Minneapolis, Memphis, and Santa Fe. Currently, Louisiana, South Carolina and Arkansas all use IRV for overseas voters. A number of prominent leaders have endorsed IRV, including: President Barack Obama, Senator John McCain, California Controller John Chiang, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, and former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Influential civic groups also support IRV, including: Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles League of Women Voters, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Asian American Action Fund, Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, and New America Foundation.

This is not only a budget issue, it's the right reform for California. Let's end the special election merry go-round.

Early Voting Do-Overs

Short of Instant Runoff Voting, this is a reform well worth making:

Voters in New Jersey who cast absentee ballots for a candidate who has dropped out of the presidential race can vote again, a state judge has ruled. The ruling by the judge, Vincent J. Grasso of State Superior Court in Ocean County, dealt specifically with the Ocean County Clerk but has bearing statewide, according to the New Jersey attorney general’s office.

The ballot for Tuesday’s presidential primary was printed about a month ago. Because the field of candidates has narrowed considerably since then in both parties, the ballot has the names of six candidates who are no longer running. The candidates include four Democrats, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, and two Republicans, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee.

Under Judge Grasso’s ruling, if someone cast their absentee ballot for one of those six candidates, they are allowed to request a new ballot from their county clerk’s office and revote.

With early voting so convenient and popular, and the primaries moving at a breakneck pace, you're getting a lot of disenfranchisement and voter remorse. It's worth doing this, and if people are concerned about double voting, IRV will do the trick by giving voters a second and third choice.

Spin Alley

You might as well call it "The Lying Lounge," but I just spent a little bit of time there. It's quite surreal, all this attention paid to people who are saying the most obvious statements imaginable ("My candidate did well!"). But I sought out some of our California legislators, and tried to ask them about some of the issues outside of the debate that we talk about a lot.

• Rep. Hilda Solis: It was great to see Rep. Solis here! I wasn't aware that she was a Clinton supporter (previously she had supported Bill Richardson), and I had to look up at her sign (every "spinner" has a sign) to recognize that after she started talking to me. She said that Hillary had a good chance to explain her proposals in a lot of detail tonight, including on health care and "green jobs." I mention that she was barely given a chance to mention green jobs, and asked her what she thought about the fact that every CNN debate has been sponsored by the coal industry. "I think that's not right," she said. She went on to mention some environmental justice legislation she's co-sponsored with Sen. Clinton, and I asked her to come to Calitics and tell us about it.

• Speaker Fabian Nuñez: I didn't want to hijack the interview, but I really wanted to hear his views in the aftermath of the health care reform failure in the State Senate. Fortunately, someone beat me to it, and wound the conversation around to that. After saying that Sen. Clinton "understands the complexities of the health care crisis," he was asked about the lessons of what took place in Sacramento this week. "That was a question of our fiscal crisis. The State Senate felt we couldn't afford it, and I respect their perspective. But at the federal level, there's a way to do it in a much more flexible way and get it paid for. For all the reasons we couldn't accomplish it at the state level, you can at the federal level." I wasn't able to add the question of what concrete proposals we could get through this year. But I respect that answer, maybe because it's what I've been saying for a long, long time.

• Rep. Xavier Becerra: The Hollywood Democrat is an Obama supporter, and he talked about how to get his message out to Latino voters. He talked about how his life is an embodiment of the immigrant experience and how he has worked with those communities. I asked him about the DTS voter issue, and how to get them educated that they have to opt in to get a Democratic primary ballot, and he basically said "Yeah, we have to do that." Wasn't much of an answer there. I think this is an under-the-radar issue in this primary.

• Secretary of State Debra Bowen: On E minus-5, she seemed calm. Bowen, in her role as elections cop, is maintaining a position of neutrality in the primary. "It'll be harder in the general election," she said. I asked her, in the aftermath of John Edwards dropping out of the race, should California look into Instant Runoff Voting so that people who voted early aren't disenfranchised by having their candidate drop out. She said that's something that the parties should look into ("The Green Party would probably do it immediately"), and that it would take a good deal of voter education, too. There are studies about voters in San Francisco who didn't understand IRV and ended up having their vote eventually not count because they only filled out one choice.

Well, I made the best of it and tried to get the least lies possible.

The Legitimate Change Coming Out Of This Election

I have been very dismissive of California's moving up their primary, and I've taken a lot of heat for that at Calitics. But Edwards dropping out and last night's events, I think, prove two things.

CHANGE THE PRIMARY SYSTEM. If 1-2% of all voters can whittle the field down to two candidates, and deliver a nominee on the Republican side, we have a serious problem and everyone knows it. My degradation of California moving up was a focus on the PROCESS, not some animus against California. The process sucks. It needs to be reformed in a big way. The fact that Florida broke the rules, moved up, delivered no delegates on the Dem side, but obviously succeeded since they PICKED THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE, should tell you something. We need a spread-out process and maybe earlier conventions to end this bad front-loaded system. It's terrible for democracy.

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING. So many Democrats threw their vote away by voting early for Edwards, and for other candidates who dropped out before the election in other states. We're moving toward a model not of election day but of election month, and in primaries where candidates drop out, those voters are disenfranchised. To the extent that voters have remorse, their vote should go to their second choice, which would be completely simple if we just used IRV. If they have no second choice they don't have to fill in those bubbles.

Or, if you prefer media-driven candidates foisted on the bulk of the country, then go ahead and keep this wonderful primary train going! Maybe within a few cycles we can vote for the nominee and the nominee four years hence on the same day! It'd make things so much easier.

Out of the Ashes, Election Reform?

The LA Times gets downright progressive about voting reform, in the wake of the horrible turnout for Tuesday's school board runoff, where $9 million dollars in voting infrastructure and campaign expenditures yielded a 6% turnout.

A much better solution is to use instant runoff voting, an electoral method that elects a majority winner in a single election.

Here's how it works: Voters rank the candidates in their order of preference instead of just picking one candidate. If a candidate wins a majority of first rankings, the election is over, just like now. But if no candidate wins a majority of first rankings, voters' other rankings are used to determine the winner instantly. The candidate with the fewest first rankings is eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate first can now have their second choice counted. All ballots are recounted in the "instant runoff," and the process of dropping the last-place candidate continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes [...]

Because this method of voting would save millions of tax dollars, part of that money could be used for an expansion of Los Angeles' public financing system, which might produce more candidates and more competition — which could induce higher voter turnout.

Los Angeles also could change to an all vote-by-mail system. Oregon votes this way, as does Burbank, and it has led to higher turnout in non-November elections. It also saves tax dollars by avoiding the high costs of setting up polling stations and hiring election workers.

Maybe it takes a disaster like the school board election to make people see the light. Of course, IRV and vote by mail and public financing have been around for decades. They were seen as flaky Birkenstock ideas at one point; only some hippie commune like San Francisco could use Instant Runoff Voting, right? But if the staid LA Times can figure out that IRV is efficient, smart and leads to better campaigning.

I am very hopeful that this work will get done in Los Angeles to make voting more in line with the 21st century. Now there's one more hurdle to clear. We just need the Governor to sign the National Popular Vote bill that would reform the electoral college by eliminating the outdated and anti-democratic idea. The Governor has taken no position on the bill this year. He ought to be urged to sign it.