BY NICK DIAMANTIDES
Staff Writer
Sometime in the next few years, voters could see significant changes in the way their ballots are counted in local and presidential elections. The City of Long Beach might do away with runoff elections when more than two candidates run for the same office and none of them gets more than 50 percent of the vote. In addition, a proposal is now circulating all across the nation that would guarantee that a candidate for president of the United States could only be elected if he or she received more than 50 percent of the popular vote. The proposal would eliminate the possibility of Electoral College votes superseding the popular vote.
The two possible changes to the way elections are conducted were discussed at a meeting organized by the Long Beach Area League of Women Voters (LWV) last Saturday morning at the Los Altos Branch Library. About 35 people attended.
Long Beach City Clerk Larry Herrera described the change that local municipal elections could undergo in the future. Known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), the new election system would avoid runoff municipal elections.
“In these tough economic times, governments are being asked to do more with less,” Herrera said. “Eliminating the need for runoff elections would provide the city with a significant reduction in election costs and that money could then be used to help pay for other critical needs within the city.” He noted that if IRV was adopted in Long Beach, after implementation and startup costs, the system could save the city about $4 million during a six-year election cycle.
Herrera explained that under IRV, each voter selects their first, second and third choices for a particular office. Election officials count all first choices first. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated.
Then the ballots of voters who ranked the eliminated candidate as first are redistributed to the other candidates according to those voters’ choices for second and third place. Imagine that John, Mary and Steve were all running for the same office and only 300 people voted. John got 135 first-choice votes, Mary got 125 first-choice votes and Steve got 40 first-choice votes. Steve would be eliminated. Then the votes of those who made him first choice would be redistributed to John and Mary. If Steve’s supporters gave 30 second-choice votes to Mary and 10 second-choice votes to John, Mary would have a total of 155 votes to John’s total of 145 votes. Thus Mary would win, without the need of the city organizing and paying for a runoff election.
In elections in which more than three candidates are running, the process would be repeated, in turn eliminating the candidate with the least amount of votes and redistributing those votes to the candidate each voter had selected as their second choice, until one candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote.
Some IRV systems are more complicated than the example described above, but the principle of redistributing the ballot choices according the wishes of the voters holds true for all of them.
Several cities in California have already adopted IRV, and several more are now considering adopting it. Recently, Hererra met with officials of the Long Beach Unified School District to explain IRV to them. He is planning a meeting with officials of the Long Beach City College District as well.
Herrera said that, although a Long Beach City Council subcommittee has discussed IRV, the system has not been presented to the full city council. That presentation could happen later this year.
In order for IRV to be adopted in Long Beach, the council would have to vote to put it on the ballot as a proposed charter amendment, and the voters would make the ultimate decision.
The other item discussed at the LWV meeting was the proposed National Popular Vote Compact (NPVC). If a critical number of states adopt the agreement, and if the United States Congress approves it, those states would be bound by law to award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who was the winner of the popular vote nationally. Such would be required of all states adopting the NPVC Compact, even the ones with a majority of voters selecting the other candidate.
If the sum total of electoral votes held by the states adopting the NPVC were more than half of the total of all electoral votes, the compact would guarantee that no one could be elected president unless he or she had won the popular vote.
“The League has a long-standing position in support of the direct election of the president by popular vote,” said Bea Antenore, Long Beach Area LWV voter service chair. “Now League members have the opportunity to consider whether to support the National Popular Vote Compact as a viable process to achieve that result.”
Arguments for and against the NPVC were then presented in turn by Janeice McConnell, local LWV action chair, and Phyllis O’Conner, local LWV president. O’Conner noted that the national LWV is currently studying the NPVC and League members will be voting on whether to support the compact in the near future.
