Breaking: Gov. Arnold vetoes another election reform bill
The People’s Governor tonight reaffirmed his reform credentials by vetoing AB 1294 (PDF), which would have let general law municipalities use proportional representation and instant runoff (also known as STV).
I can understand how, as an end-of-the-day, party-line Republican, Schwarzenegger would not want the president to be elected popularly, new citizens to participate in elections, obvious write-in votes to count or absentee ballots to be easier to submit. After all, the first would undo the small-state affirmative action built into our electoral system, and the rest would generally increase turnout, which conventional wisdom now assumes is bad for the GOP.
Why oppose this bill, though? Here’s what he said, anyway:
This bill would allow cities and counties, subject to voter approval, to conduct a local election using a ranked voting system. This represents a drastic change to the way we vote. Although there are some proponents for ranked voting, which allows for so-called “instant runoff†elections, I am concerned that we don’t yet know enough about how voters will react to such a dramatic change in the way they vote. For instance, charter cities and counties already have the right to hold ranked voting elections, yet only one city has done so thus far, and that was on a trial basis only.
I am not sure how a single implementation of preferential voting is in any way an indicator of public reaction to preferential voting. Nonetheless, we can thank the Reform Governor for protecting potentially foolish voters from themselves. Who knows who might have hurt themselves with ranked ballots?
Further, the machines necessary to implement ranked voting are not widely available nor have any been certified by the Secretary of State. As the Secretary of State recently decertified the vast majority of electronic voting machines used for traditional elections, it is premature to even contemplate moving to ranked voting tomorrow until we have resolved any issues with the machines needed for how we vote today.
One, you don’t need a machine to do ranked voting. Two, San Francisco is using machines to do ranked voting. Three, solve the machine problem rather than being a slave to it. Four, nobody would have moved to ranked voting tomorrow. Towns would have had to go through the long processes of passage and implementation, which would have included thinking about current machine impediments.
Bummer.
Bob Richard on 15 Oct 2007 at 8:40 am #
Schwarzenegger: … yet only one city has done so thus far, and that was on a trial basis only.
Trial basis????? I don’t see anything that sounds like a trial basis in the charter amendments already passed in Santa Clara County, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro. Even at 10 o’clock on Sunday night, the Governor’s staff ought to have done better than this falsehood.
Jack: One, you don’t need a machine …
And, five, the bill itself is a major part of the solution to the (alleged) problem that equipment hasn’t been certified, as well as the (real) problem that some county election officials claim they can’t legally do ranked voting elections for charter cities because there’s no recipe to follow in state law.
Bummer, indeed. We were prepared for a veto, if not exactly expecting one. But some semblance of reasoning and/or some respect for the evidence would have been nice.
Jack on 15 Oct 2007 at 10:03 am #
One advocate for the bill put it well. Arnold knew he didn’t like ranked voting before the thing got to his desk. The highly irrational veto message was a mere formality.