Choice Voting Blog

Yolo County Supervisor Frank Sieferman wrote two very nice letters in support of choice voting last month.

One was sent to State Senator Debra Bowen, who introduced SB 596 into the State Legislature. The other asked our representatives State Senator Mike Machado and State Assemblymember Lois Wolk to support the bill.

SB 596 would let any city in California use choice voting for their elections, whether or not the city has a charter.

Here is the Davis choice voting resolution that ASUCD passed for the city council at the end of last month. It was authored and introduced by Davis College Democrats President Avi Singh. Check it out!

We now have our materials page set up, with links to handouts and information about T-shirts, stickers, and DVDs! There will definitely be more to come!

We will have two choice voting meetings this week to accommodate everyone's schedule! Both meetings will be at Cafe Roma, near the corner of 3rd and A Streets:

• Monday at 7PM
• Thursday at 7PM

At this week's City Council meeting, the council received the Task Force's choice voting recommendation very positively! The council stressed the importance of good community education to make choice voting successful. At these meetings we'll be talking about exactly that: how to make community outreach and education successful. All are welcome!

On April 5 before a crowd of 60 choice voting supporters, the Davis City Council received and discussed the choice voting recommendation of the Davis Governance Task Force!

The Council expressed much pleasure and positivity with the Task Force's work. Many good questions were raised by Council members. Ted Puntillo and other members voiced support for putting choice voting before the voters. They emphasized that good voter education will help the community achieve success with choice voting.

Choice voting is the keystone of the Task Force's report. In the words of their report, "choice voting is the most important one of our recommendations." It is the result of 6 months of meetings, study, and public comment, and is available on the Task Force web site. The final vote in favor of choice voting was 8-0-1, nearly unanimous with only one abstention!

The Council will take up the issue again on May 10 (or possibly 17) for action. Hopefully at this meeting the Council will vote to put choice voting on the November 2005 ballot. It will need to be placed on the ballot as part of a city charter. The Task Force recommended that a city charter be drafted to enact their choice voting recommendation.

Davis may very soon become a 21st-century beacon of democracy for the United States! Cambridge, MA has been using choice voting for 65 years, and the 23,000 students of UC Davis have used it four times so far with great success (along with many other cities, universities, and nations).

Read Next Steps for Davis to understand more of the details of what is left!