BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
1346 (Hancock)
Hearing Date: 05/17/2010 Amended: 05/05/2010
Consultant: Maureen Ortiz Policy Vote: ER&CA 3-2
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BILL SUMMARY: SB 1346 authorizes county election officials to
use an instant runoff voting method for elections that are held
to fill a vacancy in the office of United States Representative
in Congress, State Senator, or Member of the Assembly.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 Fund
Ranked voting elections ----unknown, nonreimbursable at
local option--- Local
potentially millions in savings
SOS administrative $50
$100 $100 General
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STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to
the Suspense file. Although SB 1346 is permissive and counties
can choose whether to conduct an election using an instant
runoff voting (IRV) method, if any county does opt to purchase
such a system and use the IRV voting method, the Secretary of
State will be required to identify criteria and approve
equipment necessary for the conduct of an IRV election. In
addition, the Secretary of State will need to promulgate
regulations to establish criteria regarding elections that
encompass multiple counties, thereby incurring first year costs
of at least $50,000. It is presumed that any county that elects
to use an IRV system for a special election will potentially
save hundreds of thousands of dollars in avoiding a runoff
election.
In order for a county to hold an election using an instant
runoff voting method, the Secretary of State must first certify
that satisfactory plans and equipment are in place. Most of the
costs for equipment testing are paid by the vendor, however, the
Secretary of State does incur staffing costs that are not
reimbursed. Any costs to the counties for purchasing Instant
Runoff Voting equipment will not be reimbursed by the state
since IRV is strictly optional for those counties that wish to
participate.
SB 1346 provides that if a vacancy affects two or more counties,
all counties will have to sign a written agreement to use the
instant runoff voting method. In the case of multiple counties
using the same vendor's voting system, one county would have to
tally the ballots of all counties since all IRV tallying must be
done together. It is not clear, however, that current law would
authorize such a combination of ballots. Counties would incur
costs to rewrite software code to allow its system to tally
ballots from other counties since security measures prohibit one
county from tallying another county's ballots. The matter is
further complicated if multiple counties that conduct the same
election use different voting systems. In those instances, the
Secretary of State would likely incur costs of approximately
$100,000 for each plan requiring approval that
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SB 1346 (Hancock)
involves a different combination of voting systems. Also, an
additional layer of complication is presented when an election
to fill a vacancy is consolidated with another election. In
this instance, the statewide results would be tabulated by the
regular voting method, and the local results would be tabulated
by the instant runoff voting method.
Counties that choose to use IRV in a special election will be
required to conduct a voter education and outreach campaign to
familiarize voters with instant runoff voting in every language
in which a ballot is made available to voters in the county.
These efforts are to include public service announcements in
radio, television, direct mail, telephone, or print media.
These costs would be incurred by the counties and would not be
reimbursed by the state.
The instant runoff ballot allows voters to rank as many choices
as there are candidates, including any write-in candidates. The
ballots are then counted in rounds as follows:
1) In the first round, every ballot shall count as a vote
toward the first-choice candidate on that ballot,
2) After every round, if any candidate receives a majority of
votes from the continuing ballots, that candidate shall be
declared the winner,
3) If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate receiving
the smallest number of votes is eliminated, and every ballot
counting toward that candidate shall be advanced to the
next-ranked continuing candidate on the ballot. If there is a
tie between two or more candidates for the smallest number of
votes, the tie shall be resolved by lot. All ballots will be
counted again in a new round.
Under current law, during a special election held to fill a
vacancy, if a candidate does not receive a majority of all votes
cast, the names of the candidates receiving the most votes
representing a qualified political party are placed on a ballot
at a subsequent election, resulting in tremendous costs to
counties for the second election, while often times generating
low voter turnout.
The provisions of SB 1346 require an instant runoff voting
special election to be held on a Tuesday at least 72 days, but
not more than 86 days following the issuance of an election
proclamation by the Governor. Elections may be conducted within
120 days if the instant runoff voting election is to be
consolidated with another regularly schedule statewide election.
Ranked voting is currently allowed only in charter cities and
counties. The cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro have
all approved charter amendments to conduct city elections using
ranked voting which they plan to use for their 2010 municipal
elections. San Francisco has been able to conduct elections
using IRV, however it has only been due to a series of
"one-time" certifications. AB 1294 (Mullen) which would have
authorized cities and counties to use ranked voting if approved
by the voters was vetoed by the Governor in 2007 who cited
concerns relating to the availability of ranking voting systems.
SB 1346 is similar to AB 2732 (Eng) which is currently pending
in the Assembly.