Californians for Electoral Reform

05/16/2026

Do you wish you could list a second or third choice in California's 61-candidate primary election for governor in June 2026? Your favorite candidate might not be in the top two for November. You can in our online poll for governor:
https://www.demochoice.org/dcgovballot.php?poll=ca26gov
Or for the entire statewide election:
https://www.demochoice.org/ca26/

In June 2026, Californians will each vote for one of 61 candidates for governor. The top two will advance to the November election. Early polls suggest that those two may share about 34% of the vote — a potential loss for about two thirds of voters. If voters could rank several candidates whom the...

07/03/2023

If you live in Alameda County (or know someone who does), the Board of Supervisors recently approved creation of an Elections Commission to oversee "the implementation of general policies for the Registrar of Voters." This is very important because the current Registrar has been very resistant to public oversight, and many of the problems with Alameda County's November elections could have been avoided had such an Elections Commission existed.

We especially need people to apply who can hold the Registrar's feet to the fire (metaphorically speaking) and won't be just a rubber stamp for anything the Registrar says. (For example, if the Registrar says they can't post a preliminary cast vote record report at the same time as they post preliminary results, the appropriate responses are "why not?", "what prevents you from doing that?", and "what needs to happen to overcome those obstacles?", not a simple "okay.")

Information on the general process for applying can be found at https://www.acgov.org/clerk/apply.htm

Information specific to the Elections Commission can be found at https://www.acgov.org/bnc/ #/board/a0U6T00000XmqABUAZ

Alameda County Boards and Commissions

09/16/2021

Register for the California Rank Choice Voting Coalition Launch at https://bit.ly/3yf5DiV. This will be a one hour Zoom event.
The Coalition is a new statewide coalition that will actively campaign to promote across California at the local and statewide level. If you support RCV, we encourage you to attend the coalition's statewide launch meeting on Sept 21st at 7pm on Zoom. Hope to see you there!

Meet great people. Learn new skills. Empower voters. Make a difference in California's and the nation's future. Join us at our statewide launch meeting, where we will build the strategy to get Ranked Choice Voting passed across California! In this participatory event, you'll learn everything you nee...

08/23/2021

California voters are being asked to choose 1 out of 46 candidates to replace the governor if he is recalled on September 14. This would obviously work better with Ranked Choice Voting. See for yourself by voting in a ranked-choice version:

This is an "instant runoff" poll, allowing voters to conveniently find a strongly supported winner from among many candidates, with minimal worries about "wasting" votes on weak candidates or "splitting" votes between similar candidates. Here's how it works:

01/05/2021

If you want better choices in our elections and for candidates to behave more like civilized adults, support .

12/30/2020

Check out Fairvote's End of Year 2020 Highlights. Great progress made this year!

As the year comes to a close, here's our highlights video of all the progress that was made for ranked choice voting in 2020.

11/05/2020

Voters in Albany and Eureka have done themselves a big favor by adopting ranked-choice voting. Albany will use multi-winner RCV, which allows many more people to help elect a winner than district-based elections or multi-winner plurality methods. Eureka brings RCV beyond the SF Bay Area, which had 11 multi-round RCV contests. For two very competitive contests in San Francisco, the first-round leader did not prevail, at least in the preliminary counts. New voting equipment in San Francisco and Alameda County allowed voters to rank all candidates (the old equipment allowed only 3 rankings) and this has increased the number of votes that count in the final round.

08/31/2020

Want to make sure you receive the CfER Board agendas?

Our meetings are open to any member, and membership is free! Just sign up by clicking the link:

Joining CfER (with or without donating) helps show that there is a strong group of committed, politically diverse supporters and activists working for electoral reform in California. It helps us ac…

08/29/2020

This November, San Francisco and Oakland have several competitive open-seat ranked-choice contests. Each will benefit from the new voting equipment and ballot styles that allow all candidates to be ranked. Try voting in ranked-choice practice polls to learn about the candidates and issues:
https://sf.demochoice.org/
https://eastbay.demochoice.org/

08/16/2020

Watch CfER's 27th Annual General Meeting on demand! Our keynote speaker this year was Preston Jordon (starting at 25:55 in the recording), prime mover behind Voter Choice Albany, which has a multi-winner ranked choice voting (aka Single Transferable Vote, aka Proportional Representation) measure on the November 2020 ballot.

We also had a report on a single-winner ranked choice voting (aka Instant Runoff Voting) measure on the November ballot in Eureka (starting at 1:11:30), as well as reports on other activity in California. And FairVote Executive Director Rob Richie joined to tell us about activity in other parts of the United States (jump to 1:31:20). We also, of course, announced the winner(s) of the Wilma Rule Memorial Award (at 1:04:05).