IRV Charter Amendment

Section 1.  Instant Runoff Voting.

Elections for all offices of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Unified School District, and Los Angeles Community College District (including but not limited to Mayor, Councilmember, City Attorney, City Controller, Board of Education Members, and Community College District Trustees) shall be conducted using instant runoff voting, also known as “ranked choice voting”.

(A) Definitions.

“Instant runoff voting” shall mean an election method in which voters rank the candidates for office in order of preference, and the ballots are counted in rounds that, in the case of a single-winner election, simulate a series of runoffs until one candidate receives a majority of votes. In each round of counting:

(1) “continuing ballot” shall mean a ballot that counts towards some candidate;

(2) “continuing candidate” shall mean a candidate that has not been eliminated; and

(3) “majority of votes” shall mean more than fifty percent of the votes coming from continuing ballots.

(B) General Provisions.

Instant runoff voting elections for single winner city offices shall be conducted according to the procedures in this section. The City shall conduct a voter education campaign to familiarize voters with instant runoff voting.

(C) Ballot.

The instant runoff voting ballot shall allow voters to rank as many choices as there are candidates. The ballot shall not interfere with a voter's ability to rank a write-in candidate. For the purposes of this section, a mark for an unqualified write-in candidate shall not be considered a mark for a candidate.

(D) Tabulation.

The ballots shall be counted in rounds:

(1) In the first round, every ballot shall count as a vote towards 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. If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate receiving the smallest number of votes shall be eliminated, and every ballot counting towards that candidate shall be advanced to the next-ranked continuing candidate on that ballot. All the ballots shall be counted again in a new round.

(E) Ties. If two or more candidates tie for the smallest number of votes, the candidate to eliminate shall be chosen by lot.

(F) Elimination of more than one candidate. During the elimination stage of any round, in the event that any candidate has more votes than the combined vote total of all candidates with fewer votes, all the candidates with fewer votes shall be eliminated simultaneously, and those ballots advanced to the next-ranked continuing candidate.

(G) Skipped rankings. In the first or any round, in the event that any ballot reaches a ranking with no candidate indicated, that ballot shall immediately be advanced to the next ranking.

(H) Undervotes, Overvotes, and Exhausted Ballots. After each round, any ballot that is not continuing is either an undervote, overvote, or exhausted ballot, as follows. Any ballot that has no candidates indicated at any ranking shall be declared an “undervote.” In the event that any ballot reaches a ranking with more than one candidate indicated, that ballot shall immediately be declared an “overvote.” In the event that any ballot cannot be advanced because no further candidates are ranked on that ballot, that ballot shall immediately be declared “exhausted.” Any ballot that has been declared an undervote, overvote, or exhausted shall remain so and shall not count towards any candidate in that round or in subsequent rounds.

(I) Reports. Summary, ballot image, and comprehensive reports shall be made available after each instant runoff voting election, as follows:

(1) The “summary report” for a race shall mean a report that lists the candidate vote totals in each round, along with the cumulative numbers of undervotes, overvotes, and exhausted ballots in each round.

(2) The “ballot image report” for a race shall mean a report that lists, for each ballot, the candidate or candidates indicated at each ranking, the precinct of the ballot, and whether the ballot was cast absentee. In the report, the ballots shall be listed in an order that does not permit the order in which they were cast in each precinct to be reconstructed.

(3) The “comprehensive report” for a race shall mean a report that breaks the numbers in the summary report down by precinct. The report shall list, for each round, the number of ballots cast in each precinct

(a) that count as votes for each candidate in that round, (b) that have been declared undervotes, (c) that have been declared overvotes up to that point, and (d) that have been declared exhausted up to that point.

(4) Mode and manner of release. Preliminary versions of the summary report and ballot image report shall be made available as soon as possible after the ballots have begun to be processed and counted. The summary report, ballot image report, comprehensive report, and preliminary versions of the summary report and ballot image report shall be made available to the public during the canvass via the internet and by other means. The ballot image report and preliminary versions of the ballot image report shall be made available in a plain text electronic format.

(J) Manual Tally. Prior to the selection of precincts for the public post-election manual tally, as provided by State law, a report shall be made available to the public that lists, for the ballots subject to the manual tally, the number of those ballots in each precinct that counted in each round as undervotes, overvotes, exhausted ballots, and as votes for each candidate. The public manual tally shall check those vote totals in each of the randomly selected precincts

(K) Changes to Procedures. For the purposes of this subsection:

“voting equipment” shall mean all ballots and/or voting devices, vote tabulating systems and/or similar or related systems to be used in the conduct of the City’s election, including but not limited to paper ballot systems, optical scan systems, and touchscreen systems.

(1) Number of rankings. In the event that the voting equipment cannot feasibly accommodate a number of rankings on the ballot equal to the number of candidates, the City Clerk may limit the number of choices a voter may rank to the maximum number allowed by the equipment. This limit shall never be less than three.

(2) Voting equipment. If the voting equipment cannot feasibly accommodate all of the procedures in subsections (E)-(J) above, the City Clerk may make changes to those procedures provided that instant runoff voting shall still be used and the smallest feasible number of changes made until such time as the voting equipment can accommodate those procedures in their entirety.

(3) State guidelines. If the State of California adopts guidelines for the conduct of instant runoff voting elections and the voting equipment used to conduct the City’s election can accommodate the State’s guidelines, the City Clerk shall have the option of adopting those guidelines, in whole or in part, in lieu of the instant runoff voting procedures in this section.

(4) First choice tally. In the event that the voting equipment cannot store ballot rankings, the City Clerk may authorize the following change: before counting the ballots in rounds, the first ranking on every ballot shall be tallied. The subsection on skipped rankings shall not be construed to apply to this initial tally. If some candidate receives a majority of first rankings from all ballots cast, including ballots with no candidate marked at the first ranking and excluding ballots with more than one candidate marked at the first ranking, that candidate shall be declared the winner; and the ballots shall not be counted in rounds. Otherwise, the ballots shall be counted in rounds in accordance with this section.

(5) Election integrity. The City Clerk shall further have the authority to make any changes to these procedures necessary, including modifying the reporting

requirements, to preserve the secrecy of the ballot and ensure the integrity and smooth functioning of the election, provided that instant runoff voting shall still be used and the smallest number of changes made to achieve such purposes.

(L)  Date of Election. The date of election for these offices shall be on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November in odd years.

(M)  Date of First Implementation. The use of instant runoff voting shall commence with the 2009 Los Angeles general municipal election and all subsequent elections. If the City Clerk certifies to the City Council and the Mayor no later than August 1, 2009 that the Department will not be ready to implement instant runoff voting in November 2009 due to voting equipment incapacity, then the City shall begin using instant runoff voting no later than the November 2011 general municipal election.