The California RCV Coalition leads successful effort to kill a proposed statewide ban on ranked choice voting
Apr 13, 2022
AB2808 would have banned the popular reform at all levels of California government
AB 2808, introduced by Assemblymember Patrick O'Donnell (D-Long Beach), would have prohibited ranked choice voting (RCV) in all California state and local elections — including in charter cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland that have used the system successfully for over a decade. The bill was held in the Assembly Elections Committee on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, after Committee Chair Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) declined to bring it to a vote. O'Donnell, a self-described "defender of the American electoral process," made the curious procedural offer of having committee members vote on the bill itself using ranked choice voting — an offer the Chair declined.
The California RCV Coalition played a central role in defeating the bill, coordinating a broad coalition of good-government and civil rights organizations to oppose it. In a joint opposition letter to Chair Bryan, the following groups urged a "no" vote: the League of Women Voters of California, ACLU California Action, Voices for Progress, RepresentUs, FairVote Action, California Clean Money Campaign, Californians for Electoral Reform, Unite America, Independent Voter Project, Rank the Vote, Campaign Legal Center, and Bay Rising.
Read the Coalition Opposition Letter
The letter argued that AB 2808 would undermine voting rights, reduce turnout, roll back diversity gains in local representation, and undemocratically override the will of voters who adopted RCV by large margins in their cities. As noted in a CalMatters commentary from the mayors of Berkeley and Oakland, ranked choice voting offers more representative government at the city, county and state levels.