Pierce County Blue Ribbon Review Panel on Ranked Choice Voting

At the first meeting of the Pierce County Blue Ribbon Panel on Ranked Choice Voting on April 11, Auditor Pat McCarthy outlined the agenda for the panel and introduced the members of her staff and the members of the panel.

The four major discussion topics for the panel to cover will be:

1) Candidate filing (and ballot access)

2) Hardware/Software changes related to RCV

- Ballot design and voter instructions
- Election setup

3) Vote by mail/polling place considerations

- Postage
- Envelope design
- Pros and cons

4) Education and outreach

The panel will be discussing candidate filing at the April 25, 2007 meeting. The staff presented three scenarios for consideration:

Scenario No. 1 - Accept all filings "as is"

- Candidates self designate their party on their filing form
- Pay the filing fee
- Submit signature petition

Scenario No. 2 - Each major party approves their candidates prior to filing week

- Candidates must follow a pre-determined protocol for party approval prior to filing for office
- Pay the filing fee
- Submit signature petition

Scenario No. 3 - Each major party approves their candidates after filing week

- Candidates self designate their party on their filing form
- Pay the filing fee
- Submit signature petition
- The Auditor transmits a list of candidates to each major party for approval

The panel is requested to consider these three scenarios and be prepared to discuss at the next meeting.

Additional topics:

In the charter, there is a filing requirement of 25 signatures for all candidates regardless of party. In addition, minor party and independent candidates are nominated by nominating conventions as set forth by state law.

The intent of the authors of the Amendment to the Charter was that minor party and independent candidates would only need to collect the 25 signatures in their nominating convention and be able to use those signatures to satisfy the signature requirement for filing. This seems like the only fair interpretation of the Charter, but there seemed to be some confusion at the meeting.

The Charter explicitly gives the major parties the right to allow multiple candidates for each county level office on the ballot using their name. It seems only appropriate to allow minor parties to nominate multiple candidates for the ballot as well. This would be consistent with the RCV philosophy of providing more voter choice on the ballot.