A New America idea to expand voter registration has been approved by the California Legislature
and signed into law by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. By uniformly setting the voter registration age at 17, AB 30 will encourage California's youth to get involved in the democratic process at an earlier age and stay involved as they grow older. Almost half of California's eligible voters in the critical 18-24 age bracket are not registered to vote. AB 30 has the potential to add thousands of them to the voter rolls.
New America Ideas Move Forward
Two New America ideas for voter registration were introduced into the California legislature by Senator Curren Price. AB 30, which will encourage more high school students to register to vote, has been signed into law. Another bill, AB 106, which would move California closer to automatic voter registration, was approved by the Assembly Committee on Elections and Redistricting.
Improving on "Motor Voter"
Motor Voter was important legislation from the mid-1990s which mandated that DMV and other state agencies offer the opportunity for voter registration to everyone who uses their services. Despite this advancement, a whopping
7 million eligible Californians remain unregistered. To close this registration gap, New America has proposed a variety of ways to make voter registration "automatic." One way, for example, would be that any person who fills out a DMV or state income tax form would automatically be registered to vote (unless they were ineligible or opted out). New America will continue to explore ways to improve voter registration and participation and will share the results of our efforts with the public, the media and with California's decision-makers.
Policy Papers
“Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government…I am not among those who fear the people.” --Thomas Jefferson
“This representative assembly should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.” -- John Adams
“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” - Alexis… more
With California's fiscal woes mounting, and the government in
Sacramento seemingly frozen in place, a constitutional convention has
been proposed as a way to fix the Golden State's deeply entrenched
structural problems. But as more people have begun considering this
option, several important questions have arisen about some of the
details of the Convention, specifically: 1) how would the delegates to
the Convention be chosen; 2) how would a Convention of delegates chosen
by random selection function, and how would the delegates be educated;
Executive Summary
San Jose
uses a two-round runoff system to elect its mayor and city council, with the
first election in June and a runoff election in November if no candidate wins a
majority of votes in June. Voter turnout in the June general election is about half
that of the November election, with turnout disproportionately lower among
traditionally disenfranchised communities.
With most elections being decided in a low turnout June election, a
small and unrepresentative segment of the community is having an oversized effect
California is a state of many distinct regions. To give citizens a voice on regional issues and to reinvigorate California's Legislature, the state's central institution of self-government, we propose Personalized Full Representation for the 21st Century (PFR21), a system of representation by means of regionally based legislative elections that will allow the state'scitizens to set the agenda for their regions and for the state as a whole.
San Francisco voters approved Proposition A in March 2002 that adopted instant runoff voting (also known as ranked choice voting) to elect local offices in San Francisco. The first election occurred in November 2004. For that election, the Board of Supervisors funded and the Department of Elections conducted a voter education and outreach campaign leading up to the first election. Approximately $750,000 was spent by the Department of Elections to educate the 440,000 registered voters in San Francisco.
For the complete… more
June 17, 2007
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