CITY OF OAKLAND

N D
ONE FRANK OGAWA PLAZA • 2 FLOOR • OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA 94612

Vice Mayor Ignacio De La Fuente (510) 238-7005

Vice Mayor & City Council Member, District 5 FAX: (510) 238-6129
idelafuente@oaklandnet.com TTY/TDD:(510) 839-6451
www.idelafuente.com

October 21, 2009

Secretary of State Debra Bowen

Via email: Secretary.bowen@sos.ca.gov
1500 – 11th Street
Sacramento, CA 95814

Re: Approval of a Ranked Choice Voting System in Oakland, CA

Dear Madame Secretary,

I write to express serious concerns about granting an administrative approval of Ranked

Choice Voting (RCV) in Oakland, California this year.

Implementing RCV for the very first time in a city requires more than scrutinizing the
voting hardware and software systems. It requires careful scrutiny of whether the city is
actually capable of educating and supporting all its voters – especially less educated, non-
English-speakers, and inexperienced voters. A hasty and badly executed debut of RCV
in Oakland would reflect poorly on all of us. There is simply not enough time or
resources to roll out RCV in a way that ensures a reliable and fully accessible voting
system for Oakland this year.

While November 2, 2010 (the proposed date for Oakland’s first RCV election) feels a
long way away, January 7, 2010 is not. January 7th is the last day the City of Oakland
can schedule a resolution calling for a June primary election. All plans and resources
to shift Oakland to a new RCV system must be in place prior to January 7th, or we will
have lost our chance to hold a primary.

I understand from your staff that, if an administrative approval were granted, it will
include certain outreach and education activities as conditions. I urge you to not grant
any approvals until you receive proof that sufficient resources have been allocated to
actually implement an effective outreach and education plan in Oakland that addresses
the needs of our diverse voters, #% of whom do not speak English. Granting an
approval with conditions to be monitored later is meaningless. If any non-
compliance is noticed after January 7, 2010, it will be too late for Oakland to call a June
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RCV in Oakland, CA
Page 2

primary election (under our elections and scheduling procedures, this is the last possible
day calling a June election may be scheduled). Once January 7th has passed, there is
effectively no way to enforce your conditions.

The Alameda County Registrar of Voters is asking Oakland to pay $728,000-$1.14

Million for start-up and education costs (depending on whether the cities of Berkeley and
San Leandro participate). This is on top of the basic November election cost of
$921,000-$1.13 Million. Oakland has been in dire financial straits for more than a year.
We just closed a $100 million funding gap when we passed our current budget last June,
including layoffs, and just learned we must cut another $20 million. Although Oakland
originally budgeted $250,000 for RCV outreach, this amount was eliminated from the
budget. It would be irresponsible for the State to approve RVC without proof that
sufficient resources have been allocated to conduct the required outreach and
education. The Oakland City Council will need to approve allocating funds for RVC
outreach and start-up. This matter hasn’t even been scheduled for consideration by the
City Council and I, for one, will not support such an allocation during this economic
crisis.

Requiring proof of adequate voter outreach and education prior to granting

administrative approval is vital to your mission of ensuring our voting systems are
“secure, accurate, reliable, and accessible.” Even through San Francisco has had several
years of experience and a well-planned, well-funded voter outreach and education
campaign, the reliability and accessibility of its RCV system remain questionable.
According to the 2005 exit poll, 16% of voters still said the ranking task was “difficult”
or “very difficult” and 9% selected less than three candidates in a race “because they did
not know they could do so or did not understand that part of the ballot.” Finally, “self-
reported levels of understanding were lowest among voters with low levels of education
and those for whom Chinese was their first language.”

SF State’s study of the 2004 election also demonstrates that education and outreach
prior to election day makes a big difference – with 27% of those without advanced
knowledge reporting difficulty in understanding the system, compared with only 8% of
those who had prior knowledge. There also are higher levels of confusion amongst non-
English speakers, with those expressing a lack of understanding being 15% Chinese-
speakers, 23% Spanish-speaking and 21% other language-speakers, compared to only
12% English-speakers.

Pierce County, Washington (containing the City of Tacoma) provides another example of
the importance of outreach and education. As would be the case in Oakland, Pierce
County had to use two ballots for RCV and non-RCV races. But, according to news
reports, thousands did not turn the RCV ballot in at all and many who did treated the
RCV ballot like a regular ballot and voted for only one candidate. This maiden RCV
election resulted in so much backlash and turmoil that Pierce County has placed a
charter amendment to repeal RCV on Pierce County’s next ballot.
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RCV in Oakland, CA
Page 3

A carefully planned outreach strategy is critical in a city as diverse as Oakland, where

many of our residents fall into groups with a history of disenfranchisement. In Oakland,
32% of us are African American, 25% Latino and 16% Asian; 40% of us do not speak
English as our first language; 66% are not college-educated and 18% live in poverty.
Within the last few months, the U.S. Department of Justice was in Oakland investigating
complaints that our current electoral system isn’t providing non-English speaking voters
with the multi-lingual resources they’re entitled to and that not enough poll workers are
bilingual.

The outreach plan I have seen has not been vetted by the Oakland City Council as a body
or by community groups – particularly those representing non-English-speaking or low-
income voters. I do not support this plan’s approach for reaching out to these
communities. I urge you to not approve RCV in Oakland until its outreach and
education plan has been vetted by our community, particularly those groups
representing historically disenfranchised voters.

For all these reasons, please require every assurance that Oakland’s very first RCV
election will be reliable and fully accessible to our diverse voters prior to issuing any
approvals. The rushed timing of this process and severe shortage of resources make me
certain that this is not the year Oakland can launch an effective or equitable RCV effort.
Until we are capable of doing so, we do not deserve your approval.

Sincerely,

Vice Mayor Ignacio De La Fuente

Oakland City Council
1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, 2nd Floor
Oakland, CA 94612

Cc via email: Lowell Finley, Secretary of State

Debbie O’Donoghue, Secretary of State
Dave MacDonald, Alameda County Registrar of Voters
Alice Lai-Bitker, President of Alameda County Board of Supervisors
Marjo Keller, Oakland Deputy City Clerk, Elections
John Russo, Oakland City Attorney
Jane Brunner, Oakland City Council President
Ron Dellums, Mayor of Oakland
Tom Bates, Mayor of Berkeley
Tony Santos, Mayor of San Leandro