[EL] Voter turnout

[Lorraine Minnite]

There is a participatory budgeting project underway in New York City 
that allows all /residents/ 16 years old and older, including 
undocumented immigrants, living in districts of city council members 
participating in the project to vote in a binding election for how their 
council reps spend their discretionary capital budgets. The voting takes 
place over several days and multiple locations and just finished in the 
ten participating city council districts, where collectively about $14 
million is at issue (a minuscule fraction of the city budget).  I know 
that voters have to show some kind of proof of residency to vote, but I 
don't know if the project has been compiling a list of voters that would 
function like a registration list.  And, of course, this is not a 
municipal election and city elections officials are not involved, so 
that makes it quite different as far as local election procedures go.  
If you are interested, see http://www.pbnyc.org/ for more information.

The NYC project, however, triggered the idea that if you could allow 
same-day registration for municipal elections, you could then augment 
your existing list of registered voters with municipal-only voters, 
depending on the eligibility requirements if they differ from the 
state's (i.e., non-citizen voter participation).  I don't see why two 
separate lists would have to be maintained by election officials given 
the ability of computer relational database programs to segregate and 
sort data.  To clear things up for the public, you could distinguish 
elections as those for residents and those for citizens.

Lori Minnite

P.S. Turnout in L.A. might be better (or worse) than you think; usually 
the denominator is the citizen voting age population (or a Michael 
McDonald improvement of CVAP), not the number of registered voters, and 
especially not the number of registered voters where any list of 
"inactives" maintained by a BOE is included in the total.

On 4/10/2014 3:11 AM, David A. Holtzman wrote:
> Well, it's actually the CLAMERC.
> (pause)
> The City of Los Angeles Municipal Elections Reform Commission.
> http://electionscommission.lacity.org/
>
> At one CLAMERC meeting Larry handed out the attached (with my 
> scribbles added), and suggested that maybe we (the city) could improve 
> our dismal turnout rates by excising some of the deadweight from the 
> denominator.
>
> At which point others pointed out legal obstacles to removing people 
> from registration rolls for not voting.
>
> But I have suggested allowing non-citizen legal residents to vote in 
> city elections.And that would require a separate registration 
> roll.(L.A. would be conducting its elections differently from federal 
> elections, but in accordance with its values.I think at least one 
> proof-of-citizenship state [Alabama?] is already maintaining two 
> registration rolls so it can conduct its own nonfederal elections in 
> accordance with its values.)
>
> *Could L.A. start anew, and build a municipal election registration 
> roll from scratch?*One that would presumably contain fewer people who 
> are dead (or have moved out of the city).
>
> L.A. is a home rule, charter city, which allows it to have election 
> methods that do not follow general state law.And the CLAMERC may 
> propose rule changes requiring charter amendments.But we have to 
> follow the U.S. Constitution, so compulsory voting may be out of the 
> question.Sorry, Rick.
>
> - dah
>
>
> On 4/9/2014 9:35 PM, Rick Hasen wrote:
>> Compulsory voting?
>> On 4/9/14, 9:30 PM, Larry Levine wrote:
>>>
>>> I have been appointed as a member of the Los Angeles City Advisory 
>>> Commission on Political Reform. I am a member of the sub-committee 
>>> on research. The main charge of the commission is to look into 
>>> actions that might increase turnout in municipal elections. Can 
>>> anyone on the list provide some recent research on this subject? 
>>> Nothing is off limits -- change of election dates, consolidation 
>>> with other elections, early voting, expanded number of voting dates, 
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Law-election mailing list
>>> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>>
>> -- 
>> Rick Hasen
>> Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
>> UC Irvine School of Law
>> 401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
>> Irvine, CA 92697-8000
>> 949.824.3072 - office
>> 949.824.0495 - fax
>> rhasen at law.uci.edu
>> http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
>> http://electionlawblog.org
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Law-election mailing list
>> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>>
>> -- 
>> David A. Holtzman, M.P.H., J.D.
>> david at holtzmanlaw.com
>>
>> Notice: This email (including any files transmitted with it) may be 
>> confidential, for use only by intended recipients.  If you are not an 
>> intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this email 
>> to an intended recipient, be advised that you have received this 
>> email in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing 
>> or copying of this email is strictly prohibited.  If you have 
>> received this email in error, please immediately notify the sender 
>> and discard all copies.
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20140410/f94ae577/attachment.html>