10709.
(a) If authorized pursuant to paragraph (2) of subdivision (b) of Section 10700, special elections to fill a vacancy in the offices of United States Representative in Congress, State Senator, and Member of the Assembly shall be conducted using “instant runoff voting,” also known as “ranked choice voting.”(b) As used in this chapter, the following definitions apply:
(1) “Instant runoff voting” means an election method in which voters rank the candidates for office in order of preference, and the ballots are counted in rounds that, in the case of a single-winner election, simulate a series of runoffs until one candidate receives a majority of votes.
(2) In each round of counting the following definitions apply:
(A) “Continuing ballot” means a ballot that counts toward some candidate.
(B) “Continuing candidate” means a candidate that has not been eliminated.
(C) “Majority of votes” means more than 50 percent of the votes coming from continuing ballots.
(c) Instant runoff voting for special elections to fill a vacancy in the offices of United States Representative in Congress, State Senator, and Member of the Assembly shall be conducted according to the procedures set forth in this section. Every affected county shall conduct a voter education and outreach campaign to familiarize voters with instant runoff voting in every language in which a ballot is made available to voters in the county. These efforts shall include public service announcements in radio, television, direct mail, telephone, or print media that are disseminated in a manner consistent with the language assistance requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973aa-1).
(d) The instant runoff voting ballot shall allow voters to rank as many choices as there are candidates. The ballot shall not interfere with a voter’s ability to rank a write-in candidate. For the purposes of this section, a mark for an unqualified write-in candidate shall not be considered a mark for a candidate.
(e) The method of voting and counting ballots shall be conducted by using rounds in the following manner:
(1) In the first round, every ballot shall count as a vote toward the first-choice candidate on that ballot.
(2) After every round, if any candidate receives a majority of votes from the continuing ballots, that candidate shall be declared the winner.
(3) If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate receiving the smallest number of votes shall be eliminated, and every ballot counting toward that candidate shall be advanced to the next-ranked continuing candidate on the ballot. If there is a tie between two or more candidates for the smallest number of votes, the tie shall be resolved by lot. All the ballots shall be counted again in a new round.
(f) During the elimination stage of any round, in the event that any candidate has more votes than the combined vote total of all candidates with fewer votes, all the candidates with fewer votes shall be eliminated simultaneously, and those ballots advanced to the next-ranked continuing candidate.
(g) Skipped rankings. In the first or any round, in the event that any ballot reaches a ranking with no candidate indicated, that ballot shall immediately be advanced to the next ranking.
(h) After each round, any ballot that is not continuing is either an undervote, overvote, or exhausted ballot, as follows:
(1) Any ballot that has no candidates indicated at any ranking shall be declared an “undervote.”
(2) In the event that any ballot reaches a ranking with more than one candidate indicated, that ballot shall immediately be declared an “overvote.”
(3) In the event that any ballot cannot be advanced because no further candidates are ranked on that ballot, that ballot shall immediately be declared “exhausted.”
(4) Any ballot that has been declared an undervote, overvote, or exhausted shall remain so and shall not count toward any candidate in that round or in subsequent rounds.
(i) Summary, ballot image, and comprehensive reports shall be made available after each instant runoff voting election, as follows:
(1) The “summary report” for an election means a report that lists the candidate vote totals in each round, along with the cumulative numbers of undervotes, overvotes, and exhausted ballots in each round.
(2) The “ballot image report” for an election means a report that lists, for each ballot, the candidate or candidates indicated at each ranking, the precinct of the ballot, and whether the ballot was cast absentee. In the report, the ballots shall be listed in an order that does not permit the order in which they were cast in each precinct to be reconstructed.
(3) The “comprehensive report” for an election means a report that breaks the numbers in the summary report down by precinct. The report shall list, for each round, the number of ballots cast in each precinct as follows:
(A) Ballots that count as votes for each candidate in that round.
(B) Ballots that have been declared undervotes.
(C) Ballots that have been declared overvotes up to that point.
(D) Ballots that have been declared exhausted up to that point.
(4) Preliminary versions of the summary report and ballot image report shall be made available as soon as possible after the ballots have begun to be processed and counted. The summary report, ballot image report, comprehensive report, and preliminary versions of the summary report and ballot image report shall be made available to the public during the canvass via the Internet and by other means. The ballot image report and preliminary versions of the ballot image report shall be made available in a plain text electronic format.
(j) Prior to the selection of precincts for the public postelection manual tally, as provided by state law, a report shall be made available to the public that lists, for the ballots subject to the manual tally, the number of those ballots in each precinct that counted in each round as undervotes, overvotes, exhausted ballots, and as votes for each candidate. The public manual tally shall check those vote totals in each of the randomly selected precincts.
(k) (1) For the purposes of this subdivision, “voting equipment” means all ballots or voting devices, vote tabulating systems, or similar or related systems to be used in the conduct of the instant runoff voting election, including, but not limited to, paper ballot systems, optical scan systems, and touch-screen systems.
(2) In the event that the voting equipment cannot feasibly accommodate a number of rankings on the ballot equal to the number of candidates, the Secretary of State may limit the number of choices a voter may rank to the maximum number allowed by the equipment. This limit shall never be less than three.