RulesCommunications Highlights 2010 0323

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The City of San Francisco and Pierce County, Wash., have already conducted elections using Ranked Choice Voting and in doing so have produced similar brochures aimed at educating voters on how to vote using Ranked Choice Voting. Staff from the Alameda County Registrar of Voters has been in contact with counterparts in San Francisco and Pierce County to discuss exchange ideas on how to best produce avoter-education brochure that minimize Election Day problems related to the shift to Ranked Choice Voting. Staff from San Francisco and Pierce County, Wash., has already supplied examples of their RCV brochures and other written materials to educate voters about RCV and have given their blessing to Alameda County to use these materials to guide the County in producing its brochure and other materials targeting voters for the November 2010 elections in Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro. 3. Special Postcard Mailer The Alameda County Registrar of Voters will create a 5-inch-by-7-inch postcard-sized mailer containing a brief overview and step-by-step instructions on how to vote using Ranked Choice Voting. These easy-to-follow instructions will be mailed during the two months prior to the November 2010 election and will target each of the approximately 300,000 voters within the three RCV cities (Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro). The postcard mailer will be similar in many ways to the tri-fold brochure Alameda County is producing to educate voters about Ranked Choice Voting and how to vote using this voting format. But it will be in a more condensed format in order to fit on a postcard, an option that appeals to the RCV cities because of the potential for saving on postage costs. Drafts of the brochure and the postcard already have been produced by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters and currently are being circulated among elected officials and staff for the Cities of Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro. The postcard is also being vetted by officers of the League of Women Voters chapters in Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro, and by citizen members of a Ranked Choice Voting planning committee that has been meeting regularly since 2007 to plan the RCV rollout in Alameda County. The postcard will feature a graphic depiction of a Ranked Choice Voting ballot and step- by-step instructions on how to properly mark the ballot using RCV. The postcard will be distributed to voters at public presentations planned by Alameda County and the County's three RCV cities during the months prior to the November 2010 election, when Alameda County plans to use Ranked Choice Voting for the first time. Page ~ S