By Jorge Casuso
June 23, 2025 -- Santa Monica's new ranked choice voting system will be put to a major test Tuesday night when the City Council makes 48 appointments to 19 different volunteer boards.
The appointments come three months after the Council on March 25 first tested the new voting system meant to speed up the traditional voting process that often required multiple rounds to break a deadlock.
The meeting -- held two weeks after the Council approved rank choice voting for City Boards, Commissions, Committees and Task Forces -- resulted in ten appointments, six of them to the newly created Measure GS Resident Oversight Committee that oversees a 2022 parcel tax hike.
The other four votes -- to major Boards and Commissions -- were quickly dispatched, with only the appointment to the Recreation and Parks Commission taking multiple rounds.
Tuesday's scheduled votes include one appointment to the influential Planning Commission, four to the Housing Commission, one to the Library Board and two each to the Landmarks Commission, Architectural Review Board (ARB) and Arts Commission.
The votes also include five appointments each to the Public Safety Reform and Oversight Commission and the Transient Occupancy Tax Advisory Committee, as well as seven appointments to the Urban Forest Task Force.
The ranked choice voting method adopted by the Council on March 11 uses the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method (WIGM) to calculate the votes.
Under the method, "the number of Councilmembers who chose a nominee as their first choice is added to the number of Councilmembers who chose the nominee as their second, third, etc.," according to the City Clerk's office.
Each count is given "approximately 2/3 of the weight given to the previous count" before all the votes are added together "to arrive at a tiebreaker value for each nominee."
The rule changes were proposed "to make meetings run more efficiently for the benefit of the public."
In recent years, Council appointments have sometimes proved contentious and lengthy, with a divided Council voting for their preferred candidate along ideological lines.
Such a scenario is far less likely under the current Council, where Santa Monica's liberal establishment holds six of the seven Council seats.
