Balanced Ballot for El Cerrito
Our Story
Fighting for What We Believe In. Together.
This is a group of individuals who support an important electoral reform concept, Balanced Ballot, and intends to achieve this reform through a ballot measure in El Cerrito, CA. A Balanced Ballot is a ballot that includes the option to vote Against a candidate and such vote would be counted as minus one. Winner is someone who gets higher net positive votes. Each voter still has only one vote for each office to be voted upon.
We believe there are three main reasons why this is needed for all elections.
1. Having the choice to vote NO should be a basic right
2. It will increase participation, voluntary increase in participation is good
for democracy
3. Because the increased participation is likely to be mainly from centrist independent voters, and has the potential to change the result of a tight race, this will reduce the influence of extremists.
This reform concept is sometimes referred to as Negative Vote, Yes/No Voting, Balanced Plurality Voting, etc.
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Contact us through our Facebook group.​ We welcome civil questions and critiques.
Meet the Team
Balanced Ballot for El Cerrito political action committee members include:
Jess Brewer, Tienshang Chang, Jonathan Elliot, Peter Gradjansky, John Hack, George Leef, Lawrence Lessig, Shirley Nozaki, Tony Redfern, and Mike Shannon
Jess Brewer
Tien Shang Chang
Top funder as of January 26, 2024
Aka Sam Chang, a registered voter in El Cerrito.
Sam is our international ambassador. He has attended numerous international democracy forums to explain the concept. Invited as a speaker at the 2017 World Forum for Democracy held in Strasbourg, France; this was his 10-minute presentation.
Jonathan Elliot
Jonathan Elliot is another original thinker of this reform concept which he prefers to call Yes/No/Abstention Voting.
Peter Gradjansky
To be edited
John Hack
To be edited
George Leef
Gleorge C. Leef is the research director of the Martin Center for Academic Renewal in Raleigh, North Carolina. He isone of the original thinkers of this refomr and has written numerous articles, including this one from 2004.
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard Professor well known worldwide for his contributions to democracy.
Shirley Nozaki
To be edited
Tony Redfern
No one is truly powerless but everyone, who dares to shape a better world, can always use more power to do so.
Tony Redfern has been a Community Mediator since 1992. He taught Leadership & Peacemaking on three continents. He mediated many conflicts where there was a need for all the parties in the conflict to share power (power-with), as opposed to power-over. Generally, voting is a system that uses power-over; e.g. politically, a candidate with the most votes wins, not-with-standing any other added determination. So, how can a "power-with" be added to an already polarized voting system? Currently, all voters can vote yes, but none of the voters can vote no. Voting is not "for or against." Today, voting is "for or for." Voters do not have the power to vote no and, therefore, to truly vote as they wish. Instead of voting no, voters are forced to hold-their-nose and vote yes for a "lessor evil." Redfern asks, "Do you see the dilemma? Do you see the double-bind for the voter? Do you see the powerlessness? Why not give the voter the right to vote NO?" Power is shared when options increase; the powerless are empowered; and the integrity of the vote reflects the desires of the people.
Mike Shannon
Mike Shannon is another original thinker of this reform proposal. Has written several articles. Here is one of them.
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In the mid 1990s, Mike Shannon worked in Illinois politics and became disillusioned with the inability of the two-party system to solve, or even address or acknowledge, real problems. He observed gerrymandering - a process where legislators work together to draw their own legislative districts - as a key obstacle. He also observed how an entire opinion industry masquerading as "news" organizations acted as de facto subsidiaries of the two major political parties. In a protest campaign, he ran for the U.S. Congress in 2006 without accepting campaign donations. Later, he participated in 3rd party campaigns, where he encountered and experienced the major dilemma: voting for a 3rd party helps one's least-preferred candidate. From there, he investigated various voting systems, including Instant Runoff (Ranked Choice), Approval, and Score voting. Each was designed to solve for the dilemma, but each had its own shortcomings that perpetuate a two-party system that still favors extreme partisans. It occurred to Mr. Shannon that what he really wanted to do as a voter was to simply express disapproval of his least-preferred candidate(s), and none of those voting systems above allowed it without artificially inflating support of other candidates to game the system. That's when the right and option to vote negative was revealed to him.
"Do not go where the path may lead. Instead, go where there is no path and leave a trail."