SANTA CRUZ >> Fired up from November’s presidential election and inspired by his political involvement in the Santa Cruz City Council race, Faisal Fazilat was moved to take a close look at election system reform.

Fazilat, of Santa Cruz, has helped organize and serves as chairman of the “Yes on Ranked Choice!” campaign, an effort that coalesced last year with an immediate focus of placing a measure on the 2018 city ballot. On Sunday, the group, along with partner California FairVote, will host a public workshop on the issue.

Simply put, ranked choice voting allows voters to rank the candidates in order of preference rather than vote for a single candidate. It’s also known as instant-runoff voting, alternative vote or transferable vote.

“I think that representation is really important and what ranked choice voting would do on a local level is it would provide representation for people who are not typically represented,” Fazilat said. “You have a segment of the Latino population here in Santa Cruz that doesn’t feel represented. You have some members of some other regions, you have some Eastsiders that don’t feel that represented in our elections. You have people of color, minorities. We want to enact a system that essentially will elect people that represent the great majority of our city.”

As in standard voting, ranked choice voters select their preferred candidates on their ballots. However, each selection is numbered in order of the voter’s preference. If no majority is determined in final tallies, the lowest vote-getters are consecutively eliminated and their votes are distributed to their supporters’ next-ranked candidate. The procedure is repeated until a candidate or candidates emerge with a majority of the vote.

Fazilat said, if applied to Santa Cruz’s last city council race, voters would have been able to signal an interest in more than four candidates — as many as they wanted, in ranked order — without worrying about the “electability” of the candidate. Voting reform, however, is not “one size fits all,” Fazilat said. Instead of ranked choice voting, Santa Cruz could create council voting districts, or elect a dedicated mayor instead of having it as a rotating position, he said.

Minnesota Public Radio has produced two simplified video explanation of ranked choice voting, one in contests for a single winner and one for multiple winners, also available for viewing on the FairVote website, fairvote.org.

Santa Cruz County Clerk Gail Pellerin said she was aware of the ranked choice voting discussion, and has been approached about it several times over the years. Previously, the county used a voting system that could not handle ranked choice voting, Pellerin said.

Referring to findings in a 2011 League of Women Voters of San Jose/Santa Clara study of the issue, Pellerin said she thinks the “cons outweigh the pros,” but that the option was “certainly worth looking at.” Pellerin expects to attend Sunday’s meeting, she said. Cities such as Santa Cruz contract with the county Elections Office to run their elections.

Pellerin’s concerns include a belief that “costs would definitely go up and I believe that voter confusion would, too.” Pellerin said she was an advocate for “plain language and simplicity” and worried about voter accessibility and limitations on space in the ballot and formatting.

Ranked choice voting in California is available only for charter-governed cities, such as Santa Cruz and Watsonville, but not eligible for general law cities such as Capitola and Scotts Valley. Senate Bill 1288, which would have allowed general law cities and counties to conduct ranked-choice local elections, was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in September. Across the United States, nine cities and the entire state of Maine use ranked choice voting, according to FairVote data. Four of the cities are in the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Francisco since 2004 and Oakland, San Leandro and Berkeley since 2010.

Fazilat is former campaign manager for unsuccessful council candidate Drew Glover, a 2016 UC Santa Cruz graduate and city of Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Department employee. The Yes on Ranked Choice! group, comprised of a core seven or eight people, is seeking a federal nonprofit designation reserved for social welfare organizations who may engage in lobbying efforts, Fazilat said. Its state committee identification number is 1394513.

COMMUNITY MEETING

What: Yes on Ranked Choice! public presentation.

When: 2 to 3:30 p.m., Sunday

Where: Garfield Park Church, 111 Errett Circle.

At issue: Effort to place electoral reform initiative on 2018 Santa Cruz city ballot.

Information: yesonrankedchoice.com, info@yesonrankedchoice.com, Facebook and Twitter.