THE GREEN PARTY AND THE CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS CODE
(Or: How to Calculate the "official" size of YOUR County Council!)
http://www.cagreens.org/erwg/cecrules.htm
All political parties in California are governed by the California Elections Code. The Code specifies the duties and qualifications of all political parties, their state and county organs, and how they may select candidates in the state primary.
The California Elections Code is found on-line at:
http://leginfo.public.ca.gov/cgi-bin/calawquery?codesection=elec&codebody=&hits=20
Per §5005 of the California Elections Code, when a new party qualifies for statewide ballot recognition, they must adopt the elections code of another previously-recognized party until they can get their own party elections rules adopted by the state legislature.
In 1992, the Green Party of California agreed to adopt the elections code of the Peace and Freedom Party (Code §§7700-7999). (The Electoral Reform Working Group of the GPCA has been entrusted with the task of drafting new election code statutues for the Green Party, and to find a sponsor in the state legislature to get them adopted.)
§7752 addresses the size of the county council:
"7752. The number of members of central committees to be elected in a county shall be the greater of either of the following: (a) The number seven. (b) The integer nearest the resulting quotient obtained by dividing 400 times the number of Peace and Freedom Party [e.g., Green Party] registered voters in the county by the number of Peace and Freedom Party [e.g., Green Party] registered voters in the state. However, the number of members of central committees to be elected in a county shall be five if the number of Peace and Freedom Party registered voters in the county is less than 150. "
Based on the above statute, here's the formula for calculating the number of councilmembers for your county:
(No. of registered Greens in your county) x 400 = No. of county
(No. of registered Greens in the entire state) councilmembers
[As of 2/10/03, there were 156,803 registered Greens in the state of California. For a county which had 3,553 registered Greens, the county council formula would be 3,553 x 400 / 156,803 = 9.0636, or 9 county councilmembers for that county.]
The latest Voter Registration statistics on the California Secretary of State's webpage for all counties may be found on-line at:
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_u.htm
§7753 states that the councilmembers are to be elected "at-large" if the size of the council is 12 or less. Once the council reaches 13 members, councilmembers are to be elected by supervisorial district. (§7753 provides special rules for the counties of Los Angeles and San Francisco, due to the population density of those counties.)
§7850 gives the elected county council the power to appoint additional county council members at its discretion.
§7852 mandates that county councilmembers must be registered members of the Green Party and a resident of the county.
§7857 provides for the GPCA state Coordinating Committee to appoint a county council if there has been no county council election at the preceding direct primary election. (This is generally used for counties that are just getting organized; the organizing committee of the county generally petitions the state Coordinating Committee with a list of proposed councilmember names to be appointed.)
(ERWG: Last Updated April 14, 2003)