Ideas for Improving the Election Process

Your report on the L.A. elections (“Rivals Keeping Big Stick at Hand,” Feb. 22) was depressing. Once again, I, the average Los Angeles citizen and taxpayer, have little say in the mayoral election. I am being forced to choose between a favored but destined-to-lose candidate, i.e., one who doesn’t have enough money to get his/her message out there, and a front-running candidate whom I don’t like nearly as much.

When will Los Angeles reach the civilized levels of San Francisco, Australia and other places that allow their citizens to rank their choices in order of their preference? It’s such a simple concept. If L.A. had ranked voting or, as it is sometimes called, instant runoff voting, in place now, I could vote for my preferred candidate and also for my second choice and third. I would feel enfranchised and the city would save hundreds of thousands of dollars by not having to fund a separate runoff vote.

Genevieve Marcus

Los Angeles

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Re “Public Financing Could End Pay to Play,” Feb. 23: What a novel idea -- to get Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the biggest fundraisers of all time, to back public financing. I hope he joins Susan Lerner of the California Clean Money Campaign to support the concept.

Some of the strange ways money has been spent in Los Angeles, from the Belmont school complex to proposed changes at LAX, could lead one to think that campaign donations just might have contributed to those bad decisions.

Perhaps we could get some real experts and some just plain good citizens to run for our public offices if they did not have to ask for money to run their campaign. Many thanks to Steve Lopez for highlighting this idea.

Joanne Nagy

Granada Hills