Runoff Elections

Seven weeks after its presidential election, Zimbabwe finally set a runoff date, saying longtime President Robert Mugabe and rival Morgan Tsvangirai will face off June 27. The opposition fears that the vote will be skewed by fraud. Opposition supporters have been beaten, killed and driven from their homes in what observers say is a campaign to secure Mugabe's grip on power. Tsvangirai says that he won the original vote outright but that he will participate in the runoff. Official results said he fell short of a majority.

President Robert Mugabe's party has lost its majority in parliament after 28 years in power, election officials announced Wednesday, as the aging Zimbabwean leader faced a more damaging blow: the virtual certainty of a runoff in the presidential race that he has scant hope of winning.

Democrat Warren Furutani is the overwhelming favorite in the Feb. 5 special election for the vacant 55th Assembly District seat, but he'll need to run again later this year if he wants to keep the post for more than a few months. The special election was called when Assemblywoman Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach) captured the 37th Congressional District seat left vacant by the death last year of Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald.

At a Long Beach coffee shop Wednesday morning, Green Party candidate Daniel A. Brezenoff held a news conference to remind voters that the race for the 37th Congressional District is not over. Assemblywoman Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach) outpolled Brezenoff and 16 others in the special election Tuesday to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald.

Let's begin by agreeing that the Los Angeles City Council's Rules and Elections Committee is not exactly Comedy Central. That's not saying committee Chairman Eric Garcetti isn't a host with a sense of humor. He is. But hey, it's Rules and Elections. Short of passing out whoopee cushions and nachos, you can only do so much. But this Wednesday's meeting may be different because the committee is going to discuss instant runoff voting.

Re "No way to run an election," Opinion, May 17 Steven Hill and Lynn Serpe are right on with recommending ranked-choice voting. It's not just San Francisco but other countries, such as Ireland and Australia and increasingly Britain, successfully using it. Not only does it save money by eliminating the need for runoff elections, it captures the complexity of voter opinion. Voters can pick their first-choice candidate and party without fear because the whole concept of a "spoiler" is eliminated in that system.

Having failed to gain a clear verdict from voters, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles teachers union braced Wednesday for a costly and divisive runoff election that will determine whether Villaraigosa gains a friendly majority on the Board of Education -- and a long-sought measure of control over the sprawling, troubled school system.

One of the nation's last unresolved House races will be decided Tuesday when seven-term Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla faces former congressman Ciro Rodriguez in an unusual runoff in a newly redrawn district. In a special election Nov. 7, a well-financed Bonilla won 49% of the vote, just shy of the majority he needed to win outright. Rodriguez, 59, who represented a neighboring district in the House from 1997 to 2005, finished second with about 20% of the vote.

Ecuador's Rafael Correa, a leftist vowing to rein in political elites, won Sunday's presidential runoff with 57% of the votes after most ballot boxes were tallied, a top election official said. Opponent Alvaro Noboa has refused to accept defeat and says he might challenge the election with a review of the ballots.

Congo's president is leading his rival in a tense runoff election, according to the first returns released by the country's electoral commission. The results, based on fewer than 1 million ballots from the nation's 25 million registered voters, show President Joseph Kabila with about 68.5% of the vote, compared with 31.5% for former rebel leader and current Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba.