Sadly, nothing much has changed in California and the Salinas Valley since 1952, when John Steinbeck wrote those words for the opening chapters of his novel, “East of Eden.”

As a result, the atmospheric rivers drenching the state have been a decidedly mixed blessing.

The rainfall means for the first time in more than two years, the majority of California is no longer in a severe drought. The Sierra snowpack is at 226% of average for this time of year, the largest we’ve seen in more than two decades. Reservoirs are filling at a rapid rate. If the rains continue, it might be possible for Gov. Gavin Newsom to lift the state’s voluntary water restrictions and even consider declaring an end to the drought. That’s the good news.

Then there’s the bad news, starting of course with the deaths of 17 Californians, the forced evacuation of entire communities and the flooding and mudslides that damaged countless roads, bridges, homes and businesses.

Beyond the immediate devastation is the temptation to think the onslaught of storms has ended the drought — that we can return to our old, bad habits such as greening up lawns, taking long showers and slowing water-conservation efforts. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No rain is in the forecast after Monday. We need to remember that California had a series of major storms in December 2021 only to experience an extended dry period in January, February and March.

Even if we do get enough rain this year to end the drought, it doesn’t change the fact that climate change is exacerbating an ongoing water crisis that should rank as one of the state’s highest priorities. And that California isn’t doing nearly enough to ensure the state can meet its future residential, business and agricultural water needs.

In November 2014, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1, believing the $7.5 billion bond measure would significantly upgrade water-storage efforts. Building water storage is admittedly a complex, lengthy process. But of the four Northern California storage projects identified by the state in 2018 for funding, only two — the Los Vaqueros Reservoir expansion and the Harvest Water Program — should definitely continue moving forward. Of the other two, the Pacheco Dam project simply doesn’t pencil out, and Sites Reservoir remains highly questionable.

Los Vaqueros is far and away the best project. The Contra Costa Water District would raise the height of the dam in eastern Contra Costa County by 55 feet to 273 feet. That would expand the reservoir’s capacity from 160,000 acre-feet to 275,000, providing enough water when full for the annual needs of 1.4 million people in the Bay Area. The expansion is scheduled to be completed by 2030.

The Harvest Water Program, formerly known as the South County Ag Program, is a recycling project that would provide 50,000 acre-feet of recycled waste water a year to farmers for irrigation, reducing groundwater pumping in Sacramento County.

The Pacheco Dam project had merit until the price tag nearly doubled a year ago to $2.5 billion. The project called for a 319-foot dam to be built north of Highway 152 near Henry Coe State Park, east of Morgan Hill. It would hold up to 144,000 acre-feet of water, replacing the current earthen dam that holds only 5,500 acre-feet of water.

Building Pacheco would cost $18,800 per acre-foot of water. Compare that to the cost of $8,300 per acre-foot of water of raising the height of Los Vaqueros. There are cheaper ways of storing water, including, for example, constructing new groundwater storage banks in the Central Valley.

Planners in 2020 scaled back the cost and size of the Sites Reservoir project in the west side of the Sacramento Valley amid questions about its environmental suitability, how much water it would actually deliver and who would fund it. Those questions still exist.

California needs to face up to the fact that most of the best sites for dams are already taken and seek other means for storing water.

As Steinbeck would remind us, there is a price to be paid for ignoring our water challenges.

Not with a city still dealing with the pandemic, an economic downturn, homelessness, a housing crisis and public safety concerns. Oh. Did we mention no returning councilmembers who backed him in the November election?

Then there’s this: Last fall’s mayoral campaign featured nasty attack ads from both sides that worsened the longstanding divide between labor and business, making finding common ground on council issues that much harder.

It leaves the business-backed Mahan with three options:

• Fight with labor at every turn, likely resulting in little or no progress on the mayor’s priorities.

• Capitulate to labor’s agenda, which would anger those who elected him.

• Seek common ground with labor and find ways to collaborate in the best interest of San Jose residents.

We like the third option. And so does Mahan, as demonstrated by his approach in his first days in office. It’s a smart strategy. If labor is willing to cooperate.

Mahan last week nominated council newcomer Rosemary Kamei as vice mayor. It’s an intriguing choice. Kamei was endorsed by the South Bay Labor Council — the same organization that spent $5 million backing Cindy Chavez’ effort to defeat Mahan.

But Kamei proved to be an independent voice on the Santa Clara County Board of Education, which explains in part why she was also endorsed for the City Council by the business-oriented Santa Clara County Association of Realtors. Kamei now represents District 1, the traditionally moderate district that includes Santana Row and Westgate. If approved as vice mayor by the full council Jan. 24, Kamei is perfectly positioned to serve as a bridge between labor and business.

Mahan then extended an olive branch to the four returning council members who backed Chavez last fall. He selected Dev Davis, Pam Foley, David Cohen and Sergio Jimenez to serve on the powerful Rules and Open Government Committee, which controls the council agenda. The mayor will add a fifth member after the vacant District 8 and District 10 seats are filled.

Mahan’s third significant move was creating five transition committees aimed at making the council laser-focused on what he sees as the city’s five highest priorities: homelessness, public safety, blight and beautification, economic development and innovation. The committees will consist of council members, city staff and community members. They will meet for roughly eight weeks to make recommendations on how the city should proceed and how to measure success. The latter is a key element of Mahan’s campaign promise to bring more accountability to city government.

Getting the council on the same page and working collaboratively is a tall order. But give Mahan credit for taking meaningful steps to try to make it a reality.

Clearly, the Concord First Partners consortium is not prepared to meet the terms of its original deal. The only ethical option for the council is to reopen the bidding — again.

We watched a politically corrupted process that resulted in 2016 with the selection of the first developer. But that company, Lennar Urban, bailed because it said the council-imposed labor requirements made the project financially infeasible.

New bidding in 2021 ended when Concord First Partners, which includes Albert D. Seeno III’s Discovery Builders, was selected for exclusive negotiations over two prominent development firms after saying it could meet the labor demands.

Now the consortium says it cannot meet those conditions unless the city agrees to increase the number of housing units on the 2,275-acre site from 12,272 to 16,474, a 34% increase. That wasn’t the deal.

That wasn’t an option for Lennar or the other key firm it competed against in the first round. That wasn’t an option for the competing developers in 2021. Bidding requirements specifically called for “up to 12,200 housing units.”

If the council wants to increase the number of units, that’s a legitimate policy option to consider. But there should be a level playing field. All the bidders should have had that option. The city should not change the rules for Concord First Partners only after its competitors have been eliminated.

With a fair and level playing field, surely the city can do better than Concord First Partners. Surely the city can do better than Seeno III, who in 2016 pleaded guilty to bank fraud on behalf of his home sales company, Discovery Sales.

Seeno III’s father, prominent developer Albert Seeno Jr., is suing his son trying to oust him as CEO of five of the father’s firms. The litigation, detailed on this editorial page on Thursday, contains troubling allegations about Seeno III’s management, debt to and deception of his own father, and treatment of employees.

Seeno III’s insistence that his father can’t fire him because of an airtight employment agreement, and the voluminous litigation that has resulted, should signal to Concord officials that striking a 40-year development deal with him and his partners could be a recipe for legal heartache.

Making matters worse, the proposed deal would give Concord First Partners the rights to the entirety of the massive project. That’s ridiculous. It should have to prove itself through its actions. The last deal, the one with Lennar, would have only entitled the company to build the first phase of the project. After that, the city was to evaluate how it was going before deciding whether to continue. That’s as it should be.

The good news is that it’s not too late. The city isn’t stuck with Seeno III and the rest of the Concord First Partners consortium. If the consortium can’t make the deal work as it originally agreed to, the city is free to walk away and start the process over. That’s what it should do.

The City Council will hold a special meeting at 9 a.m. Saturday to decide whether to continue negotiating with Concord First Partners. The meeting, which had originally been slated to be held in a larger venue, has been changed to the City Council chambers to allow residents to participate remotely by Zoom.

In the November elections, in the only two competitive City Council races, Concord residents signaled what they apparently want. Voters in District 1 reelected Laura Hoffmeister, who opposed the 2021 selection of Concord First Partners. And in District 5, voters ousted incumbent Tim McGallian, a supporter of the consortium, and replaced him with Laura Nakamura, a critic.

The consortium previously had only 3-2 support on the five-member council. It seems that it now only has two votes of support, at best. Residents will see this weekend whether the council will do the right thing: Kill the deal and start over.

Constant turnover at the highest levels of city staff. Violation of city codes. Failure to manage financial and fiscal risks. Creation of a deep culture of distrust and fear.

The civil grand jury nailed it. The only downside is the timing of its release last week. What took so long? Cupertino residents could have used the report in 2020 when they voted to continue Better Cupertino’s stranglehold on the council. Or prior to the 2022 election.

Thank goodness Cupertino voters saw the light in November. The election of J.R. Fruen and Sheila Mohan to the council in November gives Mayor Hung Wei a 3-2 majority over Better Cupertino’s remaining councilmembers, Kitty Moore and Liang Chao.

But there’s still work to be done. Moore and Chao aren’t about to give up their NIMBY approach to development. And Better Cupertino’s disruptive reach still extends to the city’s commissions that often produce future council candidates.

The report’s main criticisms focus on what the civil grand jury cited as the “council manic” behavior of Moore and former Mayor Darcy Paul. The latter was termed out of office and in November finished last of four candidates in the Cupertino Union School District Board race.

The report said Paul asked city staff members to work at events that were not part of official city business and to take on additional work outside of scheduled work hours.

Moore was accused of violating city policies barring interference in the day-to-day operations of city staff, including inappropriately asking a staff member about charges the worker made on a city credit card.

That kind of behavior helped create an environment that led to the city having four city managers in the last four years. Jim Throop lasted just six months on the job before Pamela Wu took over in August.

The city has also been plagued by turnover in other key staff positions, including Deputy City Manager Katy Nomura’s departure last fall. The report said high turnover has hurt Cupertino’s ability to recruit qualified staff. No kidding.

The grand jury recommends that the city establish a public ethics commission to create a training program for all councilmembers and hire a consultant to study staff morale and make recommendations to improve employee retention.

Those are good suggestions. And the new council should reverse the previous council’s NIMBY attitude and do its part to help solve the Bay Area’s ongoing housing crisis.

Cupertino is in danger of missing its deadline providing a roadmap that explains how the city will meet state-mandated housing goals. The threat is real. The inaction of the previous council, led by the three Better Cupertino members, risks the city’s missing out on affordable housing and infrastructure funding. If Cupertino fails to comply, it also could be forced to accept large housing projects that exceed the city’s zoning laws, as long as they include affordable housing.

The election of Fruen and Mohan to the council gives the city good reason to hope for a better future. But Cupertino still has a lot of work to do to escape its image as one of the most mismanaged cities in the South Bay.

The Alameda County Registrar of Voters said Wednesday that a programming error in the tally system for ranked-choice voting changed the outcome of the District 4 Oakland Unified School Board race. Mike Hutchinson was informed Wednesday that he had defeated Nick Resnick, who previously had been declared the winner.

Ranked-choice voting has being used successfully in two states and 53 cities. A learning curve should be expected when utilizing a new system. It’s important to note that the error impacted only a single race in the four Alameda County cities — Albany, Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro — that use ranked-choice voting.

The beauty of ranked-choice voting is that it strengthens the principle of majority rule and discourages negative campaigning, because candidates need to appeal to a wider range of voters.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors should make the switch in January when it is expected to consider the issue. Santa Clara County voters approved the systems change when they backed Measure F in 1998, but the county’s voting machines didn’t have the ability to implement the system.

Better yet, the Legislature should initiate an effort to make California the third state to adopt ranked-choice voting statewide.

Ranked-choice voting works like this: Instead of making a choice for just one candidate, voters rank candidates in order of preference. Voters know that if their first choice doesn’t win, their vote automatically counts for their next choice. The candidate with more than half the first-place votes wins. If no candidate has more than 50%, the ballots for the candidate in last place are reallocated to voters’ second choices. The process continues until a candidate secures a majority and is declared the winner.

In the Oakland Unified School Board race, the election reform group Fair Voice discovered some ballots in which voters had not marked a first choice on the ballot but marked ranking of candidates elsewhere on the ballot. Alameda County mistakenly programmed the Dominion voting machines used for the election to simply discard those ballots. But under the rules governing the Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro races, if no candidate was selected as a first choice, the next choice on the ballot should be counted as the first choice. Any subsequent choices should be moved up, accordingly. When the suspended ballots were properly counted, the only outcome that changed was the Oakland race.

Ranked-choice voting is not complicated. Voters like it because it saves the cost of a primary election while also giving them much greater say in who is elected. Under the current system, a candidate can win with only 20%-30% of the vote, meaning a majority of voters did not choose the winner. Ranked-choice voting diminishes the chances of extremist candidates who appeal to a small slice of voters. It also encourages voters to research every candidate on the ballot.

Those are advantages that every California voter should support.

There are recounts ongoing in all three races. There should be. But the candidates and their backers have had to pay to make sure the results are right. That’s morally wrong.

Election integrity should not be determined by candidate wealth. Yet the state’s elitist election laws only provide for recounts if a member of the public foots the bill.

It’s time to change that. Recounts in razor-thin elections should be automatic and publicly funded. State lawmakers should end payment requirements that favor affluent candidates.

We have seen repeatedly just how close elections can be. In 2000, after the U.S. Supreme Court intervened, the infamous presidential recount debacle in Florida ended with George W. Bush beating Al Gore by 537 votes out of almost 6 million cast, a margin of 0.009%.

In California, we saw a repeat in the 2014 open primary for state controller in which Betty Yee edged out a fellow Democrat for the critical second-place slot by 481 votes, about 1/100th of 1 percent of the ballots cast in the race. This year, in a state Senate race in the southern Central Valley, Democrat Melissa Hurtado beat Republican David Shepard by 20 votes out of 136,894 ballots cast, a margin of 0.015%.

In such tight races, making sure there are no errors should be essential. That’s why 22 states and Washington, D.C., have automatic recounts for close outcomes. Among those states, the most common recount trigger is a vote margin of 0.5% or less.

California has a recount provision in exceptionally close races, but it only applies to statewide races and is at the option of the governor — a formula ripe for political abuse.

While our election counting systems are very good, they are not perfect. We need to acknowledge that and ensure there are safeguards. Which is why Santa Clara County, as an outlier in the state, has an automatic recount policy for local races within the county in which the margin of victory is either less than 0.25% or less than 25 votes. It’s a reasonable threshold.

The Santa Clara County recounts have presented startling examples of why they are needed statewide. In a 2016 San Jose City Council race, the automatic recount narrowed the margin of victory from 36 votes to 12. In the 2018 race for three seats on the San Jose-based Orchard School District board, the automatic recount changed the winner of the third seat.

As more cities and school districts, facing threats of voting-rights litigation, shift from at-large elections to selection by districts, the number of narrow races is going to increase. Indeed, the three Bay Area cities awaiting the outcomes of ongoing recounts — Richmond, Sunnyvale and Antioch — have all in recent years migrated to district elections.

While the Santa Clara County automatic-recount system is better than nothing, it doesn’t go far enough. That’s because there are two parts to a recount, the actual manual tabulating of the votes and the resolution of disputes over which ballots should be included. Santa Clara County’s policy doesn’t address the latter.

There are legitimate disputes in every election over, for example, voter intent when a ballot is not clearly marked or voter eligibility when a signature doesn’t match the election office records. The means for resolving those disputes are spelled out in state laws that affect recounts.

But Santa Clara County’s recount policy only addresses the manual tabulation. Consequently, the Sunnyvale race, for which the ballots already have been recounted under the county policy, is now subject to another recount under state law. But under the state law, the candidate must foot the bill.

It’s time for California lawmakers to ensure that every close race is automatically reviewed under state recount rules and to drop the payment requirement. Democracy should not depend on a candidate’s ability to pay.

Sadly, the outlook for 2023 doesn’t look much better. But the industry’s long-term future looks considerably brighter, thanks in large part to the efforts of an unlikely source — Congress.

That’s right.

Democrats and Republicans put aside their differences and worked together this year to craft what is the biggest science and technology investment in a generation. The Chips and Science Act provides $52.7 billion in grants for U.S. semiconductor production and research and another $24 billion in tax credits for chip plants. The legislation is designed to bring chip manufacturing back to the United States, reducing our reliance on foreign production and easing our supply-chain challenges.

As much as the investment is a game-changer for chip companies and the firms they supply, it’s the $100 billion National Science Foundation funding that likely will have the bigger impact on the tech industry’s long-term future.

Tech’s cyclical nature is well documented. During the down years, it’s essential that research and development efforts fuel innovative breakthroughs that keep us ahead of our global competitors and lead to the “next big thing” in tech.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, played a major role in pushing the bill through Congress. He expects the investment to impact research in Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, plant-based and food-technology alternatives to animal proteins, electronics manufacturing and synthetic biology. The United States hasn’t made this level of investment in technology since the 1950s and 1960s. That funding led to the lunar landing, the internet and the global positioning system (GPS).

Two weeks later, Democrats and Republicans collaborated again on the Inflation Reduction Act, providing more than $30 billion to advance manufacturing of solar panels and components, wind turbines, power inverters and batteries for electric vehicles.

And last week Congress quietly passed another Khanna-led, bipartisan tech bill that is designed to protect encryption systems and valuable data from powerful, rapidly emerging quantum computers. Tech experts have long feared that quantum computers carry the capacity to cause serious data breaches of individuals’ personal financial data and crucial business and government systems.

With Republicans gaining control of the House of Representatives in 2023, it may prove more challenging to pass meaningful tech legislation in Congress. But Khanna is working with Florida Sen. Mario Rubio on a bill designed to further manufacturing in the United States.

The legislation would provide $20 billion over the next 10 years for loan guarantees and securities-backed financing designed to specifically encourage manufacturing plants that would address potential supply-chain challenges.

Federal investment alone won’t secure the tech industry’s future. But significant research and development support has a proven track record of creating innovative products that spur the region and the nation’s economy.

It begs the question of how long California’s governor will fail to address the state’s water challenges before an even worse disaster strikes.

Yes, after three years of drought, recent storms have left the Sierra snowpack at more than 200% of average for this time of year. But heavy snowfall a year ago led to a series of dry months that only exacerbated the drought.

Climate-change forecasts project that the state’s water supply will be cut by an additional 10% by 2040. Despite that warning, California continues to overpromise its ability to deliver water to Central Valley farmers while doing far too little to identify new sources of water or conserve its available supply.

Small, rural towns are finding it increasingly difficult to find water to meet their basic needs. And the California Department of Water resources reports that more than 1,200 California wells have run dry this year, a nearly 50% increase over the same period last year.

Meanwhile the state’s reservoirs remain at frighteningly low levels.

Doug Obegi, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, notes that water storage at Oroville Dam is nearly 100,000 acre feet lower than the same time last year. If the State Water Project’s proposed water allotments for next year stand, it would likely result in water elevations behind Oroville Dam dropping below the level where the project can produce power, resulting in the loss of hydropower production from August to December next year.

Yet no California governor has taken sufficient steps to solve the problem.

In 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a plan for twin tunnels under the Delta that would export water south. Gov. Jerry Brown spent eight years trying to muster the support to make the $25 billion proposal a reality. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom pronounced the Delta twin-tunnels project dead but called instead for a cheaper, smaller, single-tunnel approach to address California’s water needs. Comments on the Delta tunnel draft environmental report are due Friday.

The earliest the Delta project could be completed is 2040. The latest cost estimate for the single-tunnel project is $16 billion. Digging projects are notorious for massive cost overruns. Boston’s Big Dig ballooned from $2.6 billion to nearly $15 billion before it was completed — eight years behind schedule.

The state has never conducted a long-promised comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the tunnel project — most likely because it has never shown to pencil out. Nor will Newsom’s proposal add a drop of additional water to California’s supply or protect the health of the Delta, the largest estuary in the United States west of the Mississippi.

California should learn from its housing failures. Let’s stop spending money on a losing proposition and instead shift our strategy to directly address what is rapidly becoming a deepening emergency.

And the state Public Utilities Commission needs to go back to the drawing board and design a rate plan that ensures solar customers aren’t subsidized by less-wealthy electricity ratepayers.

In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 327 into law, requiring that any rate plan for solar rooftop customers must assure the sustainable growth of the industry. That made sense a decade ago. It doesn’t today.

Rooftop solar still has a key role to play in fighting climate change. But solar no longer deserves a thumb on the scale in California’s effort to find the most efficient green-energy solutions. It’s past time for state lawmakers to allow wind, geothermal and other renewable energy sources a chance to compete on a level playing field.

Meanwhile, that unfair advantage in state law is at the heart of the PUC’s disappointing effort to craft fair rates and rules for the state’s rooftop solar incentive program — known as Net Energy Metering. The NEM rules have not been updated since 2016. The PUC is scheduled to vote Thursday on its latest proposal, which would determine the size of the credits customers receive on their utility bills when their rooftop solar systems generate more energy than they consume.

The PUC’s proposal wouldn’t impact current customers. New solar customers would save an average $100 a month on their electricity bills. Those that also have battery storage would save at least $136 a month on average.

The new proposal would extend the payback period for covering the capital costs of rooftop solar systems to an estimated nine years. But it is still too generous for solar customers and pushes too much of the fixed cost for the state’s electrical grid onto other ratepayers.

To say that neither the rooftop solar industry nor the state’s three largest utilities are happy with the PUC proposal is an understatement. But that both sides are screaming bloody murder doesn’t make it a reasonable compromise.

We understand that rooftop solar companies want to maximize profits and secure their long-term future. But utilities are right when they argue that rooftop solar owners don’t pay enough of the fixed costs for maintaining the grid, an inequity that would continue under the proposed plan. The burden of paying for power distribution, wildfire mitigation and investing in new technologies would continue to disproportionately fall to the rest of the electricity consumers.

It would perpetuate a regressive subsidy that unfairly burdens the poor. California’s estimated 1.5 million rooftop solar customers, who produce more than 11% of the state’s total electricity production, are disproportionately wealthy.

A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study found that about half of the state’s solar adopters are in the highest 20% of earners, while only 4% come from the lowest 20%. The PUC says that more than $4 billion in costs was passed on to non-solar customers in 2021.

The PUC needs to go back to the drawing board and design a plan that ensures that all customers fairly share the burden of utilities’ fixed costs.

At stake is the political direction of the Bay Area’s largest city for at least the next two years. Districts 8 and 10 together represent roughly 200,000 residents. The voters there should decide who fills the two seats — not a handful of councilmembers seeking to push a labor-driven agenda.

Let’s be clear. This isn’t about saving taxpayer money. There should be no price tag on democracy. This is all about whether labor has the votes to thwart newly elected Mayor Matt Mahan’s priorities.

District 8 and District 10 voters already gave an indication of their intent when they backed Mahan over labor-stalwart Cindy Chavez in the mayor’s race. Hundreds of residents also made their desire for a special election known Monday when they packed the City Council chambers demanding an election.

The council consists of the mayor and 10 members elected by district. Two of the district seats will be vacant because Mahan will give up his to become mayor, and Sylvia Arenas has been elected to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.

The new council — minus the two vacant positions — will consist of five labor-backed members. If the new council appoints a labor-backed candidate to fill even one of the vacant seats, it would give labor control of the council for the next two years.

If that’s what the voters want, so be it. But that should be the voters’ decision. For labor members from outside the two council districts to force their choices on the residents there is outrageous.

If the new council is concerned about District 8 and District 10 residents not having representation on the council until a special election could be held, the council could appoint interim members who would serve until the election is held and who would agree not to run for office.

The last five times the City Council faced this issue it opted for letting voters decide. In the latest example, in 2015, the council opted for a special election following the resignation of former District 4 Councilmember Kansen Chu, who was elected to the state Assembly in 2014. The council appointed Margie Matthews in January 2015 to serve in an interim role in District 4 until Manh Nguyen won election on June 23.

The council took similar approaches in 2007, 2005, 2001 and 1995.

The last time the City Council appointed someone to fill a vacant seat was in 1994, when Councilmember Kathy Cole was recalled. The council chose Alice Woody to serve out the term until 1997. But the council only made that choice because the city charter required that the council fill the opening rather than hold a special election.

The City Council unanimously agreed that the charter should be changed to make elections an option, arguing that voters should make these choices. We agreed, saying a charter revision should be proposed for the November 1994 ballot and that “voters would be crazy not to approve it.” San Jose voters did just that, by nearly a 2-to-1 margin.

The concept is simple. Let the voters decide. Any other approach is undemocratic.