Washington Post
Advantage, incumbents: Winner-take-all races
make democracy the loser By William
Raspberry July 8,
2003. Yes, I know what Finley Peter Dunne said, and I'm not
expecting politics to be played according to the rules of beanbag.
But it strikes me, as it strikes a lot of voters, that American
politics has become particularly ugly in recent years. I've heard
(and offered) plenty of explanations: the calculated intemperance of
talk radio and cable TV commentators; the growing efforts to
destroy, not merely defeat, the opposition; the zealotry of certain
elements of the hard right; the uncertainty of moderates and
liberals. Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting
and Democracy, offers one more: winner-take-all elections.
Particularly in the case of congressional races, says Richie, the
system encourages -virtually requires - politicians to do nasty
things to each other. The stakes are that high. Richie, in an op-ed
article he wrote with CVD analyst Steven Hill, offers these
examples: "In 1991, Texas Democrats gerrymandered (the Republicans)
so effectively that they took more than two-thirds of the seats with
only half the votes. The chief architect of that plan ... was
Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who admitted in 1997 that the
redistricting process 'is not one of kindness. It is not one of
sharing. It is a power grab."' In Florida, where Democrats have the
votes to control both U.S. Senate seats - and where Democrats and
Republicans finished in a dead heat in the last presidential
election - Republicans hold 18 of 25 seats in the U.S. House. How is
that possible? Because Republicans controlled the redrawing of the
congressional districts. Senate candidates, of course, are elected
statewide. If the situation seems worse in recent years, it may be
because political advisers have become smarter, using powerful
computer tools to maximize the benefits of such tactics as "packing"
and "cracking" - packing opposition candidates into as few districts
as possible or cracking an opponent's voter base into several
districts. Even when it doesn't play out as partisan warfare, the
results can be disheartening. Redistricting at its most benign is
usually an exercise not in citizens' rights, but in incumbent
protection. In 2002, only four incumbents lost to nonincumbent
challengers. Every single incumbent in California won by a
landslide. As Richie and Hill note: "It was no coincidence that
Democratic incumbents forked over $20,000 apiece to the
redistricting consultant to draw them a safe seat, and that the
consultant was the brother of one of the incumbents. To buy their
cooperation, Republican incumbents were given safe seats, too."
Everything about the system encourages such gerrymandering and
manipulation. Richie would change the system. One relatively simple
change would be to move from the winner-take-all single-member
districts to three-seat "super districts," with each voter getting
three votes to distribute as he wishes. Rather than losing a race
even with 49.9 percent of the vote, as could be the case now,
candidates in a super district could be elected with 25 percent of
the vote. What that means in practical terms is that significantly
more voters would have someone in office that they voted for. Racial
and political minorities would be far more likely than now to be
represented in the legislatures. "Americans think that no Democrats
live in the Rockies, or that there are no Republicans in
Massachusetts," says Richie. "They're there; they just don't win
very often. Actually, most of us live in places that are pretty far
gone to one party or the other." But winning isn't the only thing
Richie's super districts might accomplish. The bitterest, most
negative, political warfare tends to involve candidates who are
competing for the same constituency. But suppose candidates found it
advantageous to offer themselves as attractive second choices for
voters whose first choice was someone else. The result, says Richie,
would almost certainly be more political cooperation, and less
calculated divisiveness. "In the Northeast, for instance, the urban
areas are almost all represented by Democrats," he says. "What that
means is that when Republicans make their calculations they don't
have to take those constituencies into account. But when you share a
constituency, as you would in a three-member district, the whole
approach changes. "Throughout the Deep South, the dispersion of
black voters often keeps them from having the numbers to win a seat,
but if it only takes 25 percent, that changes. The most likely
outcome in a three-seat district in these cases would be the
election of a black Democrat, a white conservative Republican and a
centrist of one party or the other. As it is now, hardly any
centrists of, say, the Sam Nunn type, are winning." The changes Richie has in mind
would necessitate congressional legislation overturning a 1967 law
requiring single-member districts. I'm afraid a lot of incumbents
prefer things the way they are. |