Fair Elections Update
February 14,
2003
To: Friend of Fair Elections
Fr: Rob Richie, Executive Director The Center for
Voting and Democracy www.fairvote.org, [email protected]
Re: - The Drive for Electoral Reform Funding
- Fair
Elections Action on Instant Runoff Voting and on Full
Representation
in Congress and States - The Fair
Elections Rundown: Spanning
the Globe - Debate on
Iraq and winner-take-all elections
- Washington Post: "Don't
forget redistricting"
- Ranked-choice ballots on campuses, web,
Oscars
- Students
boost fair elections on campus - CVD staffers on the road, on the web, on
NPR
- British fair elections champion Lord
Jenkins dies
- Advances in Canada, New Zealand,
Scotland
- Lessons from Israeli and Dutch
elections
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THE
DRIVE FOR ELECTORAL REFORM FUNDING
This week budget negotiators in Congress
reached agreement on a package that would provide $1.5 billion in
funds in 2003 to help states implement last year's Help America Vote
Act (HAVA). The HAVA law authorized appropriations of more than $2
billion in 2003 and nearly $4 billion over three years, but
lawmakers compromised with the Bush administration, which sought
only a half billion for each of the next two years. Now that the
budget has been approved by Congress, attention is turning to the
states, which must come up with plans to comply with HAVA's
provisions, improve their elections and upgrade antiquated voting
equipment. Several reform groups have joined to seek fair and
well-funded implementation. Demos has a website
devoted to implementation of HAVA and sends us updates in its
"Democracy Dispatches." Electionline.org posts posts
and daily news updates. Action certainly is warranted. Better
fundamentals for our election system could have led to as many as
six million more effective votes in the 2000 elections -- six
percent of the actual total. But we simply can't stop with better
election mechanics, as those lost votes only could be tolerated for
so long in a nation where elections don't matter as much as they
should, where declines in voter turnout receive little serious
attention from elected officials and where so few races are
competitive. We need a range of reforms to bring more people into
politics, which is why we support fair election systems like instant
runoff voting and full representation. One specific goal for HAVA
implementation is to ensure that new voting equipment can support
these and other potential reforms. To help, see fairvote.org/administration/modernize.htm
SPEAKING
OF FUNDS FOR BETTER ELECTIONS....
The Center for Voting and Democracy is pleased
to announce a matching gift of $15,000 to celebrate next month's
anniversary of last year's big wins for instant runoff voting in San
Francisco and Vermont town meetings and to honor my father David
Richie, who died in December after a life devoted to improving our
democracy and protecting our environment. A generous supporter has
pledged to match, dollar for dollar, all donations made by March 31,
up to $15,000. For more on why it's such a great time to give to
CVD, please see my report to members
at http://fairvote.org/e_news/yrend2002.htm
To donate, see http://fairvote.org/donate.htm. And
remember, many employers will match your contributions to non-profit
charitable organizations like our Center. Thanks so much.
In other important
funding news, the Working
Assets telephone company has selected our Center as one of the
50 groups it will support in the coming year. Working Assets
customers will soon have the chance to vote for the Center and
ensure we win a fair share of some four million dollars to be
divided in early 2004 among the groups based on customers' votes.
FAIR
ELECTIONS ACTION IN CONGRESS AND STATES
There's been a great
new run of legislation in
Congress and states.
Congress 2006 Commission Act (HR 415), sponsored by Florida
Congressman Alcee Hastings, would create a commission to study the
size of the U.S. House of Representatives and the potential use of
full representation voting methods. The bill's 2001 version picked
up the support of Martin Frost, one of the frontrunners last year to
be the Democratic leader in the House.
More and more states are looking to instant
runoff voting (IRV), the ranked-choice voting method that ensures a
majority winner in one election no matter how many candidates
participate. Spurred by third party threats to major party
incumbents and by cash-hungry governments wanting to replace
expensive runoff contests, IRV has moved to the top of major
parties' reform agenda in states such as:
-
Vermont, where
IRV has benefitted from the support of ex-governor Howard Dean,
endorsements from civic groups like the League of Women Voters,
Grange, Common Cause, PIRG and AFL-CIO and a grassroots surge that
last year swept more than 50 town meeting votes.
-
Utah, where the Republican Party's
use of IRV to nominate Members of Congress at its 2002 convention
has sparked interest in expanding its use, as evidenced by a
strong letter of support for IRV
from the Utah attorney general.
-
Florida, where senior lawmakers are
looking to IRV as an alternative to traditional "delayed" runoffs
following editorial
endorsements
from influential Florida papers like the Fort Lauderdale Sun S
Sentinel, Palm Beach Post and St. Petersburg Times;
-
Minnesota, where the growth of
former governor Jesse Ventura's Independence Party and the Greens
have contributed to endorsements for IRV from the state's governor
and the largest newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune
-
Maine, where a leading lawmaker
publicly announced a goal of implementing IRV for state elections
by 2004. Other states that have or will soon have IRV
legislation include: California, where the
November 2003 mayoral elections with IRV should dramatically
increase potential use elsewhere -- for more on San Francisco, see
www.fairvote.org/sf/;
Hawaii, which held a hearing on an IRV bill
on Feb. 10; New Mexico; New
York; Virginia; and
Washington. Illinois has
two intriguing bills developed by the Center's general counsel Dan
Johnson-Weinberger. HB 138, which already has
unanimously passed its initial committee vote, would grant county
boards the authority to adopt cumulative voting in multi-member
districts. A second bill, HB 395, would require
officials to provide primary election ballots that permit instant
runoff voting for absentee voters in the U.S. military or outside
of U.S. -- for more on this sensible practice adopted already by
Louisiana, see http://www.fairvote.org/irv/lairv.htm.
If you live in a state with primary or local runoffs, please urge
your state legislators to initiate this legislation. To keep
updated on a full range of state legislation affecting political
parties, see the invaluable resource Ballot Access News: $14 a
year for 12 issues and on line at www.ballot-access.org.
FAIR ELECTIONS RUNDOWN: SPANNING THE
GLOBE
No matter what one might think about
the potential war in Iraq, what strikes many international observers
is how limited debate is in Congress about such a critically
important issue -- not only on the case for war, but on its overall
impact on foreign policy and the United States' long-term role in
the Middle East.
Two recent magazine quotes are revealing
about how winner-take-all elections -- which typically limit voters
to two credible parties and lead those parties to play off of each
other rather than the full range of voter opinion, in contrast to
full representation systems in which most voters win representation
even if part of a political minority -- have such an impact on our
political dialogue. In Newsweek on February 3, Howard Fineman writes
"But the biggest problem [for the peace movement]: it doesn't matter
how big your megaphone is if nobody in power is listening. The
Democrats, the protestors' historical allies, have spent the past 30
years trying to shed their image as being weak on war.... The
absence of a strong counter to Bush's saber-rattling complicates
things for the protestors."
In the Feb. 24 Nation, Eric
Alterman writes "My friend Rick Hertzberg attributes the sorry state
of just about everything in American politics to the faulty quality
of our institutions. If we had the good sense to adopt European
styles of proportional representation -- coupled with desperately
needed campaign finance reform -- we would be rewarded with
European-quality leaders who could express their values with
eloquence and courage, without fear of seeing their words
deliberately distorted beyond recognition in order to exploit the
ignorance of the average voter. He has a
point."
"Don't Forget Redistricting"
That was the headline in a January 5, 2003 editorial in the
Washington Post, which rightly pointed out that: "Redistricting,
which follows the census every decade, should be an opportunity to
make districts competitive and, thereby, to hold incumbents
accountable despite the changing demographics of a state. In most
states, however, legislatures seek to protect incumbency and to lock
in the advantage of the party in power by drawing as many safe seats
for that party as possible." The Post urged action in states to
adopt Iowa's nonpartisan redistricting system before the next round
of redistricting in 2012.
Of course we don't need to wait that long --
and we shouldn't if it troubles you that: more than 40% of state
legislative races in 2000 and 2002 didn't even have two major party
candidates; the growth of representation of women and racial
minorities in our legislatures has nearly stalled; and our Center
already has been able to project more than 350 winners in the
November 2004 U.S. House elections based on a model that has been
right in all but one of 1,263 projections since 1994 -- see Monopoly Politics 2004. Rather
than accept this status quo, states should adopt full representation
or at least pursue a new round of fair redistricting.
Ranked-choice ballots and campuses, the web and
Oscars
Young people are often particularly excited about
the potential of instant runoff voting and full representation. Just
in the past two years, colleges such as Vassar, Whitman, William and
Mary and the Universities of Maryland and Illinois joined Stanford,
Princeton, MIT, UC-Berkeley and Harvard in using instant runoff
voting and/or full representation for student government
elections.
The latest to join these colleges may well be
Duke (where the student council just voted to use IRV this spring)
and UC-Davis (where a student vote will take place this spring). For
more on student elections, see recent
news postings and our webpage on schools. To pursue an opportunity in your school (K-12
or college), contact us at [email protected].
The alternative news
website Alternet later today is launching
a public on-line election that will use instant runoff voting -- a
model for many on-line votes. For one example among many of how it
is silly to use plurality voting rules instead of instant runoff
voting for such multiple-option elections, note that a recent Gallup
poll found that Hillary Clinton was the most admired woman in the
United States -- with all of 7% of people's preferences, which were
dispersed among a large number of people.
Finally, the
Academy of Motion Pictures once again used the choice voting method
of full representation for Oscar nominations. That's why the best
motion picture could go to a big budget blockbuster like "The Lord
of the Rings: The Two Towers" or the low-budget "The Pianist" and
why the best director nominees include long-time heavyweights Martin
Scorcese and Roman Polanski, newcomers Rob Marshall and Stephen
Daldry and Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar.
CVD
staff on the road, on the web, on NPR
The Center's staff has been particularly busy
this year with speeches and events across the country. We played a
lead role in organizing a January workshop for civic leaders and
elected officials in Atlanta and similar events in February in
Boston and Augusta (ME). Touting his new book Fixing Elections, the
Center's senior analyst Steven Hill has made speeches at events in
several states. Last week, he spoke before audiences at
Northeastern, U.-Mass-Amherst, the Cambridge Forum, two bookstores
and events organized for civic leaders and state legislators in
Boston and Augusta (ME) and taped two television programs to air on
AT&T's New England's cable network and Cambridge (MA) city
cable. Steven's Cambridge Forum talk will be available to National
Public Radio affiliates on March 14 -- contact your local NPR
station to urge them to pick up the program, which also will be
available at www.cambridgeforum.org. You can read
a good review
of
"Fixing Elections" by Paul Taylor.
British
fair elections champion Lord Jenkins dies
Lord
Jenkins (formerly Roy Jenkins), whom British Prime Minister Tony
Blair appropriately said was "one of the most remarkable people ever
to grace British politics," died on January 5. Jenkins was a
passionate and influential advocate of full "proportional"
representation in the United Kingdom, based in part on the 1983
elections in which the centrist party he led received 26% of the
popular vote, but less than 5% of seats. Under Blair's leadership,
Jenkins chaired a commission that in 1998 recommended adoption of a
new system for electing the House of Commons which would have
combined full representation with instant runoff voting. Although
the Labour government has not adopted full representation for
electing the House of Commons, Jenkins' advocacy contributed to its
adoption for electing regional assemblies in Scotland and Wales
(which will have new elections this May), in London and Northern
Ireland and for Britain's delegation to the European parliament. It
is likely just a matter of the right political moment arriving
before Britain joins the great majority of established democracies
in adopting full representation for all major elections. Jenkins
headed the fair elections group Make Votes Count and was chancellor of Oxford University. His
successor at Oxford will be elected this spring by instant runoff
voting. One potential candidate is former U.S. president Bill
Clinton.
Advances in Canada, New Zealand,
Scotland
Hardly any well-established democracies around
the world use the "first past the post" plurality system that awards
100% of representation to the candidate who finishes first, but the
Anglo-American democracies traditionally have lagged behind. That is
changing. Ireland and Australia decades ago converted to adopted the
choice voting method of full representation and instant runoff
voting for their elections. In 1996 New Zealand started using the
"mixed member" method of full representation after a remarkable
national referendum in 1993. Newly created regional assemblies in
Scotland, Wales, London and Northern Ireland use full representation
systems. There are vigorous movements to keep driving for fair
elections in these nations. Fair Vote Canada is gaining
more and more advocates, including the leader of the New Democratic
Party and a host of leading scholars and civic leaders. The British Electoral Reform
Society for decades has led the charge in the United Kingdom,
while in Scotland, Fairshare has launched a
drive to win choice voting (also called "single transferable vote")
for local government in the wake of commission recommendations and
government pledges to support the change. In New Zealand, the
capital city of Wellington voted last year to convert to choice
voting, and there is a national campaign to support a series of city
ballot measures this spring led by the Electoral Reform Coalition.
Lessons from Israeli and Dutch
elections
Israel has one of the most inclusive voting
systems in the world, as its political parties can win seats with
1.5% of the national vote. But the system's combination of "closed"
party lists (where voters can choose only among parties, not
candidates) and a national vote are different from what is used in
most governments elected by full representation, while the country's
ethnic and cultural diversity and perilous position in the Middle
East have led to complicated governance that would be problematic no
matter how elections were run. In Israel's January 2003 elections,
voter turnout dropped to an all-time low -- but still brought more
than two of three eligible voters to the polls, far higher than the
40% of American adults who voted in our national elections in
November. More than 95% of voters elected representatives among a
wide array of choices. Reversing trends, more voters supported the
major parties, which was due to converting back to a system where
the prime minister is not directly elected. For more, see www.israel-mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0n130
Meanwhile, the
Netherlands, widely accepted as one of the world's most stable and
effective democracies, has nearly the exact same full representation
system as Israel. In its January 22 elections, voters turned back to
the two major parties after a much-publicized surge last year for an
anti- immigrant party led by Pym Fortuyn. That party saw its share
of seats fall from 26 seats to just eight -- mirroring a trend seen
in other European nations such as Austria. For more on full
representation, see our webpages that
include a new
listing that shows how only three (Canada, Mongolia and the
United States) of the world's 42 major, full-fledged democracies use
only winner-take-all elections to elect their national legislatures
-- and those of Douglas
Amy, author of the recently updated classic book "Real Choices,
New Voices"
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