Fair Elections Update
May 21, 2004
To: Friends of Fair Elections
Fr: Rob Richie, Executive Director
The Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD)
www.fairvote.org,
[email protected]
Re: - Instant runoffs at Utah Republican convention
- Cumulative voting in Amarillo and
corporations
- Welcoming David Moon to CVD
- Highlights of recent webpage postings:
o Register to vote on-line
o Efforts to secure funding for elections
o India's election – and a call for full representation
o UC-Davis and fair student elections
- CVD commentary in the Washington Post and
Legal Times
- News and reviews
o Voting rights amendment gathers support
o An integrated U.S. Senate?
o Books by George Farah and Hendrik Hertzberg
Entrenched in 18th-century democratic structures and practices,
the United States has missed out on many advances in how to run fair elections
and give people the tools to hold their government accountable. The Florida
election debacle in 2000 was just the tip of an iceberg of problems that remains
largely unexamined.
But there are cracks of light that expose new approaches. Take
our work on upgrading voting methods. On May 8, some 3,500 Utah Republicans
gathered for their state convention and used instant runoff voting (IRV) to
nominate candidates for governor (reducing a wide-open field of eight candidates
to two who will advance to a primary) and for Congress and to elect party
officers. IRV is a significant improvement over traditional voting methods in
accommodating voter choice and ensuring majority rule.
The next week, on May 15, voters in Amarillo, Texas, elected
their school board for the third time with cumulative voting. Cumulative voting
is a full representation system that provides all substantial groups of voters
with equal access to elect candidates of their choosing rather than only
representing the largest group of voters. Gaining general acceptance in Amarillo
since its adoption in 1999 to settle a voting rights case, cumulative voting has
had an immediate impact on fair representation. A candidate of color has been
elected in each of the three cumulative voting elections; before its adoption,
no candidate of color had been elected since the 1970s.
In today's update, we have more information about these
elections, feature high-profile editorial commentary suggesting that the best
way to tackle political gerrymandering is full representation and summarize
recent additions to our website.
I'm also pleased to welcome David Moon to the Center. A former
legal intern who graduates this month from the Washington College of Law, David
heads up our outreach about full representation voting methods – see http://fairvote.org/about_us/moon.htm
David already has appeared on CNN this month to discuss voting -- read the
transcript at http://fairvote.org/articles/cnn.htm
We're also looking forward to another energetic crew of seven interns from
around the nations coming to work with us this summer to advance democracy. They
will join our dedicated program associates Stephanie Collier, Danielle Goodreau,
Andrew Kirshenbaum and Chris Martin. Out in the field, Steven Hill, Caleb
Kleppner, Dan Johnson-Weinberger and Terry Bouricius continue to represent CVD
effectively in California, Illinois and Vermont.
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IRV PLAYS MAJOR ROLE IN UTAH / GAINS SUPPORT
On May 8, 2004, the Utah Republican Party held a convention with
3,500 delegates charged with selecting their party's nominees for the often
hotly contested offices of Governor, Attorney General and numerous US
Congressional seats as well as electing party officers. To ensure majority
support for their nominees and save on election time and expense, the Utah
Republicans have been using instant runoff voting (IRV) at state conventions
since 2001. Utah Republicans also use IRV at several county conventions.
Under the party's rules, a candidate can be nominated for an
office at the convention with 60% support; if no candidate reaches that
threshold, the top two face off to a primary. IRV is used to determine if there
is a super-majority winner and, if not, which two candidates advance to the
primary. Before adoption of IRV, there were repeated rounds of in-person voting,
which often took many hours and led to final votes occurring with far fewer
delegates than earlier in the day. Because IRV has meant more people participate
in the decisive vote, it's become very popular with delegates. (Note: If you're
a member of an organization that might experience this problem, don't hesitate
to contact us for information about IRV.)
This year's wide-open gubernatorial race provided a powerful
demonstration of how IRV works. No candidate won even 30% of first choices, and
as the field of eight was reduced to two, it was clear that supporters of
different candidates with different bases of support had coherently ranked their
choices. For instance, when House Speaker Marty Stephens was defeated, only 13
of his 465 ballots went to the incumbent governor Olene Walker, who is not his
political ally. When Walker later was defeated (Walker had become governor after
being elected as lieutenant governor), most of her votes went to Nolan Karras,
propelling him into the final two with Jon Hunstman.
We've posted the results at http://fairvote.org/irv/utahresults.htm
along with several articles about the convention, including one with a helpful
graphic showing how IRV works, at http://fairvote.org/irv/utahindex.html
In addition to the governor's race, IRV was used this year to
nominate candidates for U.S. Congress, attorney general, national committeeman
and national committee woman. Nancy Lord, the new national committeewoman for
Utah, has been an effective voice for using IRV at these conventions and has
expressed interest in discussing its value with Republicans around the
country.
The Republicans' experience with IRV at the convention drew the
attention of the Provo Daily Herald. On May 16, the Herald came out in favor of
adopting IRV for general elections in Utah, concluding, "If Utah wants to
boost public participation and make the electoral process work better, it should
embrace instant runoffs." See http://fairvote.org/editorials/herald.htm
Other recent postings about IRV include:
- In a news articles from MediaChannel.org on "Has Rocking
the Vote Missed the Boat?," youth activists tout IRV and non-winner-
take-all elections as a means to boost voter interest. See http://fairvote.org/articles/rockingthevote.htm
- Newsweek's on-line edition has a lengthy article on
"Under the Hood of the Green Machine" in which IRV's ability to
resolve the "spoiler" controversy is explained. See http://fairvote.org/articles/greens.htm
To track such news and discuss strategic questions, join the
national IRV listserv, which is moderated and limited to no more than two
messages a day. You can review the archives and/or sign up at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/instantrunoff
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CUMULATIVE VOTING AT WORK: AMARILLO, TEXAS AND CORPORATE BOARDS
On May 15, the Amarillo Independent School District -- a
jurisdiction with some 160,000 people -- elected its school board for the third
time with cumulative voting, a non-winner-take-all method of full
representation. In each of these three cumulative voting elections, at least one
candidate of color has been elected. The current board has African American and
Latino representation, after having had only elected white representatives for
some two decades under the winner-take-all system used before 2000. Voter
turnout has increased, although remains quite low; in an encouraging sign, rates
of voter error were extremely low this year.
With cumulative voting, candidates run for more than one seat
– as done in several state legislatures and in many localities. Voters have
the same number of votes as seats, and can choose to allocate them however they
want – including having the right to give more than one vote to one candidate.
When adopting cumulative voting, a jurisdiction is expanding electoral options
for its citizens. It is one of a family of voting methods that we call
"full representation" because they allow more voters to elect someone
to speak for them and represent their interests.
Amarillo's adoption of cumulative voting was the result of
litigation brought by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF),
working with the local branches of the League of United Latin American Citizens
(LULAC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP). The parties in the case agreed to settle the case with the adoption of
cumulative voting in 1999.
Cumulative voting is now used by at least 40 school districts
and 14 city councils across the state of Texas. All these districts adopted
cumulative voting during the 1990s, and burgeoning support for cumulative voting
led then-governor George W. Bush to sign into law a 1995 bill explicitly
allowing cumulative voting to be used in school board elections.
Cumulative voting allows political minorities to gain
representation by focusing their voting strength. For example, the first African
Americans were elected to the Atlanta, TX independent school district (ISD)
school board largely as a result of African American voters' giving all their
votes to these candidates. Prior to the adoption of cumulative voting, many
districts like Atlanta ISD had never had a non-Anglo elected to the school
board, even though African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities were a
substantial part of the population--Atlanta, for example, is 20% African
American.
Cumulative voting also has a long history in shareholder
elections for corporate boards. Many major corporations use cumulative voting
for board elections, and many corporate governance reformers back it. Just this
spring it was just required of all Russian corporations, while this month,
national union leaders backed cumulative voting for Entergy Corporation, arguing
it "would bring an independent perspective to the corporation." For
more on the Entergy resolution, see
http://www.reformentergynow.org
http://fairvote.org/press/entergy.htm
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HIGHLIGHTS OF RECENT WEB POSTINGS
* Register to vote! Joining a growing number of non-profits
seeking to boost voter participation, we've set up a portal with information on
how to vote and how to register to vote on-line, in person or by mail. See http://fairvote.org/turnout/infocenter.htm
* States and the new Election Assistance Commission need more
funds to help states implement the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) fairly and
fully. CVD has joined many groups in a letter calling for funds – see pdf file
at http://fairvote.org/administration/lccr.pdf
* The world's largest democracy, India, elected its parliament
this month, instituting a new electronic voting system nationwide. Voters
surprised the pundits, with the Congress party upsetting the ruling coalition.
As part of CVD's regularly updated collection of articles about full
representation around the world (see http://www.fairvote.org/pr/global/country.htm),
we've posted a new commentary from the Calcutta Times calling for full
representation to replace India's current winner-take-all elections: http://fairvote.org/pr/global/indiasuggestions.htm
* The University of California-Davis is one of more than 20
colleges and universities that now use fair election methods for student
elections. It elects its student council by the choice voting method of full
representation. Student advocates recently provide an analysis of the most
recent choice voting elections at: http://www.ucdgreens.org/cva/addendum.pdf
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FEATURED COMMENTARY: CVD ON GERRYMANDERING
In the wake of last month's Supreme Court ruling in Vieth v.
Jubilirer upholding political gerrymandering as constitutional, CVD
representatives have published several commentaries about the disturbing nature
of the problem and how it is best addressed by adopting full representation
voting methods. Others suggesting that full representation should be on the
table in the wake of the Vieth ruling include Richard Hasen, co-editor of
Election Law Journal and blogger (electionlawblog.org), who wrote in Roll Call
on May 3, 2004 that "States might move to more creative methods of choosing
members of state legislatures such as through the use of cumulative
voting."
Below is a letter by CVD's Rob Richie that was published on May
5 in the Washington Post, followed by an excerpt from a lengthy commentary by
Richie and CVD chairman John Anderson that appeared in the May 17 Legal
Times.
"Elections and Real Representation"
By Rob Richie, Washington Post Letters, May 5, 2004
Fred Hiatt is quite right to finger redistricting as a major
problem with our democracy -- it's simply wrong to allow elected officials to
help their friends and hurt their enemies ["Time to Draw the Line,"
op-ed, May 3]. But with nonpartisan redistricting, the number of competitive
districts around the nation would probably increase from one in 10 seats to
perhaps one in six -- doing little to address the polarized nature of
policymaking on Capitol Hill and under- representation of women and
minorities.
It's time to modify winner-take-all elections, as nearly all
other enduring democracies have. One American example comes from Illinois, where
from 1870 to 1980 candidates for the state House of Representatives ran in
three-seat districts, as is done in most of Maryland. A full-representation
voting method was used that lowered the victory threshold for candidates from 50
to 25 percent.
The Illinois system didn't threaten the two-party system, but it
broadened representation within the parties and promoted more bipartisan policy.
It also gave most voters better choices and fairer representation, and it
boosted representation of women and African Americans.
It would take only a statute to enact the Illinois system of
multi-seat districts for electing the U.S. House members and most state
legislators. Without it most voters are doomed to electoral irrelevance no
matter how we draw district lines.
*************
"A Better Way to Vote" (excerpt)
Legal Times, May 17, 2004, By John B. Anderson and Rob Richie
The Supreme Court's decision last month in Vieth v. Jubilirer to
uphold Pennsylvania's congressional redistricting plan demands that we confront
an uncomfortable fact: We must either change our winner-take-all electoral
system or accept the degradation of democracy…
Breyer in his dissent most directly addresses winner-take-all
elections and "why the Constitution does not insist that the membership of
legislatures better reflect different groups of voters." He states that the
Constitution demands "a method for transforming the will of the majority
into effective government." But his subsequent discussion reflects a
primitive understanding of comparative electoral systems, suggesting that the
only alternative to single-party-majority governments, elected by single-member
districts, is coalition-ridden, multiparty governments like those of Italy and
Israel. In fact, there are other viable alternatives.
Scalia's use of the word "radical" and Breyer's
specter of coalition- ridden Italy point to an underlying problem: Rather than
interpreting the Constitution, the justices are acting as political scientists,
and rather poor ones at that, in leaving undisturbed the status quo of
single-member districts.
Far-from-radical, full-representation voting methods have a
lengthy history in the United States. In fact, Justice Clarence Thomas discussed
them quite cogently in Holder v. Hall (1994), noting that "from the
earliest days of the Republic, multimember districts were a common feature of
our political systems." Non-winner-take-all voting methods used here (in a
growing number of cities) and in some other nations have led to largely
two-party systems, yet still resolve nearly all political gerrymandering
concerns -- and, importantly, all the conflicts the Court has faced in trying to
ensure that racial minorities can elect candidates of their choice.
If non-winner-take-all systems would constitute no
"radical" change, there is simply no constitutional reason to cling to
single- member districts. Indeed, Illinois shows how alternatives to winner-
take-all elections can enhance our political traditions rather than
fundamentally alter them.
From 1870 to 1980, the Illinois lower house had three-seat
constituencies elected by cumulative voting. Voters had three votes each, which
they could give to one candidate or spread among a few. The majority party
usually won two seats, often with two candidates reflecting different elements
within the party. The third seat usually was won by another party with support
from about a quarter of the voters.
After the system was replaced in 1980 (due to a citizen
initiative that sharply reduced the number of representatives), the Illinois
legislature became much more polarized. Today most longtime leaders in both
parties support the return of multi-seat districts, as evidenced by the 2001
recommendation of a bipartisan commission led by former Republican Gov. Jim
Edgar and former Democratic Rep. Abner Mikva. The commission argued that
multi-seat districts would lead to greater cooperation between the parties and
fairer representation across the state.
The Illinois system's one downside -- the fact that parties
often nominated only two candidates to avoid splitting the vote -- could be
addressed by adopting the choice voting method used in Ireland. That system lets
voters indicate their first, second, and third choices, so that voters whose
first choice doesn't win a seat can still help elect their second or third
choice. Also, to ensure greater accuracy of representation statewide, a few
"add-on" seats could be awarded to underrepresented parties, as
recently proposed in the United Kingdom.
Many students of American democracy and nearly every major
newspaper, from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, warn that our
democracy is in crisis because there is so little competition and accountability
in congressional elections. But without challenging the dogma of winner-take-all
districts, any reforms will fall short of addressing the real crisis. To
confront the political realities of the 21st century and rebuild a vibrant,
accountable representative democracy, we must turn to American systems of full
representation.
[The full commentary in pdf form is posted at: http://fairvote.org/redistricting/legaltimes.htm]
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NEWS AND REVIEWS
* Voting rights amendment gathers support: HJR 28, Rep. Jesse
Jackson Jr.'s right-to-vote amendment, now has 35 co-sponsors. See http://fairvote.org/righttovote/index.htm.
Meanwhile, the proposed Iraqi constitution would give its citizens the right to
vote, as indeed is the case in most nations. Article 20 reads "Every Iraqi
who fulfills the conditions stipulated in the electoral law has the right to
stand for election and cast his ballot secretly in free, open, fair,
competitive, and periodic elections."
* An integrated U.S. Senate: Colorado's Ben "Nighthorse"
Campbell's announcement that he would retire from the U.S. Senate this year
presents the possibility that the 49 U.S. states on the continent of North
America will not have any people of color representing them in the U.S. Senate.
Currently the Senate has 97 whites, two Asian Americans from Hawaii and
Campbell, who is a Native American. Hopes for a more integrated Senate likely
rest on strong U.S. Senate candidates who are racial minorities running this
year in Colorado (Latino), Florida (Latino) and Illinois (African
American).
* Notable books: Hendrik Hertzberg, the New Yorker magazine's
elegant writer who has served on our board of directors since 1995, will have a
book collection coming out in June called "Politics: Observations and
Arguments, 1966-2004" (Penguin Books). It will include some of Rick's best
writing in favor of full representation and instant runoff voting. Last month,
Open Debates executive director George Farah's book "No Debate: How the
Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential
Debates" (Seven Stories Press) was released – it highlights the need for
a true citizens' commission to run the presidential debates.
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The Center for Voting and Democracy is a non-profit organization
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