Fair Elections Update
November 5, 2004
To: Friends of Fair Elections
From: Rob Richie, Executive Director
FairVote-The Center for Voting and Democracy
Re:
- Big wins for instant runoff voting in cities
- We still need to protect our right to vote
- Election 2004: Revealing and surprising facts
We’ve been sifting through the results of the November 2nd elections. They
tell important stories – ones that in some cases have been overlooked or
misinterpreted by many observers. I think you'll enjoy perusing through our
findings below.
I also wanted to report on three landslide wins for instant runoff voting at the
ballot this November. Instant runoff voting (www.fairvote.org) is rapidly
growing in popularity as a means to elect majority winners when more than two
candidates contest an executive / one-winner office.
* Proposal B on Ferndale, Michigan's ballot won by a lopsided 69%-31% margin.
The proposal amends Ferndale's city charter to provide for election of the mayor
and City Council through the use of IRV pending the availability and purchase of
compatible software and approval of the equipment by the Ferndale Election
Commission. A suburb of Detroit with about 17,600 voters that are relatively
balanced between Democrats and Republicans, Ferndale had a very energetic,
effective campaign led by Ferndale IRV: www.firv.org
* In Vermont, voters in Burlington overwhelmingly passed an advisory referendum
on whether the city charter should be amended to use IRV for the election of the
mayor. Under Burlington's current charter, a candidate for mayor can win with as
little as 40% of the vote (meaning 60% might consider that candidate the worst
choice), and if no candidate achieves that threshold, a separate runoff election
is held. These provisions offer the worst of both worlds, creating the risk of a
"spoiler"
scenario and also the potential cost and lower turnout typical of a separate
runoff. Some 66% of voters approved the ballot item, meaning that a formal
charter amendment is likely to move forward in March.
* Voters in 16 western Massachusetts towns approved a non-binding motion in
support of IRV, by a margin of 11,956 to 5,568. The question directed state
representative Steve Kulik to vote in favor of legislation or a constitutional
amendment to require IRV for elections to statewide office (such as Governor,
Treasurer, Auditor and Secretary of the Commonwealth
The final good news on the instant runoff voting was San Francisco's first IRV
election. Despite introducing the system to voters in the midst of a
presidential year, the city reported a smooth transition. First-choice results
were reported on election night. With absentee and provisional ballots being
integrated into the totals, initial runs of the IRV program
should take place on Friday -- in the future we expect quicker results, and
cities and states that require all absentee votes to be in place by election
night could run IRV tallies that evening. For a San Francisco Chronicle news
article, see: http://fairvote.org/sf/sfchronicle110304.htm
Before turning to our "Election 2004 by the Numbers", I will make one
point about the election process in this country. Many observers are suggesting
that the election went smoothly. Although we applaud all the election officials,
observers and alert voters who helped make our elections work better than in
they could have been, we would politely disagree that having only 71% of our
adult population registered to vote and forcing some voters to wait in lines
that take more than 10 hours are signs of a well-operating electoral process.
More fundamentally, I believe we aren't hearing as much about problems in
significant part because this year one state isn't holding the future of the
presidency in an election requiring a recount. If Ohio had been 100,000 votes
closer, we suspect we would be hearing hourly stories about controversial
practices, the "chads" that are used on Ohio's many punchard machines,
why there were so many provisional ballots, how overseas ballots were handled,
double-voting and the like. We continue to have a patchwork of laws and
practices that are an ongoing accident waiting to happen.
We are developing a series of recommendations for congressional action to
protect our citizenship right to vote, starting with a right to vote in the
Constitution and continuing through statutory changes such as universal
registration to ensure clean and complete voter rolls, making Election Day a
holiday to ensure both an adequate pool of pollworkers and increased access for
voters, and uniform standards for voting equipment. We can -- and must -- do
better, and we would be foolish to become complacent.
Onto our report on "Election 2004 By the Numbers." Our key findings
include:
* The 2004 election was in fact a very status quo one, reflected by the near
exact Electoral College mirror of 2004 to 2000 and the almost perfect stasis in
U.S. House races. Even the Senate gains from Republicans fit into this pattern,
with all Republican gains coming on ground that already was firmly Republican in
2000. Of course when Republicans control the White House and Congress, a status
quo election is a victory for their party.
* The House of Representatives has reached a breathtaking level of
non-competitiveness. More than 95% of seats were won by margins of more than 10%
- a record. Only four incumbents outside of Texas didn’t win by at least 4%,
and only three were defeated. The House has changed partisan control only once
since 1954 – and unless Republicans suffer major setbacks in the 2006 midterm
election, it almost certainly
won’t change hands anytime soon. This lack of competition is partly due to
redistricting, partly due to incumbent advantages, partly due to campaign
finance – but primarily due to the fact of winner-take-all elections in
single-member districts. We support full representation voting methods as the
one indispensable part of any reform package seeking to provide real choices and
fair representation to all voters.
* Our Monopoly Politics projections in US House races were extremely accurate on
victory margins. Made without any attention to campaign financing and candidate
behavior and using a one-size-fits-all model, we projected landslide wins in 211
seats – and 210 those seats indeed were won by 20% landslide margins. Of the
13 seats we identified as most vulnerable with our model, fully 7 changed
parties – among only 11 of 435 seats that changed overall. Only six seats
changed hands in 403 seats outside of Texas.
Here is more detail on our findings for each level of election:
* Presidency:
- George Bush certainly ran more strongly than in 2000, a year in which he
received a half million fewer votes than Al Gore. This year President Bush’s
popular vote victory margin will likely be about 3.5 million votes – and was
much larger in total numbers of votes received due to the rise in participation.
His percentage of the vote rose consistently by 2-3% in most states, reflecting
a general rise in the national tide of support -- although one that Democrats
countered to some degree in such battlegrounds as Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin.
- At the same time, 48 of 51 the Electoral College contests (in the 50 states
and the District of Columbia) voted for or against Bush according to how they
had voted for Bush in 2000. A shift of only 35,000 votes in Iowa and New Mexico
(Bush’s narrowest wins in 2004 and Gore’s closest wins in 2000) and New
Hampshire (Kerry’s closest win in 2004 and one of Bush’s two closest wins in
2000) would have resulted in all 51 contests going exactly as they had gone in
2000.
- If Bush’s victory had been smaller – perhaps by one million votes instead
of three – John Kerry likely would have won Ohio and thus the Electoral
College and the presidency. That win would have meant two consecutive
dysfunctional presidential elections where the popular vote winner did not win
the presidency. This year’s race easily could have gone to a 269-269 tie,
after which the U.S. House would have picked the president, with one vote per
state – a tie would have occurred if Kerry had won a total of 46,000 more
votes in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico (and perhaps a good deal less once all the
provisional ballots are counted).
- For those dismayed by how the presidential campaigns so clearly focused all
their energy and resources on the 16-18 states defined as battlegrounds, watch
out. If anything, the number of battlegrounds likely will decline in 2008. If
this year’s national vote had been a 50-50 tie and the vote share had changed
equally across the nation, only 5 states would likely have been decided by less
than 4%, and only 15 states by less than 8%. Democratic states in fact are more
solid than Republican ones in this scenario – a tie vote this year certainly
would have elected John Kerry based on this year’s results. Thus, don’t
expect more inclusive presidential campaigning in 2008 – and quite possibly an
even smaller one, with all attention again paid on the two big truly swing
states, Florida and Ohio.
- For Republicans to win all 50 states, their candidate likely would need to win
more than 63% of the national vote. (Republicans can forget completely about
winning in Washington, D.C., where Bush in 2004 did not crack double digits). A
similar vote share for Democrats would likely win only 42 states; to win all 50
seats, their candidate likely would need to win more than 70% of the national
vote. These sharp differences reflect how the nation’s partisan polarization
is very real. Exit polls suggest that George Bush won only 10% support from
African-Americans (11% of all voters) and John Kerry won only 23% of evangelical
Christians (22% of all voters).
* U.S. Senate
- Republicans had a net gain of four seats in the Senate, but there are
important caveats about the mandate in that result. First, in U.S. Senate races
Democratic candidates overall won approximately three million
more votes than Republicans. Second, Republicans only gained seats in
states that George Bush had carried in 2000 at the same time he lost the
national popular vote -- Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina,
South Carolina and South Dakota. Third, five of their six seat gains were
in open seats without incumbents, and each of the winning Republicans
in these open seat races ran behind George Bush’s winning total in the state.
- The sixth seat gain for Republicans was in South Dakota, where Tom
Daschle was defeated by less than 5,000 votes (and where he and his
opponent John Thune spent more than $30 million in an election where
390,000 votes were cast – more than $75 per vote). Daschle was the
only Senate incumbent to lose; the Democrats’ two gains were in open
seats in Republican-leaning Colorado and Democrat-leaning Illinois.
*U.S. House of Representatives
- This House election was the least competitive in history. 416 out of 435 seats
(95.6%) were won by non-competitive victory margins of at least 10%. 369 out of
435 seats (84.8%) were won by landslide margins of at least 20%. More than 99%
of incumbents outside of Texas won, with only three (one Democrat and two
Republicans) losing. (Four Democratic incumbents lost in Texas after being
victimized by brutal gerrymandering, as detailed below, including two losing to
Republican incumbents.) Only one victorious incumbent won by less than 4%. Note
that these safe incumbents won in an election where the voter turnout was 50%
higher than it had been in 2002 -- but the new voters broke along very similar
partisan lines, based largely on the partisan nature of most districts.
- George Bush’s coattails were very limited. Outside of Texas (see below for
more on the impact of that state’s 2003 gerrymander), Republicans picked up
only two seats in the U.S. House and lost four. Republicans defeated only one
Democratic incumbent (by 1,365 votes in a district that George Bush likely
carried by more than 45,000 votes) and gained only one open seat, winning by
31,000 in a district that Bush likely carried by 70,000 votes. All but two of
the remaining Democratic
incumbents won by margins of at least 10% -- and those by the relatively
comfortable margins of 7% and 9%. Only five Democrats, including those defeating
incumbents and winning open seats, won by less than 7%, and only one won by less
than 4%. Republican targets among incumbents in 2006 are quite limited.
- Open seats went heavily to the party that had already been holding that
seat – 29 of 33, with one of those seat changes in a much-changed district in
Texas. Of those 33 seats, 30 went to the candidate of the party whose
presidential candidate had carried the district in 2000.
- Tom Delay’s Texas gerrymander was immensely successful for Republicans.
Democrats lost no seats in the 2002 elections after the 2002 redistricting,
resulting in a delegation that was 17-15 Democratic. Today, in the wake
of this week’s elections in the 2003 plan, the delegation is 21-11 Republican,
a shift of six seats. Just as conceived by the plan’s architects, white
congressional Democrats were decimated, reduced from 10 in 2003 to three. Of
these three, one (Edwards) won by just 4% in his heavily Republican district,
and the other two represent Latino-majority districts. By 2012, it is quite
possible that no white Democrat will represent Texas in Congress.
- In November 2002, within days of the election, we issued our “Monopoly
Politics” projections for November 2004 House races, for which we needed to
know absolutely nothing about campaign financing, the quality of challengers and
incumbent voting records and behavior. The only changes we have made since then
were factoring in the 33 open seats and the 32 seats changed in the Texas
redistricting plan. Once our one-size-fits-all formula was adjusted with that
information, we projected 211 landslide winners of at least 20% -- and 210
indeed did win by landslide. We projected another 107 comfortable wins of at
least 10% – and 105 indeed did win. We projected another 33 winners – and 32
won. Yes, despite missing only four projected margins out of 351, we did have
two of our projected winners (Phil Crane in Illinois and the open seat in
Colorado’s CD-3) defeated – making three errors out of more than 1,600
projected winners in the five House elections starting in 1996.
- Washington state voters adopted (even as California voters rejected) a
version of Louisiana’s “top two” system. This year’s elections were the
latest example of the quirks of this system. In Louisiana, all candidates run on
the November ballot. If no candidate reaches 50%, the two top vote-getters face
off in December. (In Washington, the first round will take place in September,
with the top two always facing off in November.) There will be two hotly
contested runoffs this December in competitive seats in Louisiana, both with one
Democrat and one Republican.
In CD-3 all Republican candidates won a total of 59% of the vote
and
all Democrats won a total of 41%. But the third-place Republican candidate
finished less than 2,100 behind the second-place Democrat, with another 10,300
votes going to a Republican who lagged behind – the December contest thus
easily could have been between two Republicans. In Washington State, we suspect
third party candidates will almost never now be able to contest the November
election, and key races will regularly lack a candidate from one of the major
parties.
* Women, racial minorities and third parties:
- Women increased from holding 60 U.S. House seats to 64 seats, just
shy of 15% of the House, A woman candidate has a solid chance of winning one of
Louisiana’s two runoff elections in December. Women maintained their 14% of
U.S. Senate seats and will drop from nine gubernatorial seats to seven or eight
depending on whether Christine Gregoire wins her undecided Washington State
election.
- After gaining no U.S. House seats in 2002 after redistricting, African-
Americans gained three new House seats in Texas, Missouri and Wisconsin. Asian
Americans gained a new seat in Louisiana, and Latinos a new seat in Colorado.
After six years without an African-American or Latino in the U.S. Senate,
African American Barack Obama won in Illinois and Latinos Ken Salazar and Mel
Martinez won in Colorado and Florida. White men and women now hold 49 of 50
gubernatorial seats and 95 of 100 Senate seats.
- Third parties had a sharply reduced impact in the presidential election,
with the total third party under 1%. Third parties also had limited impact
on congressional races, with only two victorious Senate and House candidates
apparently held below 50%. Third parties increased their number of seats in
state legislatures, but primarily in Vermont, where the Progressives now hold
six seats.
* Governors and state legislatures
- Gubernatorial elections continue to be the single-most competitive level of
election in the United States. Fully half of all states have had a governor from
a new party in the past four years. Four of the 10 governor’s races that have
been decided changes parties – the 11th race in Washington is too close to
call.
-According to the National Conference of State Legislators, Democrats gained 76
state legislative seats around the nation and picked up more legislative
chambers than their Republican counterparts. As a reflection of a 50-50 nation,
Democrats lead by just 12 seats out of a total of 7,382 seats. We reported this
fall that only 61% of state legislative seats were even contested by both major
parties See:
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/press/2004/pr041103a.htm
(NCSL news release)
http://fairvote.org/reports/uncontestedraces.htm
(uncontested races)
* Voter turnout
- According to Curtis Gans and the Committee on the Study of the American
Electorate (CSAE), voter turnout (not counting those who made mistakes in their
votes for president) will likely end up being more than 120 million adults,
which is 59.6% of eligible citizens – the highest since 1968, when 61.9% of
turnout and up from 2000 (54.3%), 1996 (51.5%) and 1992 (58.1%). Voter turnout
rose in all but one state (Arizona). We will post CSAE's report on Friday,
November 5.
- Turnout in the presidential battleground states increased by 6.3%. Turnout in
the other states increased by only 3.8%. Turnout in noncompetitive New York rose
by only 0.8%, while in hotly contested Florida and Ohio it rose by more than 8%.
At least three states voted at higher rates than the part of the United States
that in 2000 and most other recent years has had the highest turnout in the
nation: Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is not allowed to vote for president despite
its people being American citizens, but it again had a hotly contested race for
governor, resulting in turnout of 70.5% of eligible voters. According to CSAE,
this year's turnout was only higher in Minnesota (76.5), Wisconsin (73.7%) and
New Hampshire (71.6%) and may ultimately be iin Oregon and Maine. Helping to
explain its high turnout, Puerto Rico makes voting a holiday and has legislative
elections that allow small parties to win seats through full representation.
Minnesota, Maine, Wisconsin and New Hampshire all have election day
registration. Oregon has vote-by-mail.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.
Rob |