E-News Update
July 22,
2002
To: Friend of Fair
Elections From: Rob Richie, Executive
Director The Center for Voting and Democracy www.fairvote.org, [email protected]
Greetings!
This update is to alert you to exciting developments in our work for
fair elections and explain plans for future communication. As an
organization devoted to increasing public understanding of American
politics and how to reform its rules to provide more competition,
better choices and fairer representation, we believe that we have
entered a remarkable period -- remarkable for new opportunities to
expose how electoral rules inhibit choice, competition, political
discourse and representation and for new energy to pursue reform.
The Center is a non-profit based
outside of Washington D.C. headed by former Congressman and 1980
presidential candidate John B. Anderson. It is a year of
anniversaries for us. We are celebrating our 10-year anniversary
this summer, while last week John hosted a gathering for his 80th
birthday attended by such luminaries of the independent politics
movement as Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords, former Congressman and
current Minnesota Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tim
Penny, consumer advocate and 2000 presidential candidate Ralph Nader
and top aides to former Connecticut governor Lowell Weicker. A trip to our website particularly the items in
"what's new" and "media coverage
" -- will help explain why we think
the current time is so potentially momentous. You will find: News of how instant runoff voting is exploding onto the
reform landscape
. Instant runoff voting (IRV) is a
ranked-choice system designed to accommodate more than two choices
in an election for a single winner (like president, governor, mayor
and legislators elected in single-member districts). It allows
voters to vote their conscience without calculations of "wasted
votes" and "spoilers" and ensures that the winner has true majority
support among constituents. This year San Francisco voted to
implement "IRV" for its major elections, 53 of 56 town meetings in
Vermont voted to endorse it for statewide elections, the Utah
Republican Party used IRV to nominate congressional candidates at
its state convention, major universities adopted IRV for student
elections (young people are often supportive of IRV) and leading
newspapers around the nation endorsed it -- most recently the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Next up for IRV:
Alaskans on August 27 will vote to implement IRV for federal
elections (including president in 2004) and most state elections.
Keep tuned to our website for news on Alaska and on data that
reveals just how traditional two-runoffs in the United States waste
taxpayer money, exacerbate campaign finance abuses and depress
turnout. Information on Steven
Hill's new book "Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner
Take All Politics"
Our west coast director, Steven
Hill has produced a book that has the
power and depth to be the "Silent Spring" of the electoral reform
movement. Donors of $100 to our Center (see www.fairvote.org/donate.htm
for on-line and postal
opportunities) will receive a signed copy of Steven's book, and of
course one can find it at bookstores everywhere. Catch Steven on
Monday, July 22 on the Fox News Channel at 5:40 pm ET on the John
Gibson show and on C-SPAN's "Booktalk" in the coming weeks (C-SPAN
covered his book tour on July 18). The latest full
representation voting methods
Full representation (meaning
"proportional" systems in which like-minded voters earn a share of
seats equal to their share of votes) frequently speak to voters'
frustration with politics and are a powerful means to fulfill the
promise of the Voting Rights Act. This spring, for example, Amarillo, Texas used cumulative
voting for a second time for its school board elections, with
results that provided both dramatically fairer representation and
broad community support, while the League of Women Voters of
Washington endorsed full
representation
for elections
in its state. A state-by-state review
of the current round of redistricting
The redrawing of legislative
districts in the wake of the 2000 census has had the overall impact
of further limiting voter choice - indeed more than 60 U.S. House
incumbents will have no major party opposition and fewer than one in
10 U.S. House races are considered competitive. The Center's
comprehensive website on redistricting
details what has
happened and what we can do to improve it. In August, we will issue
predictions in the 2002 congressional races based on the partisan
tilt in districts, and be equipped to make predictions in the great
majority of November 2004 elections immediately after this year's
elections. We also will be helping to convene political reform
leaders to discuss how to pursue fairer redistricting in the future.
Looking Ahead We will send out short updates
about once a month that will highlight one or two news development
about voting system reform and a new finding from our reports on
politics. We hope that you will appreciate these updates, but if you
would like to be off the distribution list, let us know by replying
with the word "remove" in the subject or body of your message. (If
you would like to subscribe to moderated lists with more frequent
updates, indicate so in a reply to this email or access the lists at
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/instantrunoff
for instant runoff voting and www.groups.yahoo.com/group/Voice4All
for full representation.)
Finally, it is indeed our 10-year
anniversary, and we're trying to increase our membership by 20% and
encourage supporters to give us gifts of at least $100. We rely on
contributions to finance our five field sites and nine staff members
around the country (D.C, San Francisco, Chicago, Vermont and San
Antonio) and all that they do to promote reform and better
understanding of elections. Please send your contribution to the
Center at 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610, Takoma Park MD 20910 or
donate online at www.fairvote.org/donate.htm
. Enjoy your summer, and remember
to catch Steven Hill on Fox and C-SPAN! E-Mail updates from prior months
are archived |