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4/30/97 Update: Pop Quiz, Fusion Ruling, International Elections

To: CV&D members, educators and electoral reformers

From: Rob Richie, Executive Director Center for Voting and Democracy http://www.igc.org/cvd/

Re: Update on proportional representation, elections and electoral reform

Here is one of the Center for Voting and Democracy's periodic updates on proportional representation, elections and electoral reform. Proportional representation -- perhaps more accurately called "full representation," as I will call it in this update in a test of a new phrase -- describes elections in which political parties or self-defined communities of interest win seats in proportion to their support among the overall electorate. 51% of the votes earns a majority of seats rather than 100%. 10% of votes earns 10% of seats rather than none. Most major democracies use systems of "full representation." There is rapidly growing interest in their adoption in the United States. See our award-winning web site at http://www.igc.org/cvd/ for more information.

POP QUIZ

Test your knowledge of elections in the United States and abroad! Answers provided at the end of this update.....

International Elections

1. Of the 43 democracies in the world with at least two million people and with a high rating of "1" or "2" from the human rights organization Freedom House, how many use a U.S.-style plurality election system? How many uses forms of full representation?

2. What democracy had the highest rate of voter participation in a national election in 1996? What voting system do they use?

3. In the most recent elections in Germany and New Zealand, how much more likely is a woman to be elected by full representation than in U.S.-style one-seat districts?

4. How many times has a political party in the United Kingdom won a majority of the popular vote in elections since World War II?

5. In 1993, candidates for the Liberal Party in Canada won 53% of the popular vote in Ontario? What percentage of Ontario's 99 seats did they win?

United States

6. Of 103 U.S. House Members who were first elected between 1980 and 1988 and who ran for re-election in 1996, how many won? How many won by a margin of more than 10%? How many won by more than 30%?

7. Since 1952, what two elections in the United States have had the highest rate of "straight ticket" voting (meaning voters supporting candidates of the same party) for president and Congress?

8. What percentage of Americans rate the job of Congress as excellent? What percentage approve of its job?

9. Of the 200 state legislative seats in Massachusetts, how many were contested by both major parties in 1996? What percentage of the 5,958 state legislative seats elected in 1996 around the nation were contested?

10. Of 211 state legislative seats in New York, how many were won by margins of at least 10% in 1996?

* * *

We live in interesting times, it is said. Certainly it is true for electoral reformers. For example:

* On April 28, in upholding the right of states to prohibit the practice of fusion (cross-endorsement of candidates by two different parties), the Supreme Court mistook some dusty work of political science for the U.S. Constitution and found that states have a compelling interest to seek to preserve the stability of a two-party system -- even though not a single other major democracy has a two-party system and even though the Constitution says not a word about the two-party system and the method of election for the U.S. House of Representatives.

* On Friday, President Clinton will dedicate a new memorial in Washington for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Among FDR's many important qualities, he was a reformer. As governor of New York, he was a quiet supporter of full representation -- supporting its adoption for New York city council elections -- and as president supported the adoption of fusion in New York. His son, FDR Jr., joined then-New York senators Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits in co- chairing a campaign to bring full representation to New York City in the 1960s. Yet don't hold your breath waiting for dignitaries on Friday to join FDR in calling for challenges to the two-party system!

* Tomorrow (May 1st), elections in the United Kingdom likely will result in a landslide victory in seats (if not votes, as no party has won a majority of votes in the UK for over five decades for the Labour Party after 18 years of rule by the Conservative Party. The election also may lead to Britain -- the prime mover of all winner-take-all democracies, as nearly all of the remaining democracies that use U.S.-style plurality elections are former British colonies -- converting to full representation (FR). The Labour Party has pledged a national referendum on adoption of a FR system for the House of Commons and conversion to FR for elections to the European Parliament -- all other European democracies elect representatives to the European parliament by FR.

The growing frustrations of the British people with their winner-take-all system should be familiar to Americans: serious distortions between votes won and seats won; the relatively few districts that draw serious attention from the parties; the ever-more sophisticated campaigning for "floater voters" in these marginal districts; and the under- representation of women and the nation's diversity. The continuing slide in Britain's economic performance -- down from 13th in the world in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person in 1979 to 22nd in the world now, falling behind countries like Italy, Ireland and Finland -- is indication that one-party "stability" need not translate into effective policy- making.

E. J. Dionne wrote recently in the Washington Post: "Why is this British election sparking such interest among American politicians in the United States?... Since the 1960s, British and American politics have moved to similar rhythms, which makes us look to each other for clues about the future." Let us hope that the United States follows the lead of the United Kingdom and looks seriously at alternatives to winner-take-all voting.

National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" did a very good story tonight (April 30) on the reasons that proportional representation is attracting such attention in the UK, but most of the U.S. press has missed this important story. Here is an excerpt from a very good story that appeared on the Reuters news wire on April 24.

HAYES, England, April 24 (Reuter) - If you live in Bishop's Road in Hayes, you belong to a small group of voters which could make a difference to the outcome of Britain's May 1 election.
For despite a national voters' roll of 44 million, Britain's electoral system bestows enormous influence on just a few thousand people in strategic areas of the country....
While each vote in Hayes and Harlington constituency carries great weight, first-past-the-post voting effectively disenfranchises huge swathes of the British public.
A few miles (km) towards central London, in the stately streets of Kensington and Chelsea, support for the ruling Conservative party is so solid that a vote for anybody else counts for nothing.
Under the Westminster system, Britain is carved into 659 geographical constituencies and the candidate with most votes in each area wins a parliamentary seat. Ballots for other candidates in the constituency are disregarded. ...
The big publicity effort focuses on the marginals, while the safe seats are left to their own devices. Voters in marginals are peppered with phone calls and pamphlets
from every party.....
The Westminster system has few supporters other than the main beneficiaries, the big two parties.
``You would find it difficult to find anybody in the academic establishment who would support the current system... According to some calculations, the outcome of the last election was decided by as few as 1,200 people,'' said political scientist David Denver, of the University of Lancaster.
``There are now very few countries left in the world which use this system. Emerging democracies are much more likely to adopt a system of proportional representation,'' he told Reuters....
Denver said a Labour victory in the election would increase the likelihood of electoral reform within the next decade. ``They are committed to some kind of change...I would be very disappointed if they did not follow it through,'' he said.

* In their upcoming elections Canada and France may well showcase the instability -- take note, Supreme Court justices -- that easily can come with winner-take-all elections. Canada's 1993 elections in U.S.-style one-seat districts were a travesty of democracy. The country's largest party -- the Liberals -- won 60% of seats with 42% of the national vote. The second and third largest parties -- a Quebec-based party seeking independence for Quebec and the western-based Reform party -- won their seats without a single contest between candidates from the two parties. The Conservative party, which had a majority of seats coming into the election, won a total of 2 seats (0.7%) with 16% of the vote. At a provincial level, the results were even more bizarre. It is no surprise that many in Canada -- including the editorial writers of the Toronto Globe and Mail, the nation's biggest newspaper -- call for a full representation system.

France's last elections in 1994 -- held in run-off elections in single-member districts -- were also wildly unfair. The two major parties in the center-right coalition now governing the nation won less than 40% of votes in the first round of elections, but ultimately won 82% of seats. France had full representation for one election in the 1980s, and many have called for its return in recent months, ranging from prime minister Alain Juppe (before being shouted down by others in his coalition) to a group of influential women politicians unhappy with France's dismal percentage of women in parliament to the several strong smaller parties that win their fair share of seats in elections to the European parliament.

* Interest in full representation is growing quickly in the United States in the 1990s. To touch on recent examples, in March, the ACLU of Washington State completed an exhaustive one-year process of studying full representation and became the first state ACLU affiliate to take a position on FR. It supported lifting all legal and constitutional barriers to use of FR and made a strong statement of support for use of FR systems in voting rights cases. In addition, several local chapters of the League of Women Voters -- including ones in Pasadena and Mountain View, California, Miami (OH) and Seattle (WA) -- have held forums on full representation or done studies on it.

Hendrik Hertzberg, editorial editor of the New Yorker and a board member of the Center, gave a speech on full representation at New York University on April 15th that drew 200 people. More and more thoughtful political observers like Hertzberg are thinking seriously about full representation in the United States; Hertzberg and I had a good meeting with the editorial board of the New York Times in April. Recent books making plugs for FR include James Campbell's "Cheap Seats: The Democratic party's Advantage in U.S. House Elections" and Daniel Lazare's "The Frozen Republic." The Center's west coast coordinator Steven Hill, our president John Anderson and I have had articles and commentaries on proportional representation in 1997 in the last few months in the New York Times, Roll Call, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Washington Times, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Social Policy (see the full text on our web site) and more.

In April, I joined North Carolina member Lee Mortimer in testifying before the Better Campaigns Commission of North Carolina, a commission which was headed by four former governors; there was significant interest in FR. An election laws commission in North Carolina earlier this year gave bi-partisan support for a bill to allow localities to adopt full representation systems.

In Georgia, senior state legislator Bob Holmes introduced legislation on full representation this year: one bill to adopt cumulative voting for congressional elections and another to adopt choice voting. Rep. Holmes plans to chair hearings on the bills in different parts of the state during the summer. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia plans to introduce a bill in Congress to restore states' opportunities to use FR systems.

There is simmering activism in a number of states. Examples include: Washington (where a pro-full representation group seeks to put choice voting on the ballot for Seattle city council elections and drew great interest this year from a charter commission in the state's largest county); Oregon (where a coalition is planning a statewide campaign for FR); Illinois (where a pro-FR group nearly put choice voting on the ballot in Urbana and plans a statewide campaign); and California (where the largest state pro-FR group, Northern California Citizens for Proportional Representation, is following up the campaign for choice voting in San Francisco in 1996 with a range of efforts). See links at our web site to the web pages of most of the above organizations.

ANSWERS TO POP QUIZ:

1. Of the 43 democracies in the world with at least two million people and with a high rating from the human rights organization Freedom House, only five use U.S.-style plurality election systems. 35 use full representation systems.

2. The democracy with the highest rate of voter participation in an election in 1996 was Malta, with 97% turnout. Unlike some high turnout democracies, Malta does not require people to vote. It does use a form of full representation -- choice voting -- that some in the United States have criticized as "too complicated." Tell that to the voters of Malta -- and to the voters in Ireland and Australia who use choice voting (also known as preference voting) for national elections.

3. In the most recent elections in Germany and New Zealand, women were three times as likely to be elected in the half of seats elected by full representation than in the half elected by U.S.-style one-seat districts. The ratio was 39% to 13% in Germany in 1994 and 45% to 15% in New Zealand in 1996.

Women consistently win more seats in full representation elections than winner-take-all. Women in state legislative elections in the United States even do significantly better in winner-take-all, multi-seat districts than one-seat districts; they would better still with FR.

4. No political party in the United Kingdom has won a majority of the popular vote in elections since World War II. The Conservative party never won more than 44% of the vote -- which is less than the percentage won by Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988 -- in its 18 years of government since 1979.

5. In 1993, candidates for the Liberal Party in Canada won 98 of 99 Ontario's seats with only 53% of the popular vote. The province-by-province results in the 1993 elections in Canada were classic examples of distortions of majority rule and minority representation. Expect more of the same in the upcoming Canadian election in June.

6. In 1996, of the 113 Members in the House of Representatives who were first elected in the 1980-1988: all 103 won; 109 won by at least 10% (e.g., more than 55%- 45%); and 85 won by at least 30% (e.g., more than 65%-35%).

Districts won by less than 10% are considered "marginal" districts that have some chance of changing hands in the next election. Don't count on the "Class of the 1980s" to face much serious opposition in 1998.

7. The two elections in the United States that have had the highest rate of "straight ticket" voting in elections in the last 44 years for President and Congress are 1992 (highest) and 1996 (second highest). (Congressional Quarterly magazine, April 12-19, 1997)

Straight ticket voting makes it all the easier to draw legislative district lines to help one party or another and create "safe" seats for incumbents. Political gerrymandering is the great overlooked scandal of our political system; the only way to make all elections competitive elections is to adopt full representation systems.

8. Percentage of Americans who rate the job of Congress as excellent: 2%. Percentage who approve of its job: 32%. (April 1997 poll by Louis Harris and Associates) The Supreme Court of course might label this rating as more evidence of our stability. Similarly, many pundits argue that our historically low voter turnout in 1996 was a sign of voter contentment with government....

9. Of the 200 state legislative seats in Massachusetts, only 63 (31.5%) were contested by both major parties in 1996. Nationwide, 32.8% of state legislative seats were not contested -- actually down from 36% in the last two presidential elections in 1988 and 1992.

Few state legislative districts are competitive -- largely due to the fundamentally one-party nature of most legislative districts. Contrary to some wishful thinkers, it is often true that the smaller the level of government, the lower the rate of competitiveness and voter participation in winner- take-all elections.

10. Of 211 state legislative seats in New York, 201 were won by more than 10% in 1996.

As additional evidence of New York state 's rather lackluster democracy, more than half of all U.S. House races in New York were won by more than 40% (e.g., 70%-30%) in elections from 1982 to 1996.

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