E-mail Archives6/2/98 To: CV&D Core list Here is the second of two updates to the new "core list". As described in the accompanying update, core list updates are collections of material for people with a particular interest in voting system reform and elections. (If you would rather not receive them, please let me know.) This update focuses on elections and reform in the United States. It includes: - John Anderson's 5/98 commentary on Supreme Court ruling # # # (The following commentary ran on a national wire service the week of May 25th. If you know of any papers where it appeared, please let us know.) Taxpayer-Financed Exclusion: Believers in democracy, take note. The U.S. Supreme Court is not your friend. The Court this week ruled that public broadcast stations have broad discretion to exclude ballot-qualified candidates from their debates. In a 6-3 vote, the Court reversed a lower court that had ruled that the Arkansas Educational Television Network violated the free-speech rights of independent candidate Ralph Forbes by keeping him out of a 1992 congressional debate. The ruling is deadly for nearly all those choosing to run outside the major parties. They already face near-certain electoral defeat because of our winner-take-all electoral system -- one where winning 25% of the vote just makes you a spoiler rather than worthy of representing one in four voters. Now they have no guarantee of even being heard. In modern politics, television is the medium for the message. Door-knocking is a quaint relic, with congressional districts having more than a half million people. The private news media hardly is a trustworthy filter for giving candidates a fair shake, and few states produce election guides. That leaves television and radio. The public has licensed much of the airwaves to private companies, but could require those companies to give a little bit back through free air-time for political candidates. But this week's ruling not only allows taxpayer-supported stations to exclude candidates it deems not worthy of public consideration; it would allow third party and independent candidates to be arbitrarily left out of any reform establishing access to the airwaves. Let's be clear about what we have in the United States: a political monopoly of Democrats and Republicans. We have some eight thousand state legislative and congressional seats. There are a handful of independent representatives, but absolutely none are from ballot-qualified minor parties such as the Libertarians, Greens and Reform Party. The "two-party system" of course has its advocates, but even they might acknowledge that these two particular parties -- Republicans and Democrats -- are not the only ones ever worthy of consideration. Surely Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party had the right to displace another party when it rose from minor party status in the mid-nineteenth century. What makes our political monopoly particularly dangerous is that since World War II, the Democrats and Republicans often form a "grand coalition" to carry out policy. One party has typically held the presidency and the other Congress. Deals between Republicans and Democrats are necessary for almost all policy. Such compromise can have merit, but it needs the check that only minor party and independent candidates can provide -- a true opposition voice to hold bi-partisan policy up to public scrutiny. The private media is a weak substitute for institutionalized opposition within our legislatures. Just as importantly, we need to bring all Americans back into our democracy. There is a great, dangerous disconnection between the people and those that govern them. The most obvious measure is voter turnout. In 1996 less than half of eligible voters cast a ballot in the presidential race. 1998 will be far worse. Even though every U.S. House seat is up for election, fewer than one in three eligible voters may participate. Say what you will about the Reform Party's Ross Perot, but note that in 1992, turnout rose in 49 states after his high- profile participation in the 1992 presidential debates. The average rise was 8% in the 10 states where Perot ran most strongly, nearly double the national increase. Perot's campaigns have been instructive for showing the public interest in new voices. After his temporary withdrawal from the 1992 race, few believed he could win. But he still gained the voters of nearly one in five voters in 1992 and one in eleven in 1996. Although having a lower profile and generally much less money, independents and minor party candidacies are increasing at all levels of election. Nearly a third of our governors have been held to less than a majority of the vote in one of their gubernatorial elections -- meaning that a minor party or independent candidate won enough votes to possibly swing the election. The Supreme Court has been making a true mess of political reform, interfering when it should have held back and holding back when it should have interfered. Given that legislators are hardly better at judging the rules that elected them, they should establish powerful, independent commissions to propose what political reforms will foster a truly participatory, accountable and representative democracy. The Court's latest outrage should spur us to have this national conversation on reform as we move into a new century with an increasingly disappointed, disengaged, electorate. # # # (The following commentary also ran on a national wire service the week of May 25th. If you know of any papers where it appeared, please let us know.) IRV Can Decrease the Mudslinging by Rob Richie and Steven Hill Watching the governor's race in California has become quasi-farcical, like watching TV wrestling with its bombast of sneers, dirty tricks and "no-holds" barred tag teams. It reduces the dignity of the office and alienates voters, which is unfortunate because it doesn't have to be that way. There is a simple way to clean up the worst of the mud-slinging -- adopt instant runoff voting. Currently, the candidate from each political party with the most votes on June 2 advances to the general election in November. For the Democratic contested primary, a candidate like Al Checchi knows that he can win as much by driving voters away from his Democratic opponents Jane Harman and Gray Davis as by increasing his own vote totals. Candidates Harman and Davis arm themselves to respond in kind, and not surprisingly we are witnessing full-scale assault via the airwaves. The dynamic fuels negative campaigning and depresses voter turnout. But Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) changes the calculation. Rather than providing incentive to drive away voters from your opponents, IRV provides incentive to reach out to supporters of your opponents, and even encouraging candidates to build coalitions with each other. Here's how it works. Instead of voting for one candidate on June 2, voters would be asked to rank several candidates in their order of preference. So voters would rank their favorite candidate as their number one choice, their second favorite as their number two choice, up to three choices. Election administrators would count first-choices, and for those party primaries that are contested eliminate the candidate with the least first-choice support. The ballots of the eliminated candidate would be transferred to the candidate ranked next on each voter's ballot. This process would be repeated until there was only one candidate left for each party, and those candidates would be declared the nominees for the general election. It's like conducting a runoff (hence, the name "instant runoff") but it's done with only one trip to the polls. For example, after first-choice ballots of all voters are counted, suppose that the order of finish was: 1. Checchi 2. Davis 3. Harman. The way it works now, Checchi would be declared the winner. But Checchi may not have a majority of the vote. In fact, he may not even be preferred by the most voters, but may simply have stronger core support than his opponents. But with IRV, third-place finisher Harman would be eliminated, and instead of Harman's supporters having wasted their vote on a losing candidate, they can give their vote to their second choice. Suppose a Harman voter ranked her or his ballot like so: Jane Harman #1, Gray Davis #2, and Al Checchi #3. That Harman voter would be giving their vote to Gray Davis. Which remaining candidate will receive the most support from Harman voters -- Checchi or Davis? Herein lies the beauty of IRV: candidates Checchi and Davis will have to woo the supporters of Harman during the campaign if they expect any transfer votes from Harman supporters. Instead of attacking Harman, which the current "highest vote-getter" method actually rewards, IRV will encourage candidates to find common ground and build bridges to entice more voters their way. In a race as close as the Democrats, it would be smart for all the candidates to woo the voters of their opponents. That would promote positive, issue-oriented campaigning, instead of the current bombardment of mud-slinging. Also, with IRV the nominee will be the candidate that has the support of the most voters, with a combination of core support and general appeal. Right now, the nominee is more likely to be the candidate that has the strongest and narrowest cadre of supporters, regardless of whether they have broad support. In a three way race, the current method allows someone to win with as little as 34 percent support, which allows a candidate to win despite opposition from most voters. This is particularly important in a party primary, because the nominee will need the votes from losing candidates' supporters to win in the general election. Some may object that Instant Runoff Voting sounds too complicated. But the role for the voter is simple: they rank as many as three of their favorite candidates. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3. People are already used to ranking their favorite sports teams and movies, so they should be able to handle this task. In fact, the Republic of Ireland and the Australian parliament have elected their winners by this method for years. School children in these countries use IRV, so how complicated can it be? The Academy Awards also have selected the final candidates by using a similar ranking system for many years. IRV is a modest change, but it could well result in more positive, issue-oriented campaigns, and less disgusted voters. That's a win-win. Campaigns shouldn't be driven by expensive and negative TV ads. Using IRV, we might restore some dignity to our electoral contests. # # # New Mexico Business Weekly Inside the Capitol: Returning to election by majority SANTA FE. Runoff elections are looking better all the time. But the court has declared them unconstitutional for municipalities. And the state Legislature won't put a constitutional amendment proposal on the ballot for voters to consider. Sen. Lee Rawson, a Las Cruces Republican, tried it two years ago after a court had thrown out his city's runoff elections. House Republican Whip Ted Hobbs of Albuquerque tried it this year after the Duke City's runoffs were ruled unconstitutional. It's really not a partisan issue, although without the runoffs, both Las Cruces and Albuquerque elected Democratic mayors the last time around. Estancia can probably be added to the list of those places that figure there must be a better way. Its mayoral election produced a tie and a controversy over the subsequent tie-breaking game of chance that featured an unintentionally stacked deck. There were three other candidates in that race, so the winner didn't have a majority there either. The need for a majority-supported winner is apparent more than ever with our current anti-government mentality. And not just in municipal elections. Democrats are about the hold a primary election in which races for several offices, including governor, contain multiple candidates. Four years ago, a divisive Democrat gubernatorial primary helped put a Republican on the fourth floor of the Capitol building. Another strong contributing factor for Gary Johnson's trouncing of then-Gov. Bruce King was the presence of a third party strong enough to take 11 percent of the gubernatorial vote. Those two factors would be enough to make Democrats huge supporters of a runoff system for all elections. The problem with runoffs is the cost of another election. But now comes a modern-day cost-effective solution, called instant runoffs, in which voters rank their top three choices and if a voter's first choice is not in the running, the person's vote is transferred to the second-ranked choice. We're assured that computers can easily figure this out, although that doesn't take into account the last few Bernalillo County clerks who have had trouble with the present system. And in New Mexico, there also could be a problem with which voting machine companies could supply the smart computer. Recently some Green Party officials have been promoting the instant runoff system. Former state Green chairman Abraham Gutmann recently wrote a compelling argument for instant runoffs. He noted the problems a multiple-candidate field can produce when winners are selected by plurality instead of majority. Gutmann argues the deck sometimes is stacked, either through chance or manipulation, when a race features several challengers and one incumbent, several liberals and one conservative or several Hispanics and one Anglo. Any of these situations can affect the outcome of a plurality vote. We inherited the plurality system from the British, Gutmann says. He reports it is being re-evaluated in England. And two former British colonies, Ireland and Australia, have both discarded the system in favor of instant runoff voting. Gutmann thinks it's time for the world's technology leader to catch up. This looks like an issue on which all three major parties should agree. It would help Democrats and Greens more than Republicans right now. But Republicans know it could be valuable to them if religious conservatives, for instance, were to break with the GOP, as they might already have done without the guidance and intervention of Sen. Pete Domenici and others. The best reason anyone has given for instant runoffs is that they discourage negative campaigning. The reasoning is that if one of the candidates is banging on your favorite, it is highly unlikely you will list that candidate second or third on your ballot. Hooray. # # # (A former state comptroller, state senator and gubernatorial candidate, Dawn Clark Netsch is professor of law emeritus at Northwestern University. She is one of a growing number of prominent Illinois leaders calling for the return of cumulative voting in Illinois.) Talking Politics: It is an issue whose time has come -- again. We should return to the political tradition of electing the Illinois House of Representatives from multimember districts, with every voter entitled to distribute three votes among the candidates -- a system known as ''cumulative voting.'' For those whose political memory runneth not beyond the last few elections, here is how we used to do it: Beginning with the state Constitution of 1870, every House district elected three members at-large, usually from a coterminous single-member Senate district. Voters had three votes, which they could distribute as they chose -- all three to one candidate (familiarly known as bullet voting), 1 1/2 votes to two candidates or one each to three of the candidates. It was a system unique to Illinois and was designed to facilitate minority representation in the House. Throughout the life of cumulative voting, House districts, with rare exceptions, sent to Springfield two members from one party, usually the majority party, and one member from the minority party -- a form of proportional representation. Each party had at least a foothold of representation in all parts of the state, a healthy political result. The system of cumulative voting and multimember districts was specifically reaffirmed by the voters at the time the 1970 Constitution was adopted, but in a 1980 referendum, known as the Cutback Amendment, it was replaced by the current single-member House districts. The House was reduced at the same time to 118 members from 177. Cumulative voting certainly had its downside. High on the list: the frequent practice of the two major parties to nominate only the number of candidates they could elect, effectively giving the voters no choice beyond the slated candidates. There were talented Republicans from Chicago (currently only one) and gifted Democrats from the suburbs and collar counties, even DuPage County (currently a few, none from DuPage). It meant that when the House Republicans went into caucus, some of their own could speak up for legitimate concerns of Chicago and its people. And when the House Democrats went into caucus, some of their own were there to remind them that Chicago, while the critical core, was only a part of the expanding metropolis. The importance of this balance in resolving tough policy questions can't be understated. Since the demise of cumulative voting, the House has come to be controlled by its two leaders, in large part through their control of campaign funds. Some students of government have again begun to question whether the traditional American commitment to single-member, winner-take-all legislative districts really gives us the greatest competition and best representation. We in Illinois had the courage to be different once. At the least, we ought to have a vigorous debate about restoring our vision, our version, of representative government. # # # (In 1997, the Center for Voting and Democracy released its "Monopoly Politics," in which we predicted the winners in 360 of 435 U.S. House races in November 1998. The predictions are holding up well; following is an article on how the political parties are pleading "no contest.") House Members Face Few Party Rivals, May 28, 1998 By DAVID ESPO, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Two years ago, Republican Chris Cannon was locked in a hard-fought campaign for Congress against a veteran Democrat. A narrow winner then, he faces his first re-election race now - but there will be no tough battle this time around. The Utah lawmaker has no Democratic opponent this fall, a turn of fortune that he says gives him more time for his congressional duties and his family. ``I count myself fortunate on both counts,'' he adds. Fortunate, but hardly alone. Cannon is one of 79 incumbents without a major party rival thus far, a luxury for each of them individually and a political paradox nationally at a time when Republicans and Democrats are waging war for control of the House. The list includes 50 Republicans and 29 Democrats. ``Both parties, I believe, have made a decision to concentrate on really competitive districts'' this fall, said Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, who heads the Democratic campaign effort in the House. Frost's counterpart for the Republicans, Rep. John Linder of Georgia, says the GOP did not recruit candidates in districts where Democrats are shoo-ins for re-election, many of whom are blacks or Hispanics. He cites other reasons for the unusual number of unopposed lawmakers. With a good economy, he said, ``part of it is the general good environment for incumbents this year. Part of it, I think, is this is a pretty nasty business and people don't want to put up with it.'' For whatever reason, the list runs from well-known lawmakers such as Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, to those with no national profile such as first- term Democratic Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas. Some, like Rep. Bill Archer of Texas, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, have a primary opponent. Others, like Florida Democrat Karen Thurman, face opposition from minor party candidates. Others have both. Cannon, for example, has both a politically unknown primary opponent and a challenger from a minor party. Strikingly, 18 Florida lawmakers - out of a total of 23 - have no major party rival. The list, already the longest in recent memory, is certain to grow. Filing deadlines have passed in only 31 states, accounting for 315 of the nation's 435 congressional districts. At the current rate, the number will approach 100. There are other reasons as well, including the fact that the congressional districts were last redrawn for the 1992 elections, and many incumbents have had several years to become entrenched. ``A lot of our top farm team folks ... are opting to wait until Republicans have the shot at redistricting in 2000,'' said Chris LaCivita, executive director of the GOP in Virginia. Republicans contend the large number of Democratic vacancies is evidence of poor recruitment and a faltering effort to challenge GOP control of the House. Frost denies this vehemently. ``There aren't any (competitive) districts where we failed to field a candidate,'' he said in an interview, although he conceded party elders ``wish we had a stronger'' challenger in some districts. At the same time, Republicans, particularly, hope to persuade their surefire winners to donate liberally to contenders in tougher races. ``I can be more generous in supporting other candidates around the country,'' says GOP Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi, running without Democratic opposition. He said he had given $10,000 or more recently to fellow Republicans and appeared at a party campaign fund-raiser in his state. The political landscape has some distinctive patterns. In West Virginia, with three Democrats in the delegation, two have no GOP rival and the third, Rep. Bob Wise, drew an opponent who first announced plans to withdraw then decided to stay on the ballot. But the most striking example of non-competitiveness is in Florida, where an eye-catching 12 Republicans are without Democratic opponents, and six Democrats are without GOP rivals - 18 out of a total of 23 House members in the state's delegation. ``It's the first time in my life I've ever run unopposed,'' said Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican who has been in politics for more than 15 years. ``It's just incredible.'' # # # (John Gear is a business consultant in Vancouver, Washington and an active CV&D member. The following commentary appeared in the Vancouver Columbian in 5/98.) The Winner: The Apathy Party Marcia Wolf's front page piece on the two major parties in Clark County (April 27, "Right stuff has the upper hand") is a great example of how preconceived notions can cause trained reporters to miss the obvious. What did Wolf miss? Only the largest, fastest-growing political party in Clark County: the Apathy Party, the unacknowledged offspring of the Democratic and Republican Parties. By objective measures, Apathy is clearly the lead party nationally and is surging in Clark County. A more accurate headline and subtitle for Wolf's story would have been "'None of the above' has upper hand; once a bastion of the big two, Clark County has shifted to the Apathy Party in a big way." Why care about the Apathy Party? For starters, if we don't take off our two-parties only glasses we only see through a two-party filter-which means we can't figure out why the Apathy Party is booming. Of course, it's easy to write the story as Wolf did. Take two parties, two officials, and a handful of soundbites from each "side" (with everyone attempting to use their quotes to spin the story their way), and presto, the story writes itself. Newspapers love the "two horse race" storyline. It says politics is nothing but two parties jockeying for position. Every issue can be examined for how it helps or hurts one party or the other--regardless of whether the reporter knows little or nothing about the issue. And the horse race model means that reporters need never admit that they don't know something. They can always write a story like Wolf's about "Who's ahead." Couple this with the "blame the victim" game and you have a perfect recipe for Apathy Party growth. Which can make joining the Apathy Party seem like a perfectly rational move. A majority of people now see politics as just a Punch and Judy show: two puppets who do little other than beat on each other in response to commands from people hidden offstage-the people and companies who pour money into campaigns. All is not lost, however. There is something we could try if we want to avoid takeover by the Apathy Party. We could examine our winner-take-all model. We can ask whether it contributes to the low quality of election campaigns we suffer from, and the low turnout that results. Because our schools and the press act as if it were a top secret, you may not know that most democracies don't use the same election rules we do. They use one form or another of proportional representation (PR). PR is nothing more than a two-word description of how our country's republican democracy is supposed to work: representation according to numbers. It is no accident that both South Africa and Ireland have recently chosen PR elections instead of winner take all. They know that giving no representation to people who get 49.999 percent of the vote is a sure way to boost the Apathy Party--or even more dangerous ones. But in the US, that's common. In fact, that's the goal of the parties under our system: deny any representation to the other side, even if they represent half the people. That bears repeating: our winner-take-all system "works"--to the extent that it does--by encouraging the two main parties to do everything possible to prevent any other views from being heard in the halls of power. No wonder so many people feel alienated from politics. Sports are zero sum games, where one person has to lose for the other to win. But politics doesn't have to be; only our winner-take-all system makes it so. And that system tells candidates "pretend to be all things to all people" and "avoid anything that an opponent can call extreme," because that can lose you votes. This ends up boosting Apathy anyway, because it makes the 5% or 10% of voters who swing back and forth across party lines the most important voters of all--they are the targets of most campaign spending. By definition, swing voters don't identify strongly with a party. And the people who don't identify with a party tend to vote based on one or maybe two issues. They know the least about all "other' issues. It's time that we examined why a party with no candidates and no platform (other than "Don't vote, it just encourages 'em.") is surging in Clark County, and it's time we stopped overlooking the role our election rules have in fueling that trend. Thus, it's time to learn more about proportional representation. To do so, write to the Center for Voting and Democracy at PO Box 60037, Washington DC, 20039, or check their website at http://www.fairvote.org. Proportional representation isn't a cure all--but it's a serious response to the serious problems that plague our politics, one that we should stop ignoring. Especially if we want the majority to stop ignoring civic affairs. # # # (Lee Mortimer is a founding member of the Center for Voting and Democracy and served on the General Assembly's Election Laws Reform Committee. The following letter appeared in the Triangle Business Journal in 5/98.) It's interesting that Chris Fitzsimon (On the Left) and John Hood (On the Right) agree on using proportional representation (PR) to resolve North Carolina's seemingly intractable congressional redistricting problem. Rather than "winner-take-all" single-member districts, representatives would be elected from multimember districts using various proportional voting methods. Blacks and whites, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives could elect their fair share of representatives. Elections would be based on votes, not on how district lines are drawn. Since its founding in 1992, the Center for Voting and Democracy in Washington, DC, has been promoting PR. Washington Post columnist William Raspberry recently proposed a PR solution, and the Charlotte Observer's lead editorial on April 24, favoring PR drew heavily from the Raspberry column. As Fitzsimon says in his April 27 column, it's time for the General Assembly to begin serious discussions about proportional representation-both for Congress and legislative elections, which are also likely to be invalidated by the courts. Concerning Hood's April 27 column on ending General Assembly gridlock, I propose something more fundamental than session limits or changing legislators' pay formula. Instead of two competing chambers, there should be a single legislative chamber. Why make lawmakers duplicate each other's efforts through parallel House and Senate committees only to have the outcome decided by a select group of "conferees." There is no legal, constitutional or logical basis for competing legislative chambers. "Checks and balances" are intended to be between different branches of government, not within the same branch. A "unicameral" General Assembly elected by proportional representation would be the fairest, most efficient, and most representative way to conduct the people's business |