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The 2002 Elections
and the Case for Reform
By Steven Hill and Rob
Richie
November
8,
2002
Overview
Under-representation of Women and Minorities
Amidst the Noise, Little Competition
The Voters Again Largely Abstain
No Significant Gains for Third Parties
More Evidence of Value of Instant Runoff
Voting
Overview
This year's elections may well have a momentous impact
on federal policy in the next two years, with Republicans having
gained secure control of both branches of Congress and the White
House for the first time in half a century. But they also underscore
the need for fundamental reform of our political system.
Let us count the ways. Voter
turnout rose, but again was abysmally low in most states, falling
below 40% of all voting age Americans despite national congressional
elections and numerous competitive gubernatorial races. Most legislative races
lacked any meaningful competition, with with only four U.S. House incumbents losing
to non-incumbent challengers in their severely gerrymandered
districts. Minor parties again made no significant gains,
and the major parties will control all 50 governor's mansions
for the first time in more than a
decade. Women and minorities remain severely under-represented, with
this year's status quo election for their representation standing in stark
contrast to the 1992 surge in women and racial minorities after the
last round of legislative redistricting. Compared to 1994,
there in fact are two fewer African-Americans in Congress than
there were in 1994 and fewer states with women in their U.S.
House delegations.
Much of the information below was culled from election
returns as of Wednesday morning, with some races still undecided.
Nevertheless, the trends are clear and unmistakable.
Under-representation of Women
and Minorities
The number of women in Congress will remain exactly
the same -- stuck at a mere 14 percent of U.S. House seats, in stark
contrast to nations electing their legislatures by proportional
representation. (After this fall's elections, for example, women
hold 44 percent of the seats in Sweden and 32 percent in Germany).
In U.S. House elections, women picked up some open seats, but were
disproportionately represented among losing incumbents, and
ultimately the new House will have three more Republican women and
three fewer Democratic women. Liddy Dole's win in the Senate race in
North Carolina balanced Jean Carnahan's defeat in Missouri.
After much
hullabaloo about female candidates potentially winning governor's races,
women only increased their share of governor's mansions by one, up
to six. Women lost competitive gubernatorial races
in Alaska, Massachusetts, Maryland and Rhode Island, but did win in
Kansas (a Democrat), Michigan (Democrat), Hawaii (Republican) and Arizona
(where Democrat Janet Napolitano apparently has won with full public
financing).
The number of African Americans in the U.S. House
also will remain the same. Republican incumbent J.C. Watts
retired, and Democrats picked up one new African American Member in
Georgia. Importantly, a black Democratic nominee lost an open seat
in Georgia even though the district partisanship in that district
was strongly Democratic. Race still matters, as the district is
about 60% white, further proof that the key factor in minority
representation is the ability to create an electoral threshold where
minority voters can participate in enough numbers to elect their
candidate. Traditionally accomplished by drawing a "minority
opportunity" district with enough minorities to elect their
candidate of choice, the growing dispersion of racial minorities in
much of the country is pointing the value of proportional
representation systems in which minority voters of all sorts are
more likely to be able to cast an effective vote.
With Democrats Ron Kirk losing in the Texas U.S.
Senate race and Carl McCall in the New York governor's race,
African-Americans continue to be shut out in the Senate and
governor's mansions. Bill Richardson won in New Mexico, giving us
the first Latino governor in several years, but there are still no
Latinos in the U.S. Senate. The U.S. Senate does not have a single
African American or Latino despite those groups making up a quarter
of our population.
Amidst the Noise, Little
Competition
While the headlines screamed
loudly about the race to win control of the Congress and huge money
poured into those races that were close, most legislative races in
fact were completely noncompetitive. Our Center for Voting and
Democracy's pre-election projections of who would win and lose more
than 75% of U.S. House races held up with a perfect score -- the
same model projected 929 of 930 winners accurately in 1996-2000. We
already can issue our projections for the November 2004 elections
(yes, that's right -- the elections two years from now) in more than
350 House races with the same degree of confidence. See our Monopoly Politics 2004
Projections .
We can confidently make these
projections without knowing anything about the quality of the
candidates and inequities in campaign finance because we use "winner-take-all" elections in districts
that generally tilt clearly toward one party or the other. This lean
is no accident, as state after state enacted incumbent protection
plans in redistricting over the past year. With
only a few exceptions, incumbents and party leaders gerrymandered districts to guarantee the
reelection of incumbents, as well as the over-representation of whatever party controlled
the redistricting process in their state. In California, the Democratic Party
incumbents actually paid "protection money" in the amount of $20,000
apiece to have their legislative districts drawn to guarantee them a safe seat,
an audacious example of political "insider trading."
Thus, the U.S. House was very
much a status quo election, with Republicans increasing their majority
by only a few seats even though they beat the
Democrats by 6% in the national two-party vote. Four
incumbents lost to other incumbents in races where they were thrown
together by redistricting, but overall 98% of incumbents were
returned to office, with no advantage for either side.
The reason it was so difficult
for either party to make significant gains was that were so few
seats up for grabs. Typically, after the decennial redistricting,
one would expect 100 or more out of 435 seats to be competitive;
instead, this time around there were some 40 competitive races, and
that number will likely decline throughout the decade as new
incumbents solidify their hold over their districts. That will mean
a Republican majority in the House for several more election cycles
unless Democrats can break out of the current partisan balance and
win a healthy majority of the national popular vote in House races.
The Voters Again Largely
Abstain
Voter turnout in the 2002
elections is estimated to be about 39 percent of voting age adults. Even
though higher than the 1998 midterm elections, that's the lowest voter
turnout in the established democratic world for elections of a
national legislature. With "incumbent protection plans" prevailing
across the land and the parties too often attempting to obscure
their differences in close races, voters were left with what they
perceived as no-choice elections.
While we have a two-party system, the frame of
reference of most voters is of a one party system -- the party that
dominates their district or even their state. In monopoly politics
states like Massachusetts and Nebraska, only one party won
representation in their U.S. House delegation, as if there were no
other political parties in the state. Moreover, because most of
these districts are so lopsided, there really aren't even campaigns
in many districts to engage voters and turn them out to vote.
Consequently, voter turnout remains a flat line on the oscilloscope.
Two measures designed to increase turnout
were defeated. Election day registration ballot measures were voted
down in California and Colorado in amidst poorly informed
discussion about their impact on a secure election process. Even as they
lost, the nation's highest voter turnout again was recorded by
Minnesota, one of six states with election day registration.
No Significant Gains for
Third Parties
Third parties won eight state legislative seats
this year, which was the most since 1942, but that makes
only a small dent in the more than 7000 state
legislative seats and hundreds of executive seats in states
across the U.S. Democrats and Republicans secured all 50 governor's
mansions for the first time since 1990.
Vermont's Progressive Party
maintained four legislative seats, winning one outside of Burlington
for the first time in its history, but its strong candidate for
lieutenant governor Anthony Pollina finished
third after polling higher earlier in the year. In Minnesota,
Independence Party candidate (and former Democratic congressman) Tim Penny lost
in the gubernatorial race after polling close to the
lead all year, although one Independence Party incumbent held on
after converting from the Republican party. Greens lost major
party ballot status in states such as New York, but a
Green state legislative candidate did win a significant victory
in Maine, no doubt helped by Maine's Clean Money/ public
financing law. Greens also won local races, including taking a city
council seat in Providence and an at-large school board race in San
Francisco for a nonpartisan position. The two other third party
state legislative wins were in Alaska (a Republican Moderate candidate) and
New York (a Working Families Party candidate who also won
the Democratic nomination under New York's fusion system). Tom Golisano, the
Independence Party candidate for governor in New York, won nearly
10% of the vote, although he spent more than
$50 million in his campaign.
The "winner take all" electoral system continues to be
a tremendous barrier to third party participation and
representation, and voters desiring choice outside of the two major
parties -- particularly young voters -- will be frustrated without
changes to our winner-take-all electoral system.
More Evidence of Value of Instant Runoff
Voting
Finally, several results from the election bolster the
case for instant runoff voting (IRV), the ranked choice system
adopted by voters in San Francisco for their next city elections in
2003.
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In Vermont's governor's and lieutenant
governor's races, no candidate won a majority of the
vote. According to Vermont's constitution, the state legislature
now will pick the winner in a secret ballot. This had the
potential for all sorts of backroom shenanigans, but the losing
Democratic Party candidates decided to concede defeat rather than
press their case -- even though at least one of them likely was
the true majority winner who lost only due to split votes with
independent and third party candidates. These results will provide
more steam to the state's strong movement for instant runoff
voting, which was endorsed by over 50 Vermont towns in separate
referendums last March, as well as by outgoing governor and
presidential candidate Howard Dean, the Secretary of State and the
state's AFL-CIO, League of Women Voters, PIRG, Grange and Common
Cause.
-
In Louisiana's U.S. Senate race and in one
U.S. House race, no candidate won a majority the vote,
and now the top two finishers advance to a traditional, two-round
runoff election to decide the winner in early December. Just
imagine the huge amounts of money -- and restless partisan
activists -- that will pour into the state over the coming weeks.
With the Senate so closely divided, the state emerges as one where
the Republicans can either pad their slim majority or the
Democrats can narrow it to just 51-49. Thus, this runoff election
has the potential for a real Florida circus scenario. If Louisiana
had used instant runoff voting -- which they already use for their
military overseas ballots because there often is not enough time
to mail overseas a second ballot and receive it back by the runoff
-- the election would be over and Louisianans and the entire
nation would be spared yet another divisive and money-fed
slugfest.
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Hawaii's second congressional
district was won by Democrat Patsy Mink despite her death
several weeks ago. Now the state will hold two "free-for-all"
special elections: one to decide who will serve the remaining
weeks of her current term, the second in January to decide who
will serve until 2005. Both races will be single rounds of voting,
with large numbers of candidates. Unlike in Louisiana, there will
be no runoff, meaning that the winners may have a very low share
of the vote -- and easily could be unreflective of the partisan
leanings of the district. Instant runoff voting would be the
obvious solution for such special elections that must be conducted
quickly.
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There were several gubernatorial races
with non-majority winners. When a candidate wins with
fewer than a 50 percent majority of the vote, you cannot really be
sure that this candidate was preferred by the most voters in that
race. For instance, besides the Vermont governor and lieutenant
governor's races, Democrats won the Wisconsin governor's race 45%
to 41%, with 11% of the vote going to Libertarian Ed Thompson. The
Oregon gubernatorial race was won by the slimmest of margins, with
both candidates well under 50%. In Oklahoma, Republican (and
former pro football player) Steve Largent has lost narrowly, with
14% going to an independent. In Arizona, the Democrat won 45% to
45%, with 7% going to an independent (a former Democrat) and 2% to
a Libertarian. In California, incumbent Democrat Gray Davis spent
$68 million on re-election yet received only 47% of the vote as
many Democrats were not pleased with the pall of corruption and
incompetence that hung over Davis. Green Party candidate Peter
Camejo benefitted from this, picking up 5%.
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In Senate races, winners apparently have
less than half the votes in Minnesota, Missouri and South
Dakota. In House races, at least two key open seats were
won by plurality (less than a majority), including District 1 in
Arizona and District 7 in Colorado, where the candidates are
nearly tied and the Green, Libertarian and Reform candidates each
won about 2%. Florida Democrat Karen Thurman lost by four thousand
votes, far fewer than the 12,000 votes cast for two independent
candidates.
It's high time to adopt instant runoff voting more
widely to allow multiple candidates to run, yet not end up with
distorted results and non-majority winners and systems of
proportional representation that would more fully, fairly represent
and engage the American electorate.
Steven Hill is senior analyst
for the Center for Voting and Democracy and author of Fixing
Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics.
Rob Richie is executive director of the Center. Visit the Center's
website to view projections for the 2004 U.S.
House
races. |
