Boston Review
Wasted Votes? A
response to The Search for New Voting Technology By Rob
Richie
September 2001 Stephen Ansolabehere
and the Voting Technology Project deserve great credit for drawing
national attention to the millions of votes that were lost in our
recent national elections due to faulty voting technology and
procedures. If fully implemented, Ansolabehere's near-term
recommendations would significantly improve elections, and his
long-term vision for voting presents a provocative challenge to
reformers. But we can and must do better. Ansolabehere's analysis
is limited in three respects: 1) acceptance of current degrees of
decentralization in election administration, with a corresponding
acceptance of inadequate funds for democratic electoral reform; 2)
lack of attention to the tens of millions of votes "wasted" in 2000
in races where the result never was in doubt and on "lesser of two
evil" candidacies; and 3) concern with only that half of American
adults who already vote or intend to vote, thus missing how voting
technology could facilitate reforms like instant runoff voting and
proportional representation that could boost turnout in addition to
enhancing the power of current voters. Ansolabehere is right that
we have a tradition of decentralized election administration and
that such decentralization fosters innovation. But I question making
decentralization a fundamental requirement of American elections,
particularly if it trumps federal responsibility for setting
standards and providing ongoing funds for election administration.
The Constitution provides Congress with the authority to administer
federal elections, but election administration has become
decentralized because we have no genuinely national elections. All
members of Congress are elected within states, and electoral votes
are awarded in presidential races solely according to the vote
within states. The result is that dramatic variations from
state-to-state in voter turnout and registration rates have no
bearing on how much federal power each state has. But in modern
America, the rights of states should not outweigh the rights of
individuals, and I expect that over time we will move toward real
equality in federal elections. Doing so will require instituting a
system of direct election for president that ensures that every
vote, wherever it is cast, has the same weight, or adopting a
national system of proportional representation for congressional
elections. I believe current trends in our elections will make these
reforms credible within a decade, particularly if Republicans also
lose a presidential race despite winning the popular vote. Once we
have genuinely national elections, national election standards will
quickly follow. Even without direct election of the president or
proportional representation in congressional elections, however, we
need not show excessive deference to the tradition of allowing
counties and states to manage and mismanage elections. Better to
take what is best from our current process�the opportunity for local
innovators to improve elections�and have the federal government
ensure that such innovations are quickly adopted around the country.
As soon as technology was developed years ago to allow voters to
correct overvotes on punch card voting machines, for example, that
capacity should have been adopted on punch card equipment
everywhere. As shown by Florida's great number of overvotes in 2000,
however, it wasn't�with dramatic consequences for the legitimacy of
our democracy. The fundamental reason that innovative practices are
not quickly replicated is the lack of sustained federal election
funding. Federal commitment of a billion dollars a year�about what
we spend on the military every single day�would provide the means
for all counties and states to modernize elections and expand
democracy. These federal funds would be tied to meeting federal
standards for election performance�standards that, with funding,
nearly all localities and states would be willing to meet. With such
standards in place, Florida counties would have modified their
equipment to allow voters to correct overvotes because otherwise
they would have lost federal funds. In the unlikely event that
localities refused funds in order to maintain outmoded practices,
federal mandates could be pursued. With federal funds tied to
standards, we could eliminate long lines by having an appropriate
number of polling stations. We could have sensible polling hours�no
more poll-closings at 7:00 P.M., let alone the 6:00 P.M.
closing-time found in Kentucky and Indiana�because states would have
more funds to pay pollworkers. Following the model of the West
Coast, each state could mail voter guides to all registered voters.
We could better accommodate the needs of people with disabilities
and with different degrees of English literacy. And so on. We also
would not have to settle for optical scanning as our voting system
of choice in 2004. Ansolabehere is right that optical scan
equipment, with appropriate features, is the best paper-based ballot
system. But the best direct recording electronic (DRE) equipment
essentially eliminates both voter error and barriers to voting for
many specific groups of people. The Voting Technology Project
analysis unfortunately lumped a range of DREs into a single
category, but the latest models are much better than older ones. In
their very first election with a DRE system, for example, more than
99 percent of voters in Riverside County, California cast a valid
vote for president�and voter satisfaction was just as high,
indicating that the system worked well for those unfamiliar with
computer technology. With appropriate funding, voting machine
vendors could eliminate the errors of the previous DRE models,
address legitimate concerns about audit trails and ensure that no
one at the polls is left behind. To eliminate undervotes, a DRE
system could direct voters to any contest or ballot question that
was overlooked. For people more comfortable in languages other than
English�and more than one in five Americans do not speak English at
home�a DRE system could allow voters to choose to read their ballots
in a wide range of languages. By providing the option of voting with
large type or with headphones, DREs can allow the millions who
cannot see well�an important constituency opposed to optical-scan
systems�to cast a secret ballot without assistance. For those like
Ansolabehere, concerned about voting by mail, DREs could allow
voters to cast valid votes at a wide range of polling places, not
just in their home precincts. Ansolabehere's prescription also
falls short by not addressing how our current electoral rules waste
votes and suppress potential participation. If most election
administration reformers were to be believed, The New York Times was
right last December when it editorialized: "Any wise
observer�domestic, foreign, or interplanetary�has to conclude that
Americans' final verdict will be that theirs is a country in need of
new voting machines, not a new electoral system." But our low voter
turnout and stark class inequality in who votes indicates our system
is in need of far more than better machines and procedures. When
updating voting equipment, we should ensure that it accommodates the
demands of more extensive reforms even if they are unlikely to be on
Congress's immediate agenda. Instant runoff voting is one example.
The biggest flaw in Florida's election was among the least discussed
despite being correctable by mere state statute: George Bush won all
of the state's electoral votes even though more Floridians at the
polls preferred Al Gore. As with most American elections, Florida
allocates its presidential electors according to plurality voting
rules, meaning that the candidate with the most votes wins all, even
if opposed by a majority. Plurality voting can thus violate majority
rule and often suppresses non-major-party candidacies, as voting for
such a candidate can have the perverse impact of helping to elect
the major party candidate you most dislike�a perversity very
familiar to those who debated the merits Ralph Nader's Green Party
candidacy in 2000 and to the roughly 5 million (according to a
Washington Post poll released on the eve of the election) who voted
for major party candidates other than Nader only because they didn't
want to "waste" their votes. Used for decades in Australia and
Ireland, considered in thirteen state legislatures this year, and on
the ballot for major elections next year in San Francisco and
Alaska, IRV lets voters rank candidates in order of choice rather
than just vote for one. If no candidate gets a majority of first
choices, candidates with the lowest percentage of the vote are
sequentially dropped. Each ballot cast for those eliminated
candidates is added to the totals of the next choice indicated on
that ballot until a candidate achieves a majority. IRV duplicates a
series of traditional runoffs, but without the need for additional
elections that cost taxpayers and candidates more money and often
lead to declining voter participation. With IRV, even the colossal
election administration errors in Florida would not have denied Al
Gore the presidency. Given a straight choice between Gore and George
Bush, Gore would have won Florida and its electoral votes. Of course
with IRV, John McCain might have bolted the Republican Party and run
as the independent he has shown himself to be in the new Congress,
while in 1992 Ross Perot's votes�which prevented a majority winner
in all but one state�likely would have narrowed Bill Clinton's
electoral and popular vote margin over the senior George Bush. IRV
has no ideological bias: its only bias is toward majority winners
and the better choices and more diverse candidacies we need to
mobilize higher voter participation. IRV would reduce wasted votes
in executive office elections and ease the administrative burden in
jurisdictions with traditional runoffs. But fair representation in
government also demands proportional representation (PR), the system
used in the great majority of well-established democracies. PR is
based on the principle that any grouping of like-minded voters
should win legislative seats in proportion to its share of the
popular vote. Whereas the winner-take-all principle awards 100
percent of the representation to a 50-percent-plus-one majority, PR
allows voters in a minority to win their fair share of
representation. PR comes in many forms, but in all a party or
grouping of voters that wins 10 percent of the popular vote in a
ten-seat constituency would win one of the ten seats; 30 percent of
votes would earn three seats, and so on. PR would dramatically
increase voter choice and representation of women and racial
minorities in our congressional elections. Under current
winner-take-all rules, few House elections are competitive. In both
1998 and 2000, more than 98 percent of incumbents were re-elected,
and fewer than one in ten races were won by less than 10 percent
victory margins�the traditional definition of a competitive race.
Congressional districts are inherently one-sided because of voter
preferences in districts, not because of campaign financing,
incumbency or other factors. Far more votes were wasted in these
fundamentally one-sided congressional races than those lost due to
bad voting equipment. Accepting plurality voting and single-member
districts as a given, Ansolabehere doesn't address IRV and PR and
how technology could make their adoption more feasible. As done in
most nations, IRV and PR could be carried out using paper ballots;
indeed, despite IRV's seemingly complex demand to rank candidates,
more than 99 percent of voters in Ireland's IRV presidential
election cast valid votes. But given our great number of elections
and cultural suspicion of paper ballots, American advocates of IRV
and PR have found that the capacity to count them on standard voting
equipment is imperative for their widespread adoption. The easiest
way to ensure that our voting equipment can handle IRV and PR would
be to ensure that all equipment has the capacity to record and store
an electronic record of each ballot. Doing so not only makes it much
easier to use IRV and PR, but also provides an electronic means of
auditing elections; on their own, paper ballot trails are vulnerable
to the malicious or accidental distortion of the results. But many
election administration reformers have overlooked this problem�in
part because they fail to focus on flexible equipment that could
facilitate participation-enhancing reforms. Ansolabehere and his
colleagues have taken an important step on the road to democratic
reform. But for those who wish to complete the journey, much
distance remains to be traveled. Robert Richie is executive
director of the Center for Voting &
Democracy
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