PR Initiative Campaign Seeks 1996 Vote Kevin
Hornbuckle
The Campaign for Representative
Democracy has launched an initiative campaign to adopt preference voting for city council
elections. After collecting signatures in the fall of 1995, the campaign seeks a vote by
the people in 1996.
Our campaign for preference voting is
based on the need for better representation. Recent history has shown repeatedly that the
Eugene city council is out of touch with the needs of the people in our city. As in all
cities, there is of course the need for an electoral system which will produce a
representative city council. But because we believe that preference voting alone would not
suffice in reforming representative government in Eugene, we have addressed several
additional issues in our initiative.
Additional factors that play a decisive
role include: lack of pay for city councilors; domination of elections by monied
interests; and the city manager form of government which makes the council powerless and
unaccountable. Each of these areas are targeted for reform in our initiative.
Eugene and its Government
Eugene is a city of 120,000 people with an
annual total budget of over $200 million. City councilors like myself are, as a general
practice, kept in the dark as much as possible. All information flows through the city
manager's office and is carefully shaped into briefings and model motions which are at our
places each meeting. Being a volunteer discourages one from independently researching city
issues. City council workload regularly reaches 30 hours per week, and the need to hold a
paying job effectively prohibits councilors from straying from the city manager's line.
Consequently, opportunism rules council
policy, and the social consequences build in the form of homelessness, regressive
taxation, environmental destruction, privatization, crime, unemployment, etc. Observing
these results, the people of Eugene have begun to wonder what democracy really means. They
look at the current councilors and see that over half of them were appointed to the
council by various means rather than first elected by voters.
Preference Voting Innovations
Preference voting is at the center of our
initiative. Currently, eight councilors are elected from wards, while the mayor is elected
citywide and can resolve tie votes (but otherwise does not vote). The initiative would
increase the size of the council to ten members, who would be elected at-large by
preference voting. Our initiative argues in its introduction that the current system
fosters resentment at forced votes between the lesser of two evils, leads to many
uncontested races, encourages mudslinging and avoidance of issues and undercuts
councilors' accountability.
Preference voting directly addresses these
problems. Although the principle behind our proposed system of preference voting is the
same as the preference voting system now used in Cambridge and once used in a number of
cities in the United States, we have introduced several innovations that I believe improve
the system. These include:
• Providing candidates with the
option to run as part of a self-identified slate that would appear on the ballot
("The Environmental Coalition," "Citizens for a Growing Economy,"
etc.).
• Instituting the mathematical model
method of transferring surplus ballots, in which ballots are transferred at a 'vote value'
based on the principle that only that portion of the vote necessary to help elect a
candidate is deployed for that candidate. The rest transfers on to successively ranked
candidates. Ballots transferred from eliminated candidates retain their whole value.
• Allowing voters the option to cast
some "tie votes" if they do not want to rank candidates (this is also called
duplicate rankings).
Money and Politics
The pay provision in the preference voting
initiative bases the salary for city councilors on the median income. The political
consequence of paying councilors will be the abolition of the informal (but very real)
financial screen which exists for volunteers. Historically, in order to be on the council
one has had to be independently wealthy or work for a business which benefits from City
legislation and policy. The vast majority of working class taxpayers are prohibited from
helping decide how their taxes are spent. We are finding in the campaign that there are
two responses to the initiative's pay provision: "I can't believe the councilors
aren't paid now!" and, "Good. Maybe some good people will be able to afford to
run for office."
Many such would-be candidates are
surfacing to help pass the preference voting initiative. Without the pay provision, voters
in Eugene would do preference voting only for business owners; there would be more
democratic representation of business owners, but not of the people in general.
Campaign finance reform is built into
preference voting. But here we have been able to add a degree of public financing. The
city and state publish voters' pamphlets every election which are distributed to every
household. The ballot access provision of the initiative guarantees all formal candidates
a place in the city voter's pamphlet. The $50 filing fee is the only monetary cost.
The significant cost is the labor power
needed for collecting nomination signatures. Our premise is that all candidates should
have a basic amount of publicity if they work for it politically. That work is defined as
persuading voters that they (the prospective candidates, either running alone or as part
of a slate) should be put on the ballot. Candidates for re-election get no break on ballot
access. All candidates must make themselves available to the people in this way.
The initiative also would shift a
significant amount of power away from the city manager. New duties for councilors would
include: having a role in choosing the department heads; overseeing the financial auditor
and city attorney; reviewing contracts of more than $25,000; and ratifying collective
bargaining agreements. All these functions are expressly prohibited by the current city
Charter, even though most citizens believe the council already has these powers.
A Commission on PR
The initiative also requires the formation
of a "Commission on Proportional Representation and Voting Democracy." It would
purchase publications on proportional representation for the public library, advise
community groups on how to hold preference voting elections, instruct prospective
candidates on ballot access rules and distribute copies of the Charter amendment to anyone
who requests one. If the initiative passes, the commission will popularly institutionalize
preference voting, which will protect it from possible repeal attempts.
We have also required that a description
of preference voting and how it was won be included in the voter's pamphlet. If we are
victorious, all voters will know how to use the system, and they will know it was won by
grassroots activism. Perhaps they will send copies to their friends around the country who
are also hungry for representation.
Countering Arguments Against the Initiative
Our campaign to reform the city council
will be based on public interest arguments, especially accountability to the voters and
citizen participation. Already the response has been positive. Recruiting campaign
volunteers has not been difficult, and our first public education event with a mock
election for a "Dead Actors Hall of Fame" drew 100 people. A very conservative
city councilor who attended remarked, "The only problem I have with preference voting
is that I can't figure out the disadvantages. There has got to be some."
We know that there will be opposition. It
will arise most powerfully after we attain ballot status. But we have every reason to
remain confident so long as we stay focused on carrying the message of democracy directly
to the voters. We will create media opportunities whenever possible, but never will rely
on the media to replace grassroots activists in communicating our basic message.
Ironically, based on our experience to
date, proportional representation is not of concern to voters and therefore is not
ideologically central to the campaign. To many people it is a complex term, yet they
understand the concept of vote transfers. Supporters are most enthusiastic about not
having to waste their vote, and also being able to help elect more than one candidate.
If we win the initiative, voters'
understanding will mature into an appreciation of preference voting as an elegant way to
attain what they will come to know as proportional representation. However, we are quite
satisfied to take things one step at a time toward victory. Small steps come first. But
even at this early stage we seem to be leading local voters on the march away from the
alienating single seat election and toward electoral democracy.
Kevin Hornbuckle is a city council
member in Eugene, Oregon. For a copy of the preference voting initiative, request one from
the Campaign for Representative Democracy: P.O. Box 10654, Eugene, OR 97440.