Lani Guinier on Full Representation:
Lani Guinier is Bennett Boskey Professor, Harvard Law School. She is co-author, with Gerald Torres, of The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy.
Never has it been clearer that Democrats must promote a national conversation about what it means to be a multiracial democracy. Republicans' right-wing turn, Democrats' ongoing tendency to take their base for granted and the sharp decline in competitive Congressional districts create an urgent need to rebuild democracy at home. The United States maintains a whole host of antidemocratic practices, from disenfranchising nearly 5 million citizens because of felony convictions to voter registration procedures that leave a third of adults unregistered. But winner-take-all elections play a particular role in the steady decline in voter participation among core Democratic constituencies, underrepresentation of women and people of color and the general failure of politics to mobilize, inform and inspire.
Anti-Bush forces have raised tens of millions to mobilize voters--but only for competitive states. People of color are poised for a historically high vote against the President--but mostly where a white conservative majority will trump their votes. With a battle for the House occurring in a couple dozen white-majority, mostly suburban districts, the Congressional Black Caucus is largely a spectator in any effort to gain real Congressional clout. Voter turnout rates once again will be wildly unequal between low-income and high-income voters. It will be a struggle for women to win even 15 percent of House seats. Third-party options will remain constricted because of "spoiler" dynamics.
A real democracy cannot look this way--certainly not a multiracial one. Nearly all significant democracies have adopted systems of proportional representation or debate it seriously--even Iraq and Afghanistan have rejected winner-take-all. In South Africa, for example, voters cast their ballots for the political party they feel most represents their interests, and the party gets seats in the legislature in proportion to their number of votes. Each vote counts to enhance the political power of the party of the voters' choice.
Because voters in South Africa essentially "district" themselves by how they mark their ballots, proportional representation eliminates the problem of political gerrymandering--in a much more sweeping, empowering way than so-called neutral districting commissions or other modest reforms to control the power of incumbents to cherry-pick their voters. Proportional representation creates new incentives for local multiparty organizing to generate citizen engagement and meaningful participation, not merely on Election Day but between elections. Coalitions that start with narrowly focused issues can grow and use their aggregated power again and again at the intersection of race, class and geography--getting organized labor to join fights that help Latino immigrants and poor urban blacks to partner with rural whites who are also living in isolated pockets of distress, and so forth. These coalitions can aspire to an electoral strategy while nurturing leaders and innovative ideas to help us think creatively and act collectively.
Nothing in the Constitution says that we have to use winner-take-all, single-member districts. Indeed, Black Caucus members like Jim Clyburn and Mel Watt have repeatedly introduced legislation allowing states to choose proportional representation. It's a goal that should have great appeal not just for African-Americans but also for every group that has ever felt disenfranchised--and today that covers most of us.
"Granny D" Haddock on IRV
Doris Haddock, 94, who walked across America to promote campaign finance reform, is a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in New Hampshire.
One key election reform is adoption of instant-runoff voting. A way to prevent potential serious splits in the political left, IRV allows each voter to rank his or her choices. If the first choice does not gain a majority, the next-ranked choice then applies. That way, everyone can vote their heart without spoiling their vote, and third parties can rise in influence.
A second key reform is public funding of elections. We need to get special interest money out of our elections, and we must take a strong position to promote and defend the Clean Elections system of full public financing now used in Maine and Arizona. We must particularly urge Arizona Democrats to vote No on the Clean Elections repeal put on Arizona's November ballot by right-wing business groups.
A third is a return to paper ballots, owing to a lack of public trust in computerized voting; we must return to such ballots, counted at the precinct with citizens watching.
Jamin Raskin on a Right to Vote
Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University's Washington College of Law and a Kerry delegate to the Democratic convention, is the author of Overruling Democracy.
The Democratic Party should be the democracy party. Our platform should begin with a call for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing every American citizen the right to vote, to have the vote counted, to have the popular vote decide the election and to be represented in government.
In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court declared that "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States," and that even when a state allows its residents to vote for President, state legislators can always "take back the power to appoint electors."
Moreover, we have more than 8 million disenfranchised and unrepresented citizens. In Washington, DC, 570,898 people have no voting representation in the Senate or House of Representatives, while 4,230,727 US citizens in the territories--Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands--have no voting representation in Congress and no vote in presidential elections. Nearly 5 million citizens have been disenfranchised because of a criminal conviction.
And with more than 11,000 electoral jurisdictions designing their own ballots and voting systems, all of our votes are in danger.
Lani Guinier is Bennett Boskey Professor, Harvard Law School. She is co-author, with Gerald Torres, of The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy.
Never has it been clearer that Democrats must promote a national conversation about what it means to be a multiracial democracy. Republicans' right-wing turn, Democrats' ongoing tendency to take their base for granted and the sharp decline in competitive Congressional districts create an urgent need to rebuild democracy at home. The United States maintains a whole host of antidemocratic practices, from disenfranchising nearly 5 million citizens because of felony convictions to voter registration procedures that leave a third of adults unregistered. But winner-take-all elections play a particular role in the steady decline in voter participation among core Democratic constituencies, underrepresentation of women and people of color and the general failure of politics to mobilize, inform and inspire.
Anti-Bush forces have raised tens of millions to mobilize voters--but only for competitive states. People of color are poised for a historically high vote against the President--but mostly where a white conservative majority will trump their votes. With a battle for the House occurring in a couple dozen white-majority, mostly suburban districts, the Congressional Black Caucus is largely a spectator in any effort to gain real Congressional clout. Voter turnout rates once again will be wildly unequal between low-income and high-income voters. It will be a struggle for women to win even 15 percent of House seats. Third-party options will remain constricted because of "spoiler" dynamics.
A real democracy cannot look this way--certainly not a multiracial one. Nearly all significant democracies have adopted systems of proportional representation or debate it seriously--even Iraq and Afghanistan have rejected winner-take-all. In South Africa, for example, voters cast their ballots for the political party they feel most represents their interests, and the party gets seats in the legislature in proportion to their number of votes. Each vote counts to enhance the political power of the party of the voters' choice.
Because voters in South Africa essentially "district" themselves by how they mark their ballots, proportional representation eliminates the problem of political gerrymandering--in a much more sweeping, empowering way than so-called neutral districting commissions or other modest reforms to control the power of incumbents to cherry-pick their voters. Proportional representation creates new incentives for local multiparty organizing to generate citizen engagement and meaningful participation, not merely on Election Day but between elections. Coalitions that start with narrowly focused issues can grow and use their aggregated power again and again at the intersection of race, class and geography--getting organized labor to join fights that help Latino immigrants and poor urban blacks to partner with rural whites who are also living in isolated pockets of distress, and so forth. These coalitions can aspire to an electoral strategy while nurturing leaders and innovative ideas to help us think creatively and act collectively.
Nothing in the Constitution says that we have to use winner-take-all, single-member districts. Indeed, Black Caucus members like Jim Clyburn and Mel Watt have repeatedly introduced legislation allowing states to choose proportional representation. It's a goal that should have great appeal not just for African-Americans but also for every group that has ever felt disenfranchised--and today that covers most of us.
"Granny D" Haddock on IRV
Doris Haddock, 94, who walked across America to promote campaign finance reform, is a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in New Hampshire.
One key election reform is adoption of instant-runoff voting. A way to prevent potential serious splits in the political left, IRV allows each voter to rank his or her choices. If the first choice does not gain a majority, the next-ranked choice then applies. That way, everyone can vote their heart without spoiling their vote, and third parties can rise in influence.
A second key reform is public funding of elections. We need to get special interest money out of our elections, and we must take a strong position to promote and defend the Clean Elections system of full public financing now used in Maine and Arizona. We must particularly urge Arizona Democrats to vote No on the Clean Elections repeal put on Arizona's November ballot by right-wing business groups.
A third is a return to paper ballots, owing to a lack of public trust in computerized voting; we must return to such ballots, counted at the precinct with citizens watching.
Jamin Raskin on a Right to Vote
Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University's Washington College of Law and a Kerry delegate to the Democratic convention, is the author of Overruling Democracy.
The Democratic Party should be the democracy party. Our platform should begin with a call for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing every American citizen the right to vote, to have the vote counted, to have the popular vote decide the election and to be represented in government.
In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court declared that "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States," and that even when a state allows its residents to vote for President, state legislators can always "take back the power to appoint electors."
Moreover, we have more than 8 million disenfranchised and unrepresented citizens. In Washington, DC, 570,898 people have no voting representation in the Senate or House of Representatives, while 4,230,727 US citizens in the territories--Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands--have no voting representation in Congress and no vote in presidential elections. Nearly 5 million citizens have been disenfranchised because of a criminal conviction.
And with more than 11,000 electoral jurisdictions designing their own ballots and voting systems, all of our votes are in danger.
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.