Fair Elections Digest
Number 3 December 12, 2002
Welcome to the Fair Elections
Digest of the Center for Voting Democracy. In these digests we write
short items about current news and opinion regarding politics,
representative democracy, and reform. This edition was written
primarily by senior analyst Steven Hill ([email protected]), author of
"Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All
Politics," and executive director Rob Richie ([email protected]
).
Quote of the
Day:
"It makes sense to have one [U.S. Senator] in one party,
and a senator in the [other] majority party if you want to get
something done." - President George W. Bush, in excerpt from
December 3rd speech in Louisiana that was featured in the final ad
campaign for Republican Senate challenger Suzanne Terrell. President
Bush echoes comments from Illinois leaders such as former Republican
governor Jim Edgar and former Democratic Congressman Abner Mikva who
believe policy-making was better and more responsive before 1982
when Illinois elected its state house members in three-seat
districts using a full representation system that typically resulted
in a two-one split between the major parties. Partisan Lessons for 2004
from Battleground Louisiana
The results of the Dec. 7 Senate
and congressional runoff elections in Louisiana support political
analyst Charlie Cook's view that the November elections were not the
sweeping Republican tide that some have suggested. The U.S. Senate
runoff went to Democratic incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu, who won a
surprisingly comfortable 40,000-vote win in the face of strong White
House support for her Republican challenger in a state that George
Bush carried in 2000. Even more surprisingly, Democrat Rodney
Alexander defeated Republican Lee Fletcher in Louisiana's 5th
congressional district. According to our Monopoly Politics 2004
analysis (see ), an open seat election
in this district on average would be won by a Republican with 58% of
the vote. The Democrats' upset win in
Louisiana-5 balances out the only other open seat anomaly this year,
in which a Republican won Georgia-12 despite its clear Democratic leanings. Every
other open U.S. House seat except for three swing
districts went to a candidate whose party's presidential candidate won the district
in 2000. The Democrats in fact did just as well
as Republicans in this year's relatively few close House races. Each party
split nearly perfectly the House seats won by less than
5%, by less than 10% and by less than 20%. Of the merely four incumbents
who lost to challengers (the fewest since 1806), two were from each
party, and each of the five Democratic incumbents who lost (including 3 who
lost to Republican incumbents) each took clear hits in
redistricting. Given that the Republicans gained a clear advantage
over Democrats in the national U.S. House popular vote for the first
time since 1994, it may surprise some that House elections were
essentially a draw, with small Republican gains directly tied to
successes in congressional redistricting. Incumbent Protection
Redistricting Backfires on Dems
Republicans are sitting pretty for
keeping control of the House in 2004, however. Given that their
current 23-seat edge is not founded on winning a disproportionate
number of close races or winning many Democratic-leaning districts,
Democrats have to win a large proportion of close races or have a
significant partisan tide in their direction to have much chance of
retaking the House. Our Monopoly Politics model -- accurate in 1,262
of 1,263 predictions in 1996-2002 -- does not have the capacity to
predict ultimate control of the House, but it makes partisan
predictions in more than 350 races for 2004, the highest number by
far in the 1996-2004 period that we have used it. Ironically,
Democrats can blame themselves for the vary small playing field.
Democrats in several states like California decided to make deals to
insulate their incumbents in redistricting against any real
challenges instead of leaving them open to more competition in
exchange for better chances to increase their share of seats. In
state after state where they had a significant say in redistricting,
Democrats generally put incumbent interests first, resulting in
fewer competitive races than we have seen for decades. With so few
congressional races actually requiring real campaigns, it leads to
an under-mobilized electorate that has repercussions for statewide
races, like U.S. Senate and governor. The New York Times's Gail
Collins pithily sums up the story: "First they gerrymander us into
one-party fiefs. Then they tell us they only care about the swing
districts. Then they complain about voter apathy." Speaking of
Louisiana...Instant Runoff Voting on the Rise
Aside from the
partisan results, the Louisiana runoffs were notable for what an
expensive mess of mudslinging politics they turned out to be. Each
side pulled out their daggers and hacked away at each other while
spending as much as $20 million. Voters got turned off, and turnout
was lower than expected. And of course taxpayers had to foot the
bill -- millions of state dollars down the drain -- to witness the
partisan pettiness and sandbox sniping. All in the middle of the
holiday season, no less -- "goodwill to all" indeed. Louisianans
could seize their holidays back from the politicians and improve
their politics by following San Francisco's lead in adopting instant
runoff voting (IRV) instead of its two-round runoff system. IRV
produces a majority winner in one round of voting, as voters are
able to indicate their runoff choices on their ballot at the same
time as their first choice. They do this by ranking their ballots:
1, 2 ,3. With IRV, candidates have incentives to win by building
coalitions instead of tearing down their opponents, because they may
need the second, i.e. runoff ranking from their opponents' voters.
And voters are saved the exorbitant costs, headaches, and nuisance
of a second election. IRV is not wholly new to Louisiana, since that
state already uses a form of it for its military overseas ballots,
asking those voters to rank their candidates since there often is no
time to mail them and have them return a second (runoff) ballot.
Instant runoff voting is gathering momentum as a reform, with
serious talk about replacing plurality elections with it in states
such as California, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont.
Certainly any city or state debating their runoff laws should study
why San Francisco voters supported IRV in March 2002 () and are preparing to use it for mayoral
elections in November 2003. Newspapers recently endorsing IRV
include USA Today and the Minneapolis Tribune. See for the latest. Governance and Partisan
Politics: The Latest Example
John J. DiIulio, the former head of
President Bush's faith-based office has charged in an Esquire
Magazine article that the Bush administration's domestic policies
are determined by political considerations, with "everything" being
run by the office of senior adviser Karl C. Rove. DiIulio is a
Democrat, but he is not alone in his observation. Conservative
columnist Bruce Bartlett writes in the December 11 Washington Times
that "Since the beginning of the Bush administration, insiders have
complained to me that the policymaking process was not working.
Talking points and press releases had become substitutes for
interagency working groups and policy papers that explored issues in
depth." He adds that "This vacuum in terms of policy analysis has
tended to be filled by those in the White House who look at issues
solely in terms of their political implications. However, the
problem is not that people like Karl Rove, President Bush's chief
political adviser, have undue influence. Rather, it is that the
White House is structured so as to short-shrift analysis of issues
in favor of sound bites and shoot-from-the-hip responses to issues."
Part of George Bush's attraction to many voters has been that he
can seem more driven by principle than Bill Clinton, his Democratic
predecessor who famously turned to polling to judge prospective
policy decisions. But the reality is that both parties are
enthralled by pollsters, caught up in the dynamics of
winner-take-all elections where a small shift in opinion can mean a
huge shift in power. It in fact is sadly naive to expect a lasting
politics of principle in today's bitterly partisan climate under
winner-take-all rules that generally limit choices to two parties
that struggle to be all things to at least half the voters. European Political
Tidings
Several months ago, many American
journalists were sounding alarms about the rise of the far right in
Europe. But recent election results in Germany, Sweden, Austria, and
elsewhere reveal that the panic button was pushed prematurely. In
Germany, the red-green coalition of Social Democrats and the Green
Party eked out a close victory in September. In Sweden, the ruling
Social Democrats scored an unexpected victory, handily beating the
predictions of the pollsters. Recent elections saw center-left
governments take the reins in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech
Republic. Meanwhile, the fortunes of the far right have fallen on
harder times. Following the media frenzy over France's Jean-Marie Le
Pen making the runoff in their presidential election, his party
failed to win a single seat in the National Assembly races. In
Austria, the bogeyman of Europe who started the far-right alarm,
Jorg Haider of the Freedom Party, saw his party plummet in recent
elections. After a stunning upset in the Netherlands for the
assassinated Pim Fortuyn's party, bickering internal politics led to
its collapse, and Fortuyn's party is expected to virtually disappear
when new elections are held on January 22. True, these parties have
been influential, but not in a way to threaten the more moderate
views of the majority. The scary forecasts were overblown
considerably, but this is nothing new. American reportage on Europe
usually is fraught with half-truths and Hogan's Heroes stereotyping.
In reality, the European political spectrum, founded on the bedrock
of proportional representation voting methods in which nearly all
voters elect candidates of their choice, is complex, broadly
representative, and defies American branding or stereotypes.
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