By Mike O'Connor
Published September 21st 2004 in The Daily Texan
One positive effect of the tainted 2000 presidential election was that it managed to bring about a bipartisan consensus in favor of voting reform.
Despite the good intentions of the subsequent 2002 Help America Vote Act, the profoundly undemocratic ways in which we structure our elections have gone largely unacknowledged.
At the forefront of the movement for electoral reform is the nonprofit and nonpartisan Center for Voting and Democracy and its chair, former independent presidential candidate John Anderson. This organization advocates many important positions, but three are of particular importance:
The Electoral College
One fact about the 2000 election that is not controversial is that Al Gore won a half-million more votes than George W. Bush.
But our Electoral College system gives a state's entire allotment of electoral votes to the candidate who won that state, no matter how slim the margin of victory. In addition to the possibility of more minority-elected presidents, the Electoral College guarantees that residents of more highly contested states have a disproportionate influence on choosing the president. Any challenge to this system, however, would require that the Constitution be amended, and political will for such an undertaking appears to be lacking.
Hopefully significant in overcoming this inertia will be last month's New York Times editorial characterizing the Electoral College as "a ridiculous setup," and calling for a substantial and bipartisan effort to institute direct election of the president.
Instant Runoff Voting
Another factor that distorts election results is the fact that people often do not even vote for their favorite candidate. Particularly in primaries and elections featuring a third-party or independent choice, voters will cast their lots with the "least bad" candidate in hopes of defeating someone else.
Imagine instead that everyone voted for his or her favorite candidate, and no victor would be declared unless someone had more than 50 percent of the votes.
In the event that no candidate received a majority of votes, there would be another election, and the candidate who had previously received the lowest number of votes would be eliminated from the new contest.
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) simulates this series of elections in one session by allowing voters to pick several candidates and rank their preferences, allowing the various "elections" to be handled without the need to keep returning to the polls.
Ireland, Australia and the Utah Republican Party use IRV now, and San Francisco will begin using it this year. The USA Today editorial page has endorsed Instant Runoff Voting, as have Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.
Proportional representation
In the 2002 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, 54.9 percent of Texas voters cast their ballots for Republican candidates, yet only 43.8 percent of the Lone Star delegation to that august body was Republican.
This disproportionate result comes about because each district only sends one member to Congress; a close loss is worth exactly the same as a race in which a party did not field a candidate. A system of proportional representation guarantees that parties send candidates to office in the same proportion as that in which the voters supported them.
Though proportional representation might sound strange, it is in fact far more common worldwide than our own "plurality system" and deserves a serious look.
American electoral law is in need of many more substantial changes, such as easier ballot access for third parties, the elimination of the restriction on voting for felons and some form of nonpolitical redistricting standard. But the three reforms named here would go a long way toward fulfilling the democratic promise of the United States.
Further information on these and other electoral reforms is available from the Center for Voting and Democracy (http://www.fairvote.org).
Despite the good intentions of the subsequent 2002 Help America Vote Act, the profoundly undemocratic ways in which we structure our elections have gone largely unacknowledged.
At the forefront of the movement for electoral reform is the nonprofit and nonpartisan Center for Voting and Democracy and its chair, former independent presidential candidate John Anderson. This organization advocates many important positions, but three are of particular importance:
The Electoral College
One fact about the 2000 election that is not controversial is that Al Gore won a half-million more votes than George W. Bush.
But our Electoral College system gives a state's entire allotment of electoral votes to the candidate who won that state, no matter how slim the margin of victory. In addition to the possibility of more minority-elected presidents, the Electoral College guarantees that residents of more highly contested states have a disproportionate influence on choosing the president. Any challenge to this system, however, would require that the Constitution be amended, and political will for such an undertaking appears to be lacking.
Hopefully significant in overcoming this inertia will be last month's New York Times editorial characterizing the Electoral College as "a ridiculous setup," and calling for a substantial and bipartisan effort to institute direct election of the president.
Instant Runoff Voting
Another factor that distorts election results is the fact that people often do not even vote for their favorite candidate. Particularly in primaries and elections featuring a third-party or independent choice, voters will cast their lots with the "least bad" candidate in hopes of defeating someone else.
Imagine instead that everyone voted for his or her favorite candidate, and no victor would be declared unless someone had more than 50 percent of the votes.
In the event that no candidate received a majority of votes, there would be another election, and the candidate who had previously received the lowest number of votes would be eliminated from the new contest.
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) simulates this series of elections in one session by allowing voters to pick several candidates and rank their preferences, allowing the various "elections" to be handled without the need to keep returning to the polls.
Ireland, Australia and the Utah Republican Party use IRV now, and San Francisco will begin using it this year. The USA Today editorial page has endorsed Instant Runoff Voting, as have Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.
Proportional representation
In the 2002 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, 54.9 percent of Texas voters cast their ballots for Republican candidates, yet only 43.8 percent of the Lone Star delegation to that august body was Republican.
This disproportionate result comes about because each district only sends one member to Congress; a close loss is worth exactly the same as a race in which a party did not field a candidate. A system of proportional representation guarantees that parties send candidates to office in the same proportion as that in which the voters supported them.
Though proportional representation might sound strange, it is in fact far more common worldwide than our own "plurality system" and deserves a serious look.
American electoral law is in need of many more substantial changes, such as easier ballot access for third parties, the elimination of the restriction on voting for felons and some form of nonpolitical redistricting standard. But the three reforms named here would go a long way toward fulfilling the democratic promise of the United States.
Further information on these and other electoral reforms is available from the Center for Voting and Democracy (http://www.fairvote.org).
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.