By Phil Nash
Published October 14th 2005 in Asian Week
Our country continues to struggle with Democracy 1.0, the best
political system that was available in the 18th century. Unfortunately,
most of the rest of the world has moved on to Democracy 2.0 and beyond,
with proportional representation, instant runoff voting and other
expressive innovations.
One of our major problems is that we are stuck with the Electoral College, which replaces the popular vote with a system that was designed to appease 18th-century slaveholders so that they would vote to approve the new Constitution. Choosing our presidents by a system where the winner of the popular vote in a state gets 100 percent of the Electoral votes, even if he or she won the popular vote by a 51-49 margin, is a practice that has to end in 2008.
In 2004, the presidential candidates did not spend their time campaigning in all 50 states. They chose 12 “battleground” states, where the entire sum of the state’s Electoral College votes could be swung into either the Republican or Democratic column. Compare this with 1960, when Kennedy narrowly defeated Nixon. In that election, 24 states met the definition of a swing state (where neither side was expected to get over 53% of the vote in a two-person race), and fully two-thirds of the states were considered “competitive” (where neither side was expected to get over 58%).
While it is bad if any person’s vote is given second-class status, the ramifications of this “focus your campaigns on the swing states” strategy has been especially bad for APAs and other minorities. The Shrinking Battleground: The 2008 Presidential Elections and Beyond (http://www.fairvote.org/?page=1555) is a report where researchers from the Center for Voting and Democracy found that more than 30% of whites live in battleground states, compared to only 21% of blacks and Native Americans, 18 % of Latinos and 14% of Asian Americans.
They also found that California, Hawai‘i and New York, the three states with the biggest APA populations, had a grand total of 6 television ads focused on the presidential campaign aired in the last 5 weeks of the 2004 campaign. Little New Mexico, with barely 26,000 APAs, had more than 12,000 ads. Florida had more than 55,000 ads. California, Hawai‘i and New York also had a combined total of three visits from major party presidential and vice-presidential candidates, compared to 61 for Florida, 48 for Ohio and 37 for Iowa.
While campaign visits and ads don’t directly translate into campaign promises and policies, there is no doubt that the concerns of voters in the swing states have a disproportionate impact on those campaign promises and policies. If APAs are not in the states where candidate visits and ads are focused, our concerns will become less influential once successful candidates take office.
How can APAs help to end the Electoral College system and move our country toward a more fair direct voting system? The first step is to educate people about the unfairness of the Electoral College, and the next step is to work within the political parties to push for reforms.
The Democratic Party, for example, is exploring how to make the 2008 election more fair to those who do not live in the states that vote first every time (Iowa and New Hampshire) and the battleground states. Unfortunately, the Democrats are perpetuating the voting-first status of mostly white Iowa and New Hampshire, but at least they are exploring the possibility of having South Carolina or some other state with more minorities voting soon thereafter.
Meanwhile, the recent departure of key leaders from the D.C. offices of our leading APA electoral justice organizations means that a new generation must assume the leadership of the centuries-long struggle to guarantee that everyone gets to vote and every vote is counted.
Fortunately, APIA Vote (www.apiavote.org), a D.C.-based, non-partisan electoral justice organization focused on voter education, registration and mobilization, has just hired a dynamic young Laotian American community organizer, Bouapha Toommaly, to lead it into its second decade. Toommaly, who came to the U.S. as a child and was raised in the Bay Area, has a good mixture of youthful energy, idealism and the mature strategic sense of the community organizer she has been since age 19.
Congressman Mike Honda is hosting a fundraiser for APIA Vote on October 18 in D.C. that will mark the start of the group’s campaign to get more APAs involved in the electoral process in 2006 and beyond. By helping APA voting rights groups all across the nation, APIA Vote can help our community address national issues such as the Electoral College, as well as simply getting more APAs registered and into the voting booths on Election Day. If we are ever to have political power commensurate with our numbers, I hope they are successful.
One of our major problems is that we are stuck with the Electoral College, which replaces the popular vote with a system that was designed to appease 18th-century slaveholders so that they would vote to approve the new Constitution. Choosing our presidents by a system where the winner of the popular vote in a state gets 100 percent of the Electoral votes, even if he or she won the popular vote by a 51-49 margin, is a practice that has to end in 2008.
In 2004, the presidential candidates did not spend their time campaigning in all 50 states. They chose 12 “battleground” states, where the entire sum of the state’s Electoral College votes could be swung into either the Republican or Democratic column. Compare this with 1960, when Kennedy narrowly defeated Nixon. In that election, 24 states met the definition of a swing state (where neither side was expected to get over 53% of the vote in a two-person race), and fully two-thirds of the states were considered “competitive” (where neither side was expected to get over 58%).
While it is bad if any person’s vote is given second-class status, the ramifications of this “focus your campaigns on the swing states” strategy has been especially bad for APAs and other minorities. The Shrinking Battleground: The 2008 Presidential Elections and Beyond (http://www.fairvote.org/?page=1555) is a report where researchers from the Center for Voting and Democracy found that more than 30% of whites live in battleground states, compared to only 21% of blacks and Native Americans, 18 % of Latinos and 14% of Asian Americans.
They also found that California, Hawai‘i and New York, the three states with the biggest APA populations, had a grand total of 6 television ads focused on the presidential campaign aired in the last 5 weeks of the 2004 campaign. Little New Mexico, with barely 26,000 APAs, had more than 12,000 ads. Florida had more than 55,000 ads. California, Hawai‘i and New York also had a combined total of three visits from major party presidential and vice-presidential candidates, compared to 61 for Florida, 48 for Ohio and 37 for Iowa.
While campaign visits and ads don’t directly translate into campaign promises and policies, there is no doubt that the concerns of voters in the swing states have a disproportionate impact on those campaign promises and policies. If APAs are not in the states where candidate visits and ads are focused, our concerns will become less influential once successful candidates take office.
How can APAs help to end the Electoral College system and move our country toward a more fair direct voting system? The first step is to educate people about the unfairness of the Electoral College, and the next step is to work within the political parties to push for reforms.
The Democratic Party, for example, is exploring how to make the 2008 election more fair to those who do not live in the states that vote first every time (Iowa and New Hampshire) and the battleground states. Unfortunately, the Democrats are perpetuating the voting-first status of mostly white Iowa and New Hampshire, but at least they are exploring the possibility of having South Carolina or some other state with more minorities voting soon thereafter.
Meanwhile, the recent departure of key leaders from the D.C. offices of our leading APA electoral justice organizations means that a new generation must assume the leadership of the centuries-long struggle to guarantee that everyone gets to vote and every vote is counted.
Fortunately, APIA Vote (www.apiavote.org), a D.C.-based, non-partisan electoral justice organization focused on voter education, registration and mobilization, has just hired a dynamic young Laotian American community organizer, Bouapha Toommaly, to lead it into its second decade. Toommaly, who came to the U.S. as a child and was raised in the Bay Area, has a good mixture of youthful energy, idealism and the mature strategic sense of the community organizer she has been since age 19.
Congressman Mike Honda is hosting a fundraiser for APIA Vote on October 18 in D.C. that will mark the start of the group’s campaign to get more APAs involved in the electoral process in 2006 and beyond. By helping APA voting rights groups all across the nation, APIA Vote can help our community address national issues such as the Electoral College, as well as simply getting more APAs registered and into the voting booths on Election Day. If we are ever to have political power commensurate with our numbers, I hope they are successful.