By Jim Brunelle
Published July 10th 2006 in Portland Press Herald
Mexico, it appears, has the same kind of presidential elections we do -
close, contested and with winners by plurality only.
In close-call balloting last week, the conservative candidate was declared the winner by a relative handful of votes while the guy who came in second demanded a recount. The leftist Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed that the other side would not be allowed to steal the election and thwart the will of the people.
He meant, of course, the "will of the people" as expressed by the roughly one-third of the voters who cast ballots for him as opposed to the roughly one-third who voted for his opponent. It was a five-way race, after all, and a sizable number of Mexicans voted for the other candidates.
No matter who is declared the final winner in this case, Mexico will have a minority president.
On this side of the border, we've had our own minority presidents, including George W. Bush in 2000 and Bill Clinton both in 1992 and 1996. It's a growing phenomenon, coinciding with the decline of the two-party system in this country, which has led to crowded contests and uncertain election results that undermine the legitimacy of winning candidates.
The problem has spread to the state level, where a growing number of contenders for high public office are installed by a minority - sometimes quite a small minority - of the total votes cast. Maine's last five governors fall into that category.
Four years ago, Democrat John Baldacci was elected in a four-way race with just 47 percent of the vote.
The state's two independent governors were elected by far slimmer pluralities: James B. Longley in 1974 with 39 percent and Angus King in 1994 with just over 35 percent. In between those two came Democrat Joseph E. Brennan with 48 percent and Republican John R. McKernan with 40 percent.
Put it this way: For more than three decades, Maine has been led by a chief executive that most voters have opposed at the ballot box.
This didn't used to be a problem when this was a strong two-party (or even one-party) state. But it is a problem now, and it cries out for reform, my own favorite solution being the instant runoff election.
The instant runoff, which would forever eliminate government by minority election, has the virtue of being both simple and fair.
It works this way: Rather than just voting for one candidate when there are three or more to choose from on the ballot, voters get to rank their selections in order of preference.
If a single candidate gets a clear majority of the votes, that's it. But if none gets more than 50 percent of the votes cast, the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped and the second choices of voters for that candidate are distributed accordingly among the remaining candidates.
The process is repeated until a winner emerges with a clear majority.
The beauty of this is that elections can be settled within a day or two - hours, even - rather than being dragged out for weeks, as in a conventional runoff arrangement, in which surviving candidates are forced to conduct a second, costly election campaign.
The Maine Legislature has taken up instant runoff proposals in the past, most recently last year, but the idea has never quite caught on. It deserves a lot more serious consideration than it has earned so far.
If the instant runoff process had been in place during the recent Mexican presidential election, that country almost certainly would have an indisputably clear result by now.
If the system had been in effect in the United States in 2000, we would probably not have gone through the agony of uncertainty that plagued that year's presidential balloting, when the candidate who got the most votes still lost the electoral college, and thus the election.
And if such a runoff had been the law in Maine 32 years ago, when the first of the modern minority governors was elected, the political history of this state might have been a lot different - and almost certainly more democratic.
In close-call balloting last week, the conservative candidate was declared the winner by a relative handful of votes while the guy who came in second demanded a recount. The leftist Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed that the other side would not be allowed to steal the election and thwart the will of the people.
He meant, of course, the "will of the people" as expressed by the roughly one-third of the voters who cast ballots for him as opposed to the roughly one-third who voted for his opponent. It was a five-way race, after all, and a sizable number of Mexicans voted for the other candidates.
No matter who is declared the final winner in this case, Mexico will have a minority president.
On this side of the border, we've had our own minority presidents, including George W. Bush in 2000 and Bill Clinton both in 1992 and 1996. It's a growing phenomenon, coinciding with the decline of the two-party system in this country, which has led to crowded contests and uncertain election results that undermine the legitimacy of winning candidates.
The problem has spread to the state level, where a growing number of contenders for high public office are installed by a minority - sometimes quite a small minority - of the total votes cast. Maine's last five governors fall into that category.
Four years ago, Democrat John Baldacci was elected in a four-way race with just 47 percent of the vote.
The state's two independent governors were elected by far slimmer pluralities: James B. Longley in 1974 with 39 percent and Angus King in 1994 with just over 35 percent. In between those two came Democrat Joseph E. Brennan with 48 percent and Republican John R. McKernan with 40 percent.
Put it this way: For more than three decades, Maine has been led by a chief executive that most voters have opposed at the ballot box.
This didn't used to be a problem when this was a strong two-party (or even one-party) state. But it is a problem now, and it cries out for reform, my own favorite solution being the instant runoff election.
The instant runoff, which would forever eliminate government by minority election, has the virtue of being both simple and fair.
It works this way: Rather than just voting for one candidate when there are three or more to choose from on the ballot, voters get to rank their selections in order of preference.
If a single candidate gets a clear majority of the votes, that's it. But if none gets more than 50 percent of the votes cast, the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped and the second choices of voters for that candidate are distributed accordingly among the remaining candidates.
The process is repeated until a winner emerges with a clear majority.
The beauty of this is that elections can be settled within a day or two - hours, even - rather than being dragged out for weeks, as in a conventional runoff arrangement, in which surviving candidates are forced to conduct a second, costly election campaign.
The Maine Legislature has taken up instant runoff proposals in the past, most recently last year, but the idea has never quite caught on. It deserves a lot more serious consideration than it has earned so far.
If the instant runoff process had been in place during the recent Mexican presidential election, that country almost certainly would have an indisputably clear result by now.
If the system had been in effect in the United States in 2000, we would probably not have gone through the agony of uncertainty that plagued that year's presidential balloting, when the candidate who got the most votes still lost the electoral college, and thus the election.
And if such a runoff had been the law in Maine 32 years ago, when the first of the modern minority governors was elected, the political history of this state might have been a lot different - and almost certainly more democratic.
