[EL] If it were a World Cup of Democracy....

Mon Jul 7 10:26:55 PDT 2014

I recently served as a member of the City of Los Angeles Election Reform Commission. Our charge was to explore ways to increase turnout in municipal elections. The factors of disproportionately low turnout in under-represented communities was part of our work. You can see the official commission report at the link below. It recommends moving elections to November of the even numbered years to coincide with Presidential and gubernatorial elections. There also is a minority report in which I was involved. It argues that the date of the election is the least impactful factor in determining turnout and that voter interest in the issues and the candidates is far more important. In my oral argument against the official report I said: you could put the repeal of Proposition 13 (property tax reform) on the ballot on Christmas Day and get a big turnout, but you could put a lackluster gubernatorial Primary Election on the ballot June 3 and get a 20% turnout. I think the chart of turnout in Los Angeles Mayoral elections over the last 44 years is worth a look. It is in the main body of the commission’s report.

http://electionscommission.lacity.org/html/documents.html

Larry

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Zachary Roth
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 9:16 AM
To: Smith, Brad
Cc: Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] If it were a World Cup of Democracy....

Thanks for these responses. It seems like these arguments don't have much to do with how this actually plays out. In reality, low turnout usually means a turnout that skews white, upper-income, and well-educated (at least in federal elections, but I think also in others). So when people worry about low turnout, that's sort of a shorthand for worrying about an electorate that doesn't accurately represent the voting-age population, leading to a government that doesn't pay attention to the interests of marginalized groups. 

Maybe that's not something people here see as anything to be concerned about (would love to hear that argument, too). But it seems worth being clear on what I think most people mean when they worry about low turnout.

On Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Smith, Brad <BSmith at law.capital.edu> wrote:

I think, Sal, you should try to answer this question yourself. I mean this seriously: think, why would a person suggest that the fact that a near majority of voters can sometimes elect a usually narrow majority of the legislature is a strength, or at least not a weakness. 

Consider things such whether there are any merits to federalism; to representation based on geographic districts with winner take all; or to having districts drawn with purpose rather than randomly, for starters. Then compare a system that yields such results not to an idealized version of competing systems, but to their actual reality. 

Then consider again the merits of a system that ranks Argentina and Russia ahead of the United States as a democracy, and consider what flaws there might be in that model.

Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

  _____  

From: Salvador Peralta [oregon.properties at yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2014 8:01 PM
To: Smith, Brad; Rob Richie
Cc: Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] If it were a World Cup of Democracy....

The ability to manipulate districts to enable a minority of voters to win a majority of seats in our legislature is a strength of our electoral system?

How so?

  _____  

From: "Smith, Brad" <BSmith at law.capital.edu>
To: Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org> 
Cc: Election Law <Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu> 
Sent: Thursday, July 3, 2014 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: [EL] If it were a World Cup of Democracy....

What's interesting is that there are very strong arguments that all of these things represent the strength of American democracy and our electoral system. The absurdity of a ranking putting Argentina and Russia ahead of the US may be evidence that the raters do not understand what their data means.

Bradley Smith 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 3, 2014, at 6:59 PM, "Rob Richie" <rr at fairvote.org> wrote:

Not to bore the list, but just briefly, the FairVote crew used four different measures. One is based on the Economist's "Democracy Index", which measures overall democratic health -- court system, press, etc. The US does pretty well there, ranking 7th among the nations, with countries like Algeria and Russia far behind. So good for us there, even if we're a good bit behind countries like Australia, Netherlands, and Switzerland. 

But they did want to make this more heavily focused on elections. And there, Americans do have to face up to a few facts like:

- Voter turnout in the US is exceptionally low in internal norms

- Representation of women in Congress is very low, which we see as a window into other limitations in how well we represent the electorate.

- Congress can have an approval rating around 10%, yet more than 98% of House incumbents almost certainly be returned to office this November - returning us to the four elections from 1998 to 2004 where each year more than 98% of House incumbents won even in years like 2002 when more than half of states switched parties in gubernatorial elections. (Note that FairVote will be able to call winners for November 2016 in close to 90% of races just two days after this November's election using a methodology that is quite likely to be 100% accurate.)

- Republicans won 54% of seats in 2012 with 48% of votes, and likely would not lose control of the House this year without dropping below 45% of votes (and this can happen to the GOP in some states, like in NJ, where its assembly candidates won only 40% of seats with 50% of votes in 2013). So we don't do seats-to-votes very well for the major parties, and of course not all for emerging parties seeking to hold the major parties accountable.

On some of these electoral measures, generally less democratic nations like Russia and Argentina do a lot better than us. And we think that matters, even if we recognize the Economist measure as critically important.

Onward,

Rob

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Richie
Executive Director, FairVote   
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
Takoma Park, MD 20912
rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616 <tel:%28301%29%20270-4616>   http://www.fairvote.org <http://www.fairvote.org/>  

Social Media: FairVote Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/FairVoteReform>    FairVote Twitter <https://twitter.com/fairvote>   My Twitter <https://twitter.com/rob_richie> 

First Million Campaign  Thank you for considering a tax-deductible donation <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2495/t/10346/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=5643>  to support FairVote's Reform2020.com <http://reform2020.com/>  vision. (Combined Federal Campaign number is 10132.) 

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 6:25 PM, Ilya Shapiro <IShapiro at cato.org> wrote:

Um, Russia is tied with the US and Argentina is way ahead. Time to go back to the drawing board on that ridiculous measurement.

Ilya Shapiro

Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies,

Editor-in-Chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review

Cato Institute

1000 Massachusetts Ave. NW

Washington, DC  20001

tel. (202) 218-4600 <http://UrlBlockedError.aspx> 

cel. (202) 577-1134 <http://UrlBlockedError.aspx> 

fax. (202) 842-3490 <http://UrlBlockedError.aspx> 

 <mailto:ishapiro at cato.org> ishapiro at cato.org

Bio/clips:  <http://www.cato.org/people/shapiro.html> http://www.cato.org/people/shapiro.html

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ishapiro

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Cato Supreme Court Review:  http://www.cato.org/supreme-court-review

Register for our 2014 Constitution Day Conference - Supreme Court Review/Preview:  http://www.cato.org/events/13th-annual-constitution-day

Watch me defend the right to keep and bear arms on the Colbert Report:  http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/340923/july-08-2010/automatics-for-the-people---ilya-shapiro---jackie-hilly

  _____  

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rob Richie
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2014 6:20 PM
To: Election Law
Subject: [EL] If it were a World Cup of Democracy....

Some soccer fans at FairVote are also fans of representative democracy. Even as they get ready for the quarterfinals this weekend, they decided to compare nations according to measures of their level of electoral democracy.

Spoiler alert: the US wouldn't even have advanced to the round of 16 based on this measure.

Happy July 4th - -a good time to mull over how well we're measuring the "consent of the governed."

- Rob Richie

##############

http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/blog/world-cup-of-democracy-goes-to-the-netherlands/

World Cup of Democracy Goes to the Netherlands

by  <http://www.fairvote.org/list/author/Anthony_Ramicone> Anthony Ramicone,  <http://www.fairvote.org/list/author/Nicholas_Golden> Nicholas Golden,  <http://www.fairvote.org/list/author/Bogdan_Popescu> Bogdan Popescu // Published July 3, 2014

  fifa <http://www.fairvote.org/assets/_resampled/ResizedImage627495-fifa.jpg> 

The FIFA World Cup is underway in Brazil. And while that tournament will eventually crown the best national soccer team in the world, we wondered what it would look like if it was crowning the best democracy in the world. With that in mind, we decided to put together an index that compares democracies across countries and then apply it to this year’s World Cup field.

In the end, the Netherlands came out on top, defeating Australia in a fairly lopsided final. You can see how the whole tournament played out in the graphic above. As to the United States, it didn’t even escape its “group of death” in our Democracy World Cup and ranks 17th among the 32 nations overall.

But what does it mean to have the world’s best democracy (or at least the best out of World Cup entrants)? Here is what went into our calculation:

1) Turnout

If a lot of people don’t bother to vote, your democracy is probably not healthy. Political participation is at the root of representative democracy, and voting is perhaps the most basic form of participation. Our turnout metric is an average of the turnout of the last two nationwide elections as a percentage of the voting age population,  <http://www.idea.int/vt/index.cfm> as reported by IDEA. 

2) Fair Representation of Political Views

How likely is it that your vote will elect someone? Do political parties receive a share of the power equal to their share of support? These questions are at the heart of measuring fair representation, or “proportionality” in political science terms. If, for example, one third of the voters support a particular political party, they should not be excluded from the system. To measure this, we use the  <http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/staff/michael_gallagher/ElSystems/Docts/ElectionIndices.pdf> Gallagher Index, which calculates the overall difference between how many votes that different parties get and how many seats they receive in a country.

3) Women’s Representation

Is your democracy inclusive of underrepresented groups? While an ideal calculation of this would include racial, ethnic, and religious measures, what constitutes a minority is so varied across countries that it is too difficult to encapsulate in a single metric. Instead, the percentage of women in government serves as a good barometer for understanding how well a democracy represents those who are traditionally excluded. In particular,  <http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm> drawing on the Inter-Parliamentary  Union, we use the percentage of women in the lower house of the legislature, since almost every lower house is directly elected.

4) Legitimacy

Is your democracy a sham? It doesn’t matter how inclusive your legislative chamber is or how many people show up to vote if your elections are rigged. We use the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, which measures the robustness of democracies, as a multiplier in our calculation. This ensures that superficial democracies, which look good on the surface, or not rewarded.

You can find all of our  <http://www.fairvote.org/assets/World-Cup-Democracy.xlsx> sortable data and calculations here which allow you to see which nations are best in each category. We hope that this serves as a foundation for building an index that serves to compare democracies around the world, not only measuring how free or fair they are but also how successful they are at representing the people they serve.

Some might be surprised to see that the United States did not make it past the group stage. Not even Tim Howard could save the US from its weak turnout and poor representation of women in Congress. You can read more about FairVote’s proposed reforms that would  <http://www.representation2020.com/> enhance women’s representation ,  <http://www.promoteourvote.com/> increase voter turnout and  <http://www.fairvoting.us/> improve fair representation.

Stay tuned for our next edition of  <http://www.fairvote.org/assets/Uploads/DubiousDemocracy2010.pdf> Dubious Democracy, where we have rated states in congressional elections. Historically we have done a relative index, but the method presented here is a step towards an absolute measure that will allow for more meaningful comparisons.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Richie
Executive Director, FairVote   
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
Takoma Park, MD 20912
rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616 <http://UrlBlockedError.aspx>   http://www.fairvote.org <http://www.fairvote.org/> 

Social Media: FairVote Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/FairVoteReform>    FairVote Twitter <https://twitter.com/fairvote>   My Twitter <https://twitter.com/rob_richie> 

First Million Campaign  Thank you for considering a tax-deductible donation <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2495/t/10346/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=5643>  to support FairVote's Reform2020.com <http://reform2020.com/>  vision. (Combined Federal Campaign number is 10132.) 

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