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

Mon Jul 7 10:57:56 PDT 2014

________________________________
From: Zachary Roth [zacharyr46 at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 1:41 PM
To: Smith, Brad
Cc: Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] If it were a World Cup of Democracy....

Right, I get all that. I was sort of trying to move this beyond the somewhat esoteric question of whether FairVote used the best possible model to rank the health of democracies in its "World Cup of Democracy" feature, and instead to focus on the actual real-world issue that people who worry about low turnout are concerned about. *Me too*

In other words, whether people think that having an electorate that doesn't reflect the population is worth worrying about, and if not why not. *If that's your question, my answer would be that it could be (depending on a lot of empirical factors, value assumptions, and so on). If it is a problem, we should look to unskew the electorate in the best possible way, which may or may not involved higher turnout, and may or may not be worth undertaking. That's a big discussion, one I'll decline today. I do think that my original answers were quite relevant to that question, however.*

On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Smith, Brad <BSmith at law.capital.edu<mailto:BSmith at law.capital.edu>> wrote:
Sure, that's the worry (or one of the worries). But that's an after the fact analysis of a particular situation, not an a priori argument that high turnout is inherently a good thing. For example, I'm sure that the electorate in low turnout elections in Switzerland indeed skews white, too - but it would do so in high turnout elections as well.

Suppose, for example, that a low turnout election did not skew in all those undesirable ways (white, upper-income, well-educated). Would you still care? Maybe you would, but that argument would be certainly be gone.

And what are some of the reasons people might not be concerned about turnout? Again, the basic idea that relatively low turnout may mean that the society and the body politic have ample checks against extremism, sudden, jarring change, loss of liberties and a decline in the rule of law would be one. Others would argue that a smaller, more motivated, better informed electorate is preferable to a larger, coaxed, uninformed electorate, so long as the process is open. So long as the process is open, the fact that turnout is low probably doesn't matter a lot. There are other arguments as well.

In my view, the proof of a good political/electoral system is in the pudding. Elections are merely a means to ends. Is the society governed well, and does the system provide for orderly changes of power, particularly in the case of abuse of power? Are rights and liberties respected? Does the system facilitate growth and prosperity? I just don't think that one can show that high turnout elections lead to more effective government, greater political stability while accommodating change, greater respect for individual liberty, and greater prosperity for all than do low turnout elections. Perhaps in particular circumstances, but as a general matter? No. It takes no great research to see that many of our most successful democracies have had consistently low turnouts. Would they be even more successful if they worked to pump up turnout? Who knows. But high turnout doesn't seem critical to their success.

So the question should not be - as it is in the Fairvote model - whether turnout is high or low. It is to what extent, if any, should changes in the electoral system be made to assure effective government, greater stability accompanied by opportunities for change, respect for liberty and the rule of law, and prosperity. (Add other goals if you desire). Those changes may result in higher turnout. But I don't think that the evidence justifies defining lower turnout as inherently problematic.

Once more: If you've got a model that ranks Argentina and Russia ahead of the US, you need a better 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<tel:614.236.6317>

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

________________________________
From: Zachary Roth [zacharyr46 at gmail.com<mailto:zacharyr46 at gmail.com>]
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2014 12:15 PM
To: Smith, Brad
Cc: Salvador Peralta; 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<mailto: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<tel:614.236.6317>

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

________________________________
From: Salvador Peralta [oregon.properties at yahoo.com<mailto: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<mailto:BSmith at law.capital.edu>>
To: Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org<mailto:rr at fairvote.org>>
Cc: Election Law <Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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
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Washington, DC  20001
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________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> [mailto: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 Anthony Ramicone<http://www.fairvote.org/list/author/Anthony_Ramicone>, Nicholas Golden<http://www.fairvote.org/list/author/Nicholas_Golden>, Bogdan Popescu<http://www.fairvote.org/list/author/Bogdan_Popescu> // Published July 3, 2014
 [fifa]
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, as reported by IDEA<http://www.idea.int/vt/index.cfm>.
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 Gallagher Index<http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/staff/michael_gallagher/ElSystems/Docts/ElectionIndices.pdf>, 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, drawing on the Inter-Parliamentary  Union<http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm>, 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 sortable data and calculations here<http://www.fairvote.org/assets/World-Cup-Democracy.xlsx> 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 enhance women’s representation<http://www.representation2020.com/> , increase voter turnout<http://www.promoteourvote.com/> and improve fair representation<http://www.fairvoting.us/>.
Stay tuned for our next edition of Dubious Democracy<http://www.fairvote.org/assets/Uploads/DubiousDemocracy2010.pdf>, 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<mailto: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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