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

[Rob Richie]

Relating to Jim's question, closeness to home / size of government is
essentially an inverse relationship to turnout -- that is, turnout is
highest for president, then governor, then Congress, then state
legislature, then local.  I suspect a lot of that is media -- while city
councils are closest to us, the media coverage of their actions is often
the lowest.

Disparities by income and educational background are almost certainly far
greater in local elections as well, even though local government often
controls things that have particular. As one example we did an exit survey
in Takoma Park in a city council ward in a special election in 2012 - -one
with three candidates, including one African American, in a ward that is
majority-minority. The electorate was heavily white, and more than half had
graduate degrees -- as opposed to the census report that one in ten in the
ward had graduate degrees.

If you look at age, it's even more striking. In the last contested mayoral
election in Takoma park, less than 2% of eligible voters between 18 and 26
voted -- with some 20 times higher turnout among some other age groups.
Since the city lowered the voting age to 16, the number of 16- and
17-year-olds who have voted in each election has been more than all
18-30-year-olds -- good news for the newly enfranchised teens, but
underscoring the incredibly limited engagement of 20-somethings..

We've looked at turnout in the last few mayoral elections in our 22 largest
cities. The very highest turnout of any of them was 43% of registered
voters -- and some are in single digits. (The six lowest turnout cities are
all in Texas, interestingly.). See:
http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/blog/voter-turnout-lags-in-americas-22-largest-cities/

One FairVote program is PromoteOurVote.com, focused on cities taking to
boost turnout. Most non-participation in local elections has nothing to do
with access, and much more about motivation/interest.

- Rob Richie



On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> In the report of the L.A. Commission cited in the link below there is a
> discussion of variant factors that impact turnout in L.A. Mayoral races
> over the last 44 years.
>
> Larry
>
>
>
> *From:* JBoppjr at aol.com [mailto:JBoppjr at aol.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 10, 2014 7:01 AM
> *To:* rr at fairvote.org; larrylevine at earthlink.net
> *Cc:* Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] If it were a World Cup of Democracy....
>
>
>
> Regarding this:
>
>
>
> *Many just don't see elections as worth the time*
>
>
>
> This does seem to be a rational decision for several reasons. One reason
> is the growth in power of the federal government and the fact that one vote
> has no chance to effect who is elected President or controls Congress. The
> Framers concept was as much power as possible at the lowest level.
>
>
>
> So I wonder if there are any statistics on historic voting rates in local
> communities and/or for state elections when relatively they had more power?
> Logically, people should think they have more influence on local elections
> in most communities and, if local governments have real power, it is worth
> one's time voting in the election.
>
>
>
> But I doubt we can figure this out, since one cannot do a truly scientific
> study since one cannot control all the other variables.  Over time lots of
> the factors that can influence voting rates change and many vary
> from election to election - some increasing turnout and some decreasing
> it.  It is just speculation on which factor was most important -- if any
> one was -- over time or in any particular election and it cannot be
> scientifically determined.
>
>
>
> Jim Bopp
>
>
>
> In a message dated 7/9/2014 4:56:57 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> rr at fairvote.org writes:
>
> In answer to Larry, Australia made it to the final in our World Cup. Not
> only does it have high turnout, largely due to compulsory voting ,but it
> rates well on other measures.
>
>
>
> We updated the piece. It turns out the version I linked to on Thursday had
> accurate data in the spreadsheet and write-up, but an error in the graphic
> that was based on changes to the indices being incompletely updated. Ilya
> will be happy to know that Russia indeed rated poorly, well behind the US.
> See the corrected version here, with some additional text that tries to
> anticipate the kinds of concerns raised on this list:
>
>
> http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/blog/world-cup-of-democracy-goes-to-the-netherlands/
>
>
>
> The final four nations are all ones that are well-respected nations and
> strong democracies -- Germany, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands.
> Interestingly, three of these nations made the final eight in the real
> World Cup.
>
>
>
> The US still legs, however. Its low turnout might not bother Brad, but it
> does raise questions about  the health of our electoral democracy in our
> eyes -- especially when those not showing up to vote do not correlate with
> people who are necessarily content. Many just don't see elections as worth
> the time, which I don't see it is as good in the long-term.
>
>
>
> Rob
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Rob Richie
> Executive Director, FairVote
> 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
> Takoma Park, MD 20912
> rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616  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
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> support FairVote's Reform2020.com <http://reform2020.com/> vision.
> (Combined Federal Campaign number is 10132.)
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
> 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 <614.236.6317>*
>
> *http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx
> <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  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/>
>
> ishapiro at cato.org
>
> Bio/clips: http://www.cato.org/people/shapiro.html
>
> Twitter: www.twitter.com/ishapiro
>
> SSRN: http://ssrn.com/author=1382023
>
>
>
> *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 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
>
>  [image: 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  (301) 270-4616 <http://urlblockederror.aspx/>
> 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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