[EL] Rick Pildes Guest Post
Dan Meek
dan at meek.net
Thu Jul 4 15:55:40 PDT 2019
Rick Pildes suggests " the hybrid German system, in which voter elect
individual representatives from districts but there is also a
party-based vote, and the overall representation reflects the correct PR
outcome."
In Oregon very soon the largest group of voters will be the
non-affiliateds, who already comprise 33% of all registered voters. How
does the German system work when lots of voters join and support no party?
Dan Meek
503-293-9021 dan at meek.net <mailto:dan at meek.net> 855-280-0488 fax
On 7/4/2019 2:17 PM, Rob Richie wrote:
> I'm pleased that this exchange is happening on Independence Day, with
> its special connection to our nation's founding principles -- the
> meaning of being created equal, how best to ensure government is
> grounded in the consent of the governed, and what it might mean today
> for the people to act "to institute new government, laying its
> foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
> as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
>
> i think Rick Pildes is right to be cautious about proposals like the
> Fair Representation Act for Congress, and he asks good question about
> how the single transferable vote (ranked choice voting in multi-winner
> districts) might work in elections to the US House.
>
> At the same time, we have a lot of data to help assess his questions
> and similar ones, and I'm looking forward to upcoming work being
> organized to evaluate such questions. In 2015, FairVote oversaw an
> important comparative analysis
> <https://www.fairvote.org/comparative-structural-reform>involving a
> lot of scholars active on this list or frequently cited that suggested
> a system like the Fair Representation Act would be the most positively
> consequential change we might do - and certainly more feasible than a
> mixed member system in a nation where half of states have five or
> fewer House seats.
>
> What I've seen suggests strongly it won't cost more to run and win
> seats within such a system, that racial minority voting rights would
> be expanded and better protected, that fair political outcomes the
> norm.and that every voter in every election would participate in a
> meaningfully contest where their vote mattered. Living in a Maryland
> community where I am directly represented by five county
> commissioners, four state legislators and two U.S Senators (as with
> all state residents without great complaint), I am comfortable with
> not being limited to one representative per legislative body. Having
> more than one representative is quite common in the United States,
> with 41 states having at least some multi-member state legislative
> districts as recently as the 1950s.
>
> Speaking to Steve's original post and some email traffic earlier on
> Rucho that legal scholars perhaps could do more to lay a legal theory
> driving their challenge, I think there's a real case to be made that
> "consent of the governed" clashes with winner-take-all elections in
> the modern era of politics. For all its virtues (which are real),
> independent redistricting will only marginally increase electoral
> competition and can result in exceptionally imbalanced representation.
> Witness California, which has an independent redistricting commission
> and a congressional delegation in which Republicans hold seven seats
> (13%) out of 53 today despite their nominees for president and
> governor averaging 35 percent of the vote in 2016 and 2018, Out of 53
> California seats, 34 seats were won by landslides of 20% or more, and
> only five won by less than five percent.
>
> Consider what Justice Kagan says in her Rucho dissent in this
> revealing passage, - one that underscores that fairness is not a goal:
>
> << Everything in today’s opinion assumes that these cases grew out of
> a “desire for proportional representation” or, more generally phrased,
> a “fair share of political power.” Ante, at 16, 21. And everything in
> it assumes that the courts below had to (and did) decide what that
> fair share would be. But that is not so. The plaintiffs objected to
> one specific practice—the extreme manipulation of district lines for
> partisan gain. Elimination of that practice could have led to
> proportional representation. Or it could have led to nothing close.
> *What was left after the practice’s removal could have been fair, or
> could have been unfair, by any number of measures. That was not the
> crux of this suit.>> /[emphasis added]/*
> *
> *
> Without anything close to criticism of the plaintiffs and their
> attorneys in this for case,I , for one, would like to see legal
> theories developed that would lead to fairness actually being the crux
> of the case.
>
> Rob Richie
>
> On Thu, Jul 4, 2019 at 4:28 PM Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu
> <mailto:rick.pildes at nyu.edu>> wrote:
>
> I support ranked-choice voting in certain kinds of elections,
> particularly for a single officeholder (Ned Foley's idea that
> States should use it in presidential elections is a good one).
>
> I have been more skeptical about using MMDs and RCV when electing
> members of Congress. Take a State like NC, which might be carved
> up into three regions for MMDs; the regions would elect 4, 4, and
> 5 candidates. So we would have 8-10 candidates running in a
> general election, across a third of the State, with voters having
> to rank them. My concerns are that this would raise the cost of
> elections; demand more of voters regarding information than is
> reasonable to expect; would leave voters without feeling they had
> a representative who was "their" person. I think a better
> approach, if we are going to think outside the box this far, is
> the hybrid German system, in which voter elect individual
> representatives from districts but there is also a party-based
> vote, and the overall representation reflects the correct PR outcome.
>
> But none of these changes are going to happen, certainly not for
> the 2020 round. So for that, I still will focus on IRCs.
>
> Best,
> Rick
>
> Richard H. Pildes
> Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law
> NYU School of Law
> 40 Washington Sq. So.
> NYC, NY 10012
> 212 998-6377
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Law-election
> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> <mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>] On Behalf
> Of Steven John Mulroy (smulroy)
> Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2019 3:50 PM
> To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> <mailto:law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
> Subject: Re: [EL] Rick Pildes Guest Post
>
> Rick Pildes does a good job explaining the practical tensions
> between partisan fairness and competitiveness, and between both
> and traditional districting criteria like compactness, contiguity,
> respect for political subdivision boundaries, and "communities of
> interest" (whatever that means). In my recent book Rethinking US
> Election Law, I argue that these tensions are inherent and
> irreconcilable, and reveal a fundamental flaw in our single member
> district, winner take all system. Thus, we should not assume that
> the ultimate I hope I iremedy is in independent Redistricting
> commissions (or IRCs, as Pildes calls them)
>
> . Rather, we should consider proportional representation
> approaches using multi member districts and ranked choice voting.
> They have many advantages beyond fixing the persistence of
> "natural gerrymanders" even with well intentioned IRC
> map-drawers. There should be a new piece about this soon in The
> New Republic.
>
> I hope reformers disappointed by Rucho don't rush to judgment
> towards IRCs as a perceived best practice.
>
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> <mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__department-2Dlists.uci.edu_mailman_listinfo_law-2Delection&d=DwICAg&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=74qvnkiCgjdaR3YsyEaF8IibxcyuuaWGEuHZSh5gerI&s=GawCFj2BxSqBslCJ8BAAbmG-V2p--ZdY6lRBjdOyuZQ&e=
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> <mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
> https://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
>
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Rob Richie
> President and CEO, FairVote
> 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 240
> Takoma Park, MD 20912
> rr at fairvote.org <mailto:rr at fairvote.org> (301) 270-4616
> http://www.fairvote.org
> _FairVote Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/FairVoteReform>__FairVote
> Twitter <https://twitter.com/fairvote>_My Twitter
> <https://twitter.com/rob_richie>
>
> Thank you for considering a /donation
> <http://www.fairvote.org/donate>. Enjoy our video on ranked choice
> voting <https://youtu.be/CIz_nzP-W_c>!/
> (Note: Our Combined Federal Campaign number is 10132.)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> https://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20190704/11901d7a/attachment.html>
View list directory