October 16, 2002
To: Friend of Fair Elections
Fr: Rob Richie, Executive Director
The Center for Voting and Democracy
www.fairvote.org, rr@fairvote.org
Re: - Federal election reform amidst "no-choice elections"
- Highlighted additions to our website
- Sample "CVD Digest"
(We hope that you value these occasional updates. We end the
update with information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe.)
* A Federal Election Reform Bill.... Finally
The United States may be the world's remaining superpower
and high-tech leader, but we still can't count the votes right.
Analysts estimate that as many as six million more Americans
would have cast valid votes in the 2000 presidential race with
modern and efficient procedures for voting and voter
registration. Just recently, Florida received well-deserved
ridicule after yet another "gang that couldn't shoot straight"
fiasco in several counties in its primary election. Indeed,
state after state has had problems with polls not opening
on time, machines breaking down, voter registration cards
getting lost and underpaid pollworkers not carrying out
their duties. In Michigan's hotly-contested gubernatorial
primary, to cite one generally overlooked example, more than
10% of ballots were invalidated due to voter error in the
wake of yet another faulty ballot design.
It may have taken longer than expected, but Congress today
finally passed legislation to modernize elections. President
Bush is expected to sign the bill into law. The legislation
provides nearly $4 billion to states and counties for better
voting machines and election administration and establishes a
new national electoral commission designed to be a partner
with county and state officials on ensuring the quality and
integrity of elections. While the commission has a far weaker
mandate than similar commissions in most nations and will
focus primarily on changes designed to help that half of the
American electorate which already votes rather than the
growing number who rarely participate, its creation is a
positive step. It will consider at least some areas designed to
boost voter turnout such as making Election Day a holiday.
Now the battle for modern and fair election administration
turns to the states, which must develop plans in order to
receive federal money. For more on the bill and concerns of
civil rights groups about provisions that could provide obstacles
to voting, please see the websites of electionline.org and the
Constitution Project (www.constitutionproject.org/eri/legislation.htm).
Showing good timing, PBS will air a program on Thursday
night (10 pm in most parts of the nation), October 17 on election
reform. Saturday Night Live cast member Darrell Hammond is
featured in "Who Counts? Election Reform in America." The
program suggests that we should explore changes to allow a
multi-party system in order to boost participation.
* Monopoly Politics 2002 -- Reign of the No-Choice Election
Make no mistake -- improving election administration is only a
part of what we must do to make our elections worthy of such
a proud democracy. Indeed, our election mechanics could have
become so rusty and inefficient only in a climate where
elections don't mean what they should: where few races are
close and where most people don't care very deeply about who
wins. We believe we must reform our winner-take-all election
system because it fundamentally undermines voter choice and
fair representation. We promote full representation voting
methods to elect our legislatures and instant runoff voting to
elect "single winner" offices such as president. (See our home
pages on these issues linked from www.fairvote.org)
Last month, we were pleased that C-SPAN provided live
coverage of the release of our report "Monopoly Politics 2002:
How No-Choice Elections Rule in a Competitive House."
Every congressional season, we engage in the rather
provocative exercise of projecting the results and likely victory
margins in three in four U.S. House races.
Not only that, but we confidently make these predictions
without using a single fact relating to campaign spending
inequities, the identity of challengers or any characteristic of
the incumbent that might suggest the quality of their
representation such as voting records and constituent service
record. All we need to know are the results from the two most
recent federal elections in the district and the incumbent's party
and seniority. Applied to U.S. House elections in 1996-2000
elections, our model projected 930 winners. Only one projected
winner actually lost, and we were right in 97% of our victory
margin projections.
For 2002, our model projects 332 winners out of 435 races,
including 195 candidates winning by landslide margins of at
least 20 percent, and an additional 100 candidates winning by
comfortable margins of at least 10 percent. Of the remaining
103 districts, most in fact will not be competitive either.
This year's lack of real choice for most voters has troubling
ramifications for the rest of the decade. Even though often very
anti-democratic in how it manipulates voters and protects
certain incumbents, redistricting at least historically results in
more competitive elections. But just like the static elections in
1998 and 2000, fewer than one in ten races are expected to be
won by less than 10% this year, and once again more than 98%
of incumbents are likely to defeat non-incumbent challengers.
This means that without significant shifts in Americans'
preferences between the two major parties, we likely will see
even less competitive races as the decade progresses. The lack
of competitiveness is often even more pronounced in state
legislative elections.
Without the hope of competitive choices, voters have little
chance to hold representatives accountable and seek new
representation. While we think of ours as a two-party system,
the frame of reference of most voters is actually that of a
one-party system in any given legislative election.
You can read our full report, download the spreadsheets we
used to make our predictions and watch the C-SPAN telecast of
our news conference at www.fairvote.org/2002. And stay tuned -- we'll
be able to make our predictions with the same degree of
reliability for November 2004 within just a few days of next
month's election. We also soon will make projections in most
states in the U.S. Presidential race in 2004.
* Website Highlights
It's been a busy period since our last update. Below are a few
highlights among the many items newly posted at fairvote.org
in "what's new" and "national and state media."
- Instant Runoff Voting: Hear Sen. John McCain's
message in favor of instant runoff voting taped for Alaska
voters. Read: Robert's Rules of Order on why IRV is better
than plurality elections; a resolution in favor of IRV adopted by
the Vermont AFL-CIO; an article about Vermont Governor and
presidential candidate Howard Dean's support for IRV; and
commentaries in favor of IRV from a former publisher of the
Minneapolis Star Tribune, the head of Vermont's League of
Women Voters, Rocky Mountain News editors and the Center
for Public Justice.
- Full Representation: Read about: advances for full
representation (also called proportional representation) in
Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom; the story of
how Vassar became the latest college to adopt full representation
for student elections; Tom Brazaitis' Cleveland Plain Dealer
column about full representation and Steven Hill's "Fixing
Elections"; and several new commentaries from CVD staff and
supporters. Find out how to get Doug Amy's new edition of
"Real Choices, New Voices" and learn about how Ireland's
choice voting system of full representation works.
- Elections: See our new webpages on the Electoral College
and our Monopoly Politics 2002 report.
* The CVD Digest -- A Sample Edition
We are starting a free email newsletter called "The Center for
Democracy On-Line Digest." Two or three times a month, the
Center's staff will assemble short items about current news and
opinion regarding politics, representative democracy and
political reform. These items are designed to be timely, useful
and provocative. You can subscribe by replying to this email
with "Subscribe Digest" in the email subject or in the body
of your message.
**********************************************
...........Center for Voting and Democracy Online Digest..........
..........Volume 1, Number 1, October 11, 2002..........
Welcome to the online digest of the Center for Voting and
Democracy. Two or three times a month, the Center's staff will
assemble short items about current news and opinion regarding
politics, representative democracy and political reform. This
first issue is edited by the Center's executive director Rob
Richie and senior analyst Steven Hill (shill@fairvote.org),
author of "Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner
Take All Politics" (Routledge Press, 2002,
www.fixingelections.com), where many of the themes to be
referenced in these digests are discussed in more detail.
*** A Woman Governor-to-be in Hawaii
In an election that could upset the Democratic Party's control
of the governor's mansion since the early years of statehood,
two women will face off in Hawaii's gubernatorial race this
November. Whichever of the two candidates win, Democratic
nominee and two-term Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono or Republican
nominee, Linda Lingle, the former mayor of Maui, they will
join the lonely ranks of female governors (Arizona, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts and Montana). This marks only the
second time in the nation that two women have won the two
major party nominations in a general election for governor. In
1986, Republican Kay Orr and Democrat Helen Boosalis ran
for governor in Nebraska.
With several other strong woman gubernatorial candidates,
2002 may mark an increase in women governors, but it won't
be another "Year of the Woman" in congressional elections.
Any increase in women in the U.S. House will be in the low
single-digits, in sharp contrast to the dramatic increase after the
last redistricting in 1992 when far more seats were made
competitive in redistricting. Women currently hold a mere 13
percent of seats in Congress, one of the lowest levels in the
world among well-established democracies.
*** Dancing the Two-Choice Tango
Thomas Mann, who watches Congress from the Brookings
Institution, was quoted in the Washington Post recently saying
that a new-breed of conservative politicians have torn a page
from President George Bush's playbook. "They reflect the
president, who is a very conservative man on things like taxes,
missile defense and social issues but has figured a way to . . .
appear more moderate than he is," Mann said. Mann said these
new Republicans pursue politics "with more soothing rhetoric
and a seemingly more accommodating style."
Many Democrats do the same thing. Former president Bill
Clinton was famous for "triangulating" his way to re-election in
1996, while most leading contenders for the 2004 Democratic
presidential nomination this month supported giving the
president the authority to invade Iraq despite opposition from
most Democratic Party voters.
"New Democrat".... "Compassionate Conservative"... Expect
more and more of these labels in a winner-take-all system,
where our two-choice politics bestow a disproportionate
amount of power on a small political minority -- "swing
voters." In low-turnout elections (all too frequent in the United
States, with some primary and local election turnouts in single
digits), those in a party's base who may sit out an election if
not inspired can be defined as "swing," but the voters who
inevitably draw the greatest attention are those 10 to 20 percent
willing to vote for either major party -- either because they are
single issue voters or because they are undecided. Because
undecided swing voters determine most close elections, it's no
wonder so many campaign appeals, sound bites and television
ads from both major parties are directed to them and sound so
similar. And it should be no surprise that attack ads still
dominate the final days of campaigns, as swing voters can be
more easily persuaded of your opponent's lack of worthiness
than of your own positive qualities.
Indeed most major party candidates become addicted to the
new modern techniques of polling, focus groups and dial meter
groups to figure out which issues and groups of voters to talk
to and which to ignore. In the process, many major issues,
including ones that most voters deeply care about, can be left
on the political sidelines. This is leading to a worrisome
dumbing down of politics and a disconnection between what
elected leaders do and what we debate in campaigns. These
techniques are inevitable results of a two-choice, winner-take-
all political system, where political operatives have the latest
technology to be able to easily slice and dice the electorate.
*** German Elections: On Sunday, September 23, nearly 50
million Germans went to the polls to elect their national
legislature, a turnout of four in five eligible voters. Given that
more than 90% of Germans directly elected someone under
Germany's full representation system, three out of every four
German adults now have their voice represented directly in
their national legislature. That's a sharp contrast to the fewer
than one in four American adults who elected anyone to the
U.S. House of Representatives in 1998, the last time we elected
the House in a non-presidential election year. That year fewer
than one in three adults voted in a House race, and despite the
lack of competitive races, a third of those votes were cast for
losing candidates. (For more such statistics, see our "Dubious
Democracy: 2001" report, which tracks various election
statistics from 1982 to 2000 for the nation and every state,
at http://fairvote.org/2001/.)
In this year's German elections, the incumbent Social
Democrat-Green Party coalition was re-elected in a squeaker.
Germany uses a "Mixed Member" system where half the
legislators are elected in U.S.-style, winner-take-all district
elections, and the other half by party lists in which five percent
of the national vote is required to entitle a party to a fair share
of seats in the legislature. The German Green Party won close
to 10% of the vote and also its first-ever district seat. The
failure of the Greens to win district seats in the past is a good
measure of how difficult it is for political minorities to win in
winner-take-all elections. Even though the German Greens are
far more established than any third party in the United States
and even though Germany has full public financing of elections
and bans most sources of private money, still a "third" party
like the Green Party would be shut out if the election was held
only under winner-take-all rules.
In fact, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, despite his popularity
and his party's sixteen year reign over German politics, never
won his local district seat. In that particular area, Kohl's
Christian Democratic party was the political minority. These
examples help lay to rest the notion that, outside of the
lightning-strikes kind of exception, third parties and the smaller
major party in any given area (i.e. political minorities) in our
system can start winning representation if they just "work
harder," "have better candidates" or "raise more money."
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The Center for Voting and Democracy is a non-profit based in
Washington D.C. headed by former Congressman and
presidential candidate John B. Anderson. We are devoted to
increasing public understanding of American politics and how
to reform its rules to provide more competition, better choices
and fairer representation. Our website (www.fairvote.org) has
information on voting methods, redistricting and voter turnout.
As we rely heavily on individual donations, please consider a
contribution by mail (6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610, Takoma
Park MD 20910) or on-line at www.fairvote.org/donate.htm.
Thank you!
Rob Richie, Executive Director
The Center for Voting & Democracy
rr@fairvote.org, www.fairvote.org
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
Takoma Park, MD 20912
(301) 270-4616
"Make Your Vote Count!"