May 21, 2004
To: Friends of Fair Elections
Fr: Rob Richie, Executive Director
The Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD)
www.fairvote.org, rr@fairvote.org
Re: - Instant runoffs at Utah Republican convention
- Cumulative voting in Amarillo and corporations
- Welcoming David Moon to CVD
- Highlights of recent webpage postings:
o Register to vote on-line
o Efforts to secure funding for elections
o India's election Ð and a call for full representation
o UC-Davis and fair student elections
- CVD commentary in the Washington Post and Legal Times
- News and reviews
o Voting rights amendment gathers support
o An integrated U.S. Senate?
o Books by George Farah and Hendrik Hertzberg
Entrenched in 18th-century democratic structures and practices, the
United States has missed out on many advances in how to run fair
elections and give people the tools to hold their government
accountable. The Florida election debacle in 2000 was just the tip of
an iceberg of problems that remains largely unexamined.
But there are cracks of light that expose new approaches. Take our
work on upgrading voting methods. On May 8, some 3,500 Utah
Republicans gathered for their state convention and used instant
runoff voting (IRV) to nominate candidates for governor (reducing a
wide-open field of eight candidates to two who will advance to a
primary) and for Congress and to elect party officers. IRV is a
significant improvement over traditional voting methods in
accommodating voter choice and ensuring majority rule.
The next week, on May 15, voters in Amarillo, Texas, elected their
school board for the third time with cumulative voting. Cumulative
voting is a full representation system that provides all substantial
groups of voters with equal access to elect candidates of their
choosing rather than only representing the largest group of voters.
Gaining general acceptance in Amarillo since its adoption in 1999
to settle a voting rights case, cumulative voting has had an
immediate impact on fair representation. A candidate of color has
been elected in each of the three cumulative voting elections; before
its adoption, no candidate of color had been elected since the 1970s.
In today's update, we have more information about these elections,
feature high-profile editorial commentary suggesting that the best
way to tackle political gerrymandering is full representation and
summarize recent additions to our website.
I'm also pleased to welcome David Moon to the Center. A former
legal intern who graduates this month from the Washington College
of Law, David heads up our outreach about full representation
voting methods Ð see http://fairvote.org/about_us/moon.htm
David already has appeared on CNN this month to discuss voting --
read the transcript at http://fairvote.org/articles/cnn.htm
We're also looking forward to another energetic crew of seven
interns from around the nations coming to work with us this summer
to advance democracy. They will join our dedicated program
associates Stephanie Collier, Danielle Goodreau, Andrew
Kirshenbaum and Chris Martin. Out in the field, Steven Hill, Caleb
Kleppner, Dan Johnson-Weinberger and Terry Bouricius continue
to represent CVD effectively in California, Illinois and Vermont.
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IRV PLAYS MAJOR ROLE IN UTAH / GAINS SUPPORT
On May 8, 2004, the Utah Republican Party held a convention with
3,500 delegates charged with selecting their party's nominees for the
often hotly contested offices of Governor, Attorney General and
numerous US Congressional seats as well as electing party officers.
To ensure majority support for their nominees and save on election
time and expense, the Utah Republicans have been using instant
runoff voting (IRV) at state conventions since 2001. Utah
Republicans also use IRV at several county conventions.
Under the party's rules, a candidate can be nominated for an office
at the convention with 60% support; if no candidate reaches that
threshold, the top two face off to a primary. IRV is used to
determine if there is a super-majority winner and, if not, which two
candidates advance to the primary. Before adoption of IRV, there
were repeated rounds of in-person voting, which often took many
hours and led to final votes occurring with far fewer delegates than
earlier in the day. Because IRV has meant more people participate
in the decisive vote, it's become very popular with delegates. (Note:
If you're a member of an organization that might experience this
problem, don't hesitate to contact us for information about IRV.)
This year's wide-open gubernatorial race provided a powerful
demonstration of how IRV works. No candidate won even 30% of
first choices, and as the field of eight was reduced to two, it was
clear that supporters of different candidates with different bases of
support had coherently ranked their choices. For instance, when
House Speaker Marty Stephens was defeated, only 13 of his 465
ballots went to the incumbent governor Olene Walker, who is not
his political ally. When Walker later was defeated (Walker had
become governor after being elected as lieutenant governor), most
of her votes went to Nolan Karras, propelling him into the final two
with Jon Hunstman.
We've posted the results at http://fairvote.org/irv/utahresults.htm
along with several articles about the convention, including one with
a helpful graphic showing how IRV works, at
http://fairvote.org/irv/utahindex.html
In addition to the governor's race, IRV was used this year to
nominate candidates for U.S. Congress, attorney general, national
committeeman and national committee woman. Nancy Lord, the
new national committeewoman for Utah, has been an effective
voice for using IRV at these conventions and has expressed interest
in discussing its value with Republicans around the country.
The Republicans' experience with IRV at the convention drew the
attention of the Provo Daily Herald. On May 16, the Herald came
out in favor of adopting IRV for general elections in Utah,
concluding, "If Utah wants to boost public participation and make
the electoral process work better, it should embrace instant runoffs."
See http://fairvote.org/editorials/herald.htm
Other recent postings about IRV include:
- In a news articles from MediaChannel.org on "Has Rocking the
Vote Missed the Boat?," youth activists tout IRV and non-winner-
take-all elections as a means to boost voter interest. See
http://fairvote.org/articles/rockingthevote.htm
- Newsweek's on-line edition has a lengthy article on "Under the
Hood of the Green Machine" in which IRV's ability to resolve the
"spoiler" controversy is explained. See
http://fairvote.org/articles/greens.htm
To track such news and discuss strategic questions, join the national
IRV listserv, which is moderated and limited to no more than two
messages a day. You can review the archives and/or sign up at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/instantrunoff
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CUMULATIVE VOTING AT WORK: AMARILLO, TEXAS
AND CORPORATE BOARDS
On May 15, the Amarillo Independent School District -- a
jurisdiction with some 160,000 people -- elected its school board for
the third time with cumulative voting, a non-winner-take-all method
of full representation. In each of these three cumulative voting
elections, at least one candidate of color has been elected. The
current board has African American and Latino representation, after
having had only elected white representatives for some two decades
under the winner-take-all system used before 2000. Voter turnout
has increased, although remains quite low; in an encouraging sign,
rates of voter error were extremely low this year.
With cumulative voting, candidates run for more than one seat Ð as
done in several state legislatures and in many localities. Voters have
the same number of votes as seats, and can choose to allocate them
however they want Ð including having the right to give more than
one vote to one candidate. When adopting cumulative voting, a
jurisdiction is expanding electoral options for its citizens. It is one
of a family of voting methods that we call "full representation"
because they allow more voters to elect someone to speak for them
and represent their interests.
Amarillo's adoption of cumulative voting was the result of litigation
brought by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education
Fund (MALDEF), working with the local branches of the League of
United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The
parties in the case agreed to settle the case with the adoption of
cumulative voting in 1999.
Cumulative voting is now used by at least 40 school districts and 14
city councils across the state of Texas. All these districts adopted
cumulative voting during the 1990s, and burgeoning support for
cumulative voting led then-governor George W. Bush to sign into
law a 1995 bill explicitly allowing cumulative voting to be used in
school board elections.
Cumulative voting allows political minorities to gain representation
by focusing their voting strength. For example, the first African
Americans were elected to the Atlanta, TX independent school
district (ISD) school board largely as a result of African American
voters' giving all their votes to these candidates. Prior to the
adoption of cumulative voting, many districts like Atlanta ISD had
never had a non-Anglo elected to the school board, even though
African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities were a
substantial part of the population--Atlanta, for example, is 20%
African American.
Cumulative voting also has a long history in shareholder elections
for corporate boards. Many major corporations use cumulative
voting for board elections, and many corporate governance
reformers back it. Just this spring it was just required of all Russian
corporations, while this month, national union leaders backed
cumulative voting for Entergy Corporation, arguing it "would bring
an independent perspective to the corporation." For more on the
Entergy resolution, see
http://www.reformentergynow.org
http://fairvote.org/press/entergy.htm
#####################
HIGHLIGHTS OF RECENT WEB POSTINGS
* Register to vote! Joining a growing number of non-profits seeking
to boost voter participation, we've set up a portal with information
on how to vote and how to register to vote on-line, in person or by
mail. See http://fairvote.org/turnout/infocenter.htm
* States and the new Election Assistance Commission need more
funds to help states implement the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)
fairly and fully. CVD has joined many groups in a letter calling for
funds Ð see pdf file at http://fairvote.org/administration/lccr.pdf
* The world's largest democracy, India, elected its parliament this
month, instituting a new electronic voting system nationwide.
Voters surprised the pundits, with the Congress party upsetting the
ruling coalition. As part of CVD's regularly updated collection of
articles about full representation around the world (see
http://www.fairvote.org/pr/global/country.htm), we've posted a new
commentary from the Calcutta Times calling for full representation
to replace India's current winner-take-all elections:
http://fairvote.org/pr/global/indiasuggestions.htm
* The University of California-Davis is one of more than 20
colleges and universities that now use fair election methods for
student elections. It elects its student council by the choice voting
method of full representation. Student advocates recently provide an
analysis of the most recent choice voting elections at:
http://www.ucdgreens.org/cva/addendum.pdf
#####################
FEATURED COMMENTARY: CVD ON GERRYMANDERING
In the wake of last month's Supreme Court ruling in Vieth v.
Jubilirer upholding political gerrymandering as constitutional, CVD
representatives have published several commentaries about the
disturbing nature of the problem and how it is best addressed by
adopting full representation voting methods. Others suggesting that
full representation should be on the table in the wake of the Vieth
ruling include Richard Hasen, co-editor of Election Law Journal and
blogger (electionlawblog.org), who wrote in Roll Call on May 3,
2004 that "States might move to more creative methods of
choosing members of state legislatures such as through the use of
cumulative voting."
Below is a letter by CVD's Rob Richie that was published on May 5
in the Washington Post, followed by an excerpt from a lengthy
commentary by Richie and CVD chairman John Anderson that
appeared in the May 17 Legal Times.
"Elections and Real Representation"
By Rob Richie, Washington Post Letters, May 5, 2004
Fred Hiatt is quite right to finger redistricting as a major problem
with our democracy -- it's simply wrong to allow elected officials to
help their friends and hurt their enemies ["Time to Draw the Line,"
op-ed, May 3]. But with nonpartisan redistricting, the number of
competitive districts around the nation would probably increase
from one in 10 seats to perhaps one in six -- doing little to address
the polarized nature of policymaking on Capitol Hill and under-
representation of women and minorities.
It's time to modify winner-take-all elections, as nearly all other
enduring democracies have. One American example comes from
Illinois, where from 1870 to 1980 candidates for the state House of
Representatives ran in three-seat districts, as is done in most of
Maryland. A full-representation voting method was used that
lowered the victory threshold for candidates from 50 to 25 percent.
The Illinois system didn't threaten the two-party system, but it
broadened representation within the parties and promoted more
bipartisan policy. It also gave most voters better choices and fairer
representation, and it boosted representation of women and African
Americans.
It would take only a statute to enact the Illinois system of multi-seat
districts for electing the U.S. House members and most state
legislators. Without it most voters are doomed to electoral
irrelevance no matter how we draw district lines.
*************
"A Better Way to Vote" (excerpt)
Legal Times, May 17, 2004, By John B. Anderson and Rob Richie
The Supreme Court's decision last month in Vieth v. Jubilirer to
uphold Pennsylvania's congressional redistricting plan demands that
we confront an uncomfortable fact: We must either change our
winner-take-all electoral system or accept the degradation of
democracyÉ
Breyer in his dissent most directly addresses winner-take-all
elections and "why the Constitution does not insist that the
membership of legislatures better reflect different groups of voters."
He states that the Constitution demands "a method for transforming
the will of the majority into effective government." But his
subsequent discussion reflects a primitive understanding of
comparative electoral systems, suggesting that the only alternative
to single-party-majority governments, elected by single-member
districts, is coalition-ridden, multiparty governments like those of
Italy and Israel. In fact, there are other viable alternatives.
Scalia's use of the word "radical" and Breyer's specter of coalition-
ridden Italy point to an underlying problem: Rather than interpreting
the Constitution, the justices are acting as political scientists, and
rather poor ones at that, in leaving undisturbed the status quo of
single-member districts.
Far-from-radical, full-representation voting methods have a lengthy
history in the United States. In fact, Justice Clarence Thomas
discussed them quite cogently in Holder v. Hall (1994), noting that
"from the earliest days of the Republic, multimember districts were
a common feature of our political systems." Non-winner-take-all
voting methods used here (in a growing number of cities) and in
some other nations have led to largely two-party systems, yet still
resolve nearly all political gerrymandering concerns -- and,
importantly, all the conflicts the Court has faced in trying to ensure
that racial minorities can elect candidates of their choice.
If non-winner-take-all systems would constitute no "radical"
change, there is simply no constitutional reason to cling to single-
member districts. Indeed, Illinois shows how alternatives to winner-
take-all elections can enhance our political traditions rather than
fundamentally alter them.
>From 1870 to 1980, the Illinois lower house had three-seat
constituencies elected by cumulative voting. Voters had three votes
each, which they could give to one candidate or spread among a
few. The majority party usually won two seats, often with two
candidates reflecting different elements within the party. The third
seat usually was won by another party with support from about a
quarter of the voters.
After the system was replaced in 1980 (due to a citizen initiative
that sharply reduced the number of representatives), the Illinois
legislature became much more polarized. Today most longtime
leaders in both parties support the return of multi-seat districts, as
evidenced by the 2001 recommendation of a bipartisan commission
led by former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar and former Democratic
Rep. Abner Mikva. The commission argued that multi-seat districts
would lead to greater cooperation between the parties and fairer
representation across the state.
The Illinois system's one downside -- the fact that parties often
nominated only two candidates to avoid splitting the vote -- could
be addressed by adopting the choice voting method used in Ireland.
That system lets voters indicate their first, second, and third choices,
so that voters whose first choice doesn't win a seat can still help
elect their second or third choice. Also, to ensure greater accuracy
of representation statewide, a few "add-on" seats could be awarded
to underrepresented parties, as recently proposed in the United
Kingdom.
Many students of American democracy and nearly every major
newspaper, from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal,
warn that our democracy is in crisis because there is so little
competition and accountability in congressional elections. But
without challenging the dogma of winner-take-all districts,
any reforms will fall short of addressing the real crisis. To confront
the political realities of the 21st century and rebuild a vibrant,
accountable representative democracy, we must turn to American
systems of full representation.
[The full commentary in pdf form is posted at:
http://fairvote.org/redistricting/legaltimes.htm]
#####################
NEWS AND REVIEWS
* Voting rights amendment gathers support: HJR 28, Rep. Jesse
Jackson Jr.'s right-to-vote amendment, now has 35 co-sponsors. See
http://fairvote.org/righttovote/index.htm. Meanwhile, the proposed
Iraqi constitution would give its citizens the right to vote, as indeed
is the case in most nations. Article 20 reads "Every Iraqi who fulfills
the conditions stipulated in the electoral law has the right to stand
for election and cast his ballot secretly in free, open, fair,
competitive, and periodic elections."
* An integrated U.S. Senate: Colorado's Ben "Nighthorse"
Campbell's announcement that he would retire from the U.S. Senate
this year presents the possibility that the 49 U.S. states on the
continent of North America will not have any people of color
representing them in the U.S. Senate. Currently the Senate has 97
whites, two Asian Americans from Hawaii and Campbell, who is a
Native American. Hopes for a more integrated Senate likely rest on
strong U.S. Senate candidates who are racial minorities running this
year in Colorado (Latino), Florida (Latino) and Illinois (African
American).
* Notable books: Hendrik Hertzberg, the New Yorker magazine's
elegant writer who has served on our board of directors since 1995,
will have a book collection coming out in June called "Politics:
Observations and Arguments, 1966-2004" (Penguin Books). It will
include some of Rick's best writing in favor of full representation
and instant runoff voting. Last month, Open Debates executive
director George Farah's book "No Debate: How the Republican and
Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates"
(Seven Stories Press) was released Ð it highlights the need for a true
citizens' commission to run the presidential debates.
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The Center for Voting and Democracy is a non-profit organization
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The Center for Voting & Democracy
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