The Slow Motion Stampede - Rob Richie talks Primaries on NPR
August 23rd, 2007
Paul
Paul Fidalgo was Communications Director at FairVote.
Rob spoke with Melissa Block on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday, along with Kentucky Secretary of State Tray Grayson. They discussed solutions to the broken presidential primary system, and Rob focused on the FairVote-backed “American Plan,” a system that creates clusters of primaries of increasing state size.
You can listen to the broadcast here, or you can subscribe to FairVote’s podcast feed so you’ll always be the first to get FairVote’s audio and video offerings!
Other posts by Paul
- Nomination by Attrition - October 25th, 2007
- Cary Voters Sing the Praises of IRV - October 25th, 2007
- FairVote Announces Upgrade Democracy Video Contest Finalists! - October 23rd, 2007
- The Senate Loses its Cool: The Undemocratic Ways States Fill Senate Vacancies - October 12th, 2007
- Of Campaigns and Crosswords: Pluralities as Poor Political Reflections - October 4th, 2007
- The Primaries' Premature Nomination Problem - September 28th, 2007
- Barry Bonds, Blast-offs and Ballots: What the Fate of a Baseball Teaches Us about Voting - September 20th, 2007
- The President of Everyone? Crucial Issues Suffer when Most Voters Don't Matter - September 13th, 2007
- Upgrade Democracy Video Contest News Update - September 11th, 2007
- The First Shall Be Last: The Dangerous Decline in Primary Turnout - September 7th, 2007
August 27th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Why not advocate a national primary?
Any idea of a “fair vote” primary has to start with that concept.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:22 am
The argument against a single national primary that I hear most frequently is this. It would favor well-funded candidates and block grassroots candidates who need to build momentum in order to raise enough money for a national election. State-by-state or regional primaries, according to this approach, give grassroots candidates a somewhat better chance to get started.
In addition, schemes like the American Plan are more of an incremental change from the current (non)system, rather than a brand new approach. I imagine that supporters of these schemes would argue that this makes them more doable.
Prof. Shugart is an expert on comparative electoral systems. Perhaps he can tell us whether any other country has anything even roughly analogous to the U.S. Presidential nomination process.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Rob Richie’s plan is to move the United States towards a Parliamentary Government, as in many european countries. He has some talking points that he failed to update after IRV use in San Francisco had been studied extensively.
IRV has been a real dud in San Francisco, the largest jurisdiction in the United States to use it since 2004 and that has been evaluated.
Take a look at these headlines in San Francisco:
IRV as “incumbent protection”:
No one is running against S.F. district attorney in fall election
Demian Bulwa, San Francisco Chronicle, 08/16/07
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris collected more than $500,000 from donors for her re-election effort, lined up high-profile endorsements and launched a campaign Web site. Then the clock at the Department of Elections struck 5 p.m. Friday, the…
Where’s all that healthy competition that IRV would provide?
Mayor Newsom says he’s no shoo-in: ‘It’s not over’
Cecilia M. Vega, San Francisco Chronicle, 08/12/07
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom cautioned a crowd of cheering supporters Saturday against prematurely celebrating his re-election victory, saying that despite the absence of a challenger who comes close to matching his campaign war chest or popularity…
Tony Hall quits race for S.F. mayor, calling Newsom too entrenched
Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle, 08/31/07
Tony Hall - the best-known candidate challenging San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for reelection - is pulling out of the race, citing a lack of opposition in the city to a second term for the mayor. Hall, a former San Francisco supervisor, made that…
Newsom lacks serious challengers, but lineup is full of characters
Cecilia M. Vega, San Francisco Chronicle, 08/11/07
It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: A chicken, a wolf and a grasshopper … But in true only-in-San Francisco form, it’s a partial list of candidates voters will get to choose from when they go to the polls in November to select a mayor. With the…
Gonzalez decides against mayor race - Newsom to face field of unknowns
Cecilia M. Vega, San Francisco Chronicle, 07/31/07
Matt Gonzalez, the former San Francisco supervisor who was city progressives’ last hope for a big-name candidate to challenge Mayor Gavin Newsom in his re-election quest, said Monday he will not run for mayor this fall. The decision follows weeks of…
San Francisco spent over a $million to get special software to accommodate IRV elections, and now the SOS won’t let them use it.
SAN FRANCISCO - Officials scurry to find solution to longtime vote machine problem
John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle, 07/25/07. Election officials in San Francisco and Sacramento are scrambling to find a way to keep the city from having to count more than 200,000 ballots by hand this November, a nightmare process that could drag on for weeks. California Secretary of State Debra…
And here is a story about how one of the least preferred candidates becomes the winner:
Now, how did this guy get elected?
John Diaz, San Francisco Chronicle, 06/10/07
IN RECENT years, San Francisco voters have set up systems promising to encourage the election of citizen-politicians from the neighborhoods and to raise voter participation and the prospects that our elected leaders arrive in office with a “mandate.” So…
So, how did it come to pass that the city’s newest supervisor, Ed Jew, apparently did not even live in the Sunset District and was the choice of just 5,125 (or 26.2 percent) of voters? And the FBI is looking into what this “citizen politician” was doing with $40,000 in cash from tapioca-shop owners who had sought his help with city permits.
It turns out that both of the voter-installed “reforms” — district elections, instant-runoff voting — helped make it possible for the flower-shop operator, who once served as vice chairman of the local Republican Party, to get elected in San Francisco on a “grassroots” campaign.
September 9th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Laura, all those unfortunate developments you cite are functions of candidate quality and voter interest - not functions of the voting system.
September 9th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
>[Jack]Laura, all those unfortunate developments
>you cite are functions of candidate quality and
>voter interest - not functions of the voting system.
I’m not coninvinced that this is so for the Sunset district election of Ed Jew.
IRV advocates sometimes push IRV as a way of getting rid of actual runoff elections.
But context matters. Preference ordering during the general election may be very different in an an actual runoff where the circumstances are different:
* there are now only two candidates instead of many
* the press and the voters can scrutenize these candidate more carefully
Quoting from the full text of the SF Chronical article:
In the old days, Jew would have been forced into a runoff against Ron Dudum, the candidate who was just 53 votes behind, with 25.96 percent of the vote. Jew’s belated switch from Republican to Democrat and questions about his family residence in Burlingame surely would have been significant issues in a one-on-one race against a lifelong Democrat and lifelong Sunset resident.
“I always thought if Ed and I were in a runoff, I would have had a good chance,” Dudum said in a interview last week.
September 16th, 2007 at 1:27 am
So, do you advocate reversion to two-round runoffs, or do you prefer range voting?
The answer is important because runoffs disenfranchise minority voters, present unnecessary fiscal burdens and are widely subject to spoiler effects.
From your last answer, it follows that you prefer the old two-round system to IRV, which is not the range voting system you advocate elsewhere on this blog and the Internet.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Todd, my reply is here.
September 20th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Prof. Shugart is an expert on comparative electoral systems.
I don’t think it’s fair to call Shugart an “expert” considering his severely flawed analysis of e.g. Range Voting and Approval Voting, discussed here:
http://groups.google.com/group/socorg/web/shugart
Clay Shentrup
San Francisco, CA
415.240.1973