Harris was a wonderful friend to FairVote — in 1992 he spoke at our founding conference in the offices of the Charter Committee that was traditionally the foundation of support for the choice voting form of proportional voting and was a key ally in narrowly defeated campaigns to restore it in 1991 and 2008. He was the co-author of the statutory language in both of those efforts and a man of gravitas and quiet good humor. He will be missed.

Don’t believe it? Let’s turn the mic over to a group of people with unassailable, first-hand knowledge of the presidential campaign process: the strategists. This elite cadre of political wizards knows better than anyone else what the Electoral College does to the picking of the president. Since November they’ve told a variety of outlets about the behind-the-scenes story of how the winner-take-all Electoral College determines their every step. Here are some of their more revealing insights…

The general election was never a 50-state contest. “The campaign,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says in this video, “for those of you that followed it, watched on cable, were online a lot, was all about the Gallup poll, and national coverage.” We had it all wrong: instead, the Obama team “viewed the campaign always through battleground states [...] this was a series of contests in a series of states. It’s a puzzle to get to 270.”

The board game metaphor should be taken quite literally: according to Esquire, Plouffe played the Electoral College like the rest of us would play a jigsaw puzzle. He consulted the electoral map constantly: “I look at it on the computer all the time…It’s kind of like my North Star. They can never take that away from me. I don’t think my wife would like it, but I’d put that map up in every room of our house if I could.”

The winner-take-all system determines the very structure of campaign organizations. Plouffe was keenly attuned to the demands it placed on his operation. As he told Portfolio:

We were kind of a service organization in some respects to the states. We had a whole team in Chicago there to serve the states, who were out there in the battleground and war zones. [...] There are the states, which were always critical, and within the states, there’s a state director, the ground game, and people doing press in the states. We viewed the campaign as essentially 16 different campaigns, because every state is different.

The candidates realize how potentially divisive the Electoral College can be. At one point during the campaign, McCain’s chief pollster believed his candidate could win the Electoral College without winning the popular vote. And he was worried about what would happen. From Time:

The context of the entire campaign, McInturff said, was a national math that did not favor McCain at any point. He said he told the candidate that the “happy scenario” was for McCain to narrowly win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote by about 3 million. Because of this, McInturff advised McCain not to campaign in an overly divisive manner, lest the task of governing become nearly impossible.

Your opinion matters–but only if you live in a swing state. Just read this January Washington Post interview with David Plouffe carefully:

But I think the real underappreciated story is the people in Marion, Indiana, and you know, in Asheville, North Carolina, and Hillsboro County, Florida, who were out there living their lives, or part of it, through the campaign every day, talking to their neighbors and colleagues [...] we had millions of Americans out there talking about the campaign everyday. Here’s Barack’s plan on the economy, on jobs, also helping people respond to attacks. So if someone came up to one of our supporters in Pennsylvania and he said, “Well what’s about this Bill Ayers character?” They would know what to say. And it’s hard to quantify that, but we know it was really important.

Why did Plouffe specifically pick the good people of Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida as examples of what his campaign did right? Not just because they’re fine folks, but also because they happened to live in those swing states: according to Plouffe, “we view this through the prism of the battleground states, that’s all we focused on.” And–through no fault of Plouffe’s, just through the logic of the system we use today–the voters of Texas and California get left by the wayside.

There is one particularly concrete consequence, however: she will be the third woman governor to leave office since the November elections in the wake of President Obama tapping two women governors for his cabinet (Kansas’ Kathleen Sebelius and Arizona’s Janet Napolitano). Women make up a majority of today’s electorate, but come August, there will be 44 male governors and only six female governors, two of whom (Hawaii’s Linda Lingle and Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm) are barred from running for third terms next year. According to the invaluable Center for American Women in Politics, a majority of states have never had a woman governor in their history.

As highlighted in my commentary in Roll Call this week with Cindy Terrell, representation of women in elected office remains very low. We need to talk about it more, and urge more women to run, urge more partisans to promote women for office and consider changes to our electoral laws to create more incentives for women to run strong campaigns.

Q:    Can I ask you one more question, just quickly, on sort of a D.C. issue?  And that is, why hasn’t the President changed his license plates on the presidential limousine?  Is he planning to change them to the “Taxation Without Representation” plates or –

MR. GIBBS:  I think rather than change the logo around the license plate, the President is committed instead to changing the status of the District of Columbia.

He is? It’s not news to us that President Obama is in favor of DC voting rights; he’s an original co-sponsor of that very bill, and he has quietly expressed support for statehood. But since the apparent death of the latest version of the DC Voting Rights bill, few expected this:

Q:    . . . When you say “changing the status of the District,” what do you mean?

MR. GIBBS:  Giving it voting rights, giving it statehood.

We haven’t heard this expressed this succinctly in a while, and it’s fairly encouraging. Of course, one must keep in mind that Gibbs was trying to dance around the question about the president’s limo. But certainly, Gibbs is essentially correct that the president’s policy regarding voting rights is far more important than what is on the back of his car.

That said, I became a bit more confused when the exchange took this turn:

Q:    What are you guys doing on that?

MR. GIBBS:  I think the legislation is making its way through Congress, with the support of the President.

Well, to the best of our knowledge here at FairVote, it’s not making its way through Congress, as the latest DC Voting Rights bill was besieged by an amendment eviscerating DC’s gun laws, dooming the bill to near-oblivion — a comatose state certified last month by Steny Hoyer when negotiations fell apart. But perhaps Mr. Gibbs knows something I don’t (not by any means out of the question). It would be terribly exciting to know that a renewed effort was being waged on behalf of the District. One can hope.

Last week the LA Times, not content to let the issue fall off the radar, sharply suggested that the person to “push this issue to the forefront” should probably be the District’s “most celebrated resident.” I hope that the president was listening. But regardless, it’s good to hear such clear support from the White House for the enfranchisement of the citizens of the nation’s capital, whatever the context. What we need to see next is this support put into action.

The federal agency the Election Assistance Commission has an Overview of the Electoral College available for download on its website. You might expect an unexceptionable, just-the-facts-ma’am explanation, but you’d be wrong. Instead, the document has some questionable assertions and omissions.

Where to begin? Maybe with the final sentence, which gives us this strikingly “Whig” interpretation of history: “The Electoral College may have been a system the founding fathers regarded as imperfect, but it remains likely the only way Americans will continue to elect their president.” Well, it will with that attitude, but…. Americans widely dislike the Electoral College, with about 75% preferring a direct election, so there’s plenty of public appetite for a better system. Luckily, there’s a reform effort on the table, the National Popular Vote, that’s already been enacted by five states with 61 of the 270 electoral votes needed for us to attain “one person, one vote.”

To be fair, the EAC document, dated October 2008, does mention the National Popular Vote effort, albeit without noting the string of successes it has had since its introduction in 2006. But there are a few other oversights in the Overview. Such as…

–No Mention of Slavery. Anywhere. You don’t need to be a cynic to recognize that some of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had a, shall we say, peculiar objection to direct democracy. Here’s what James Madison — a private backer of a national popular vote himself — had to say about why the convention wasn’t going to establish a direct election to pick the president:

There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.

New Yorker senior editor Hendrik Hertzberg has much more on this issue. Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised that the document also neglects to mention the current Electoral College system’s disproportionate adverse impact on African-Americans, Latinos, and other minority populations that are under-represented in the current swing states.

–Uncritically Adopting the “Small State” Myth. The document claims that “one of the central reasons for adopting the Electoral College—to ensure more populace [sic] states do not have an unfair advantage—still applies today.” That would come as news to residents of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, and DC…12 of the 13 smallest-population states. But don’t worry, neither California nor New York has an “unfair advantage” today–in fact, the two largest population states have almost no influence during the general election campaign. That seems odd…there must be some place…somewhere…with that unfair advantage…

–Forgetting about Swing States and Safe States. Red, blue, swing, safe. All of these terms, juvenile as they may be, are items in our common political glossary. All of us are too well aware of the unbelievably concentrated attention that 15 or 16 “battleground” states receive every four years. All of us except for this EAC analyst, it seems–when the document was produced in October 2008, its authors must have been living in a cave without cable TV.

David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, told Portfolio magazine after the election that his team “viewed the campaign as essentially 16 different campaigns”–one for every battleground state. Not one campaign for every one of the 50 states, or one for all of America, but a collection of swing state contests, and even more specifically, fights over swing voters in those swing states.

The facts from 2008 are staggering:

* More than 98% of all campaign events and more than 98% of all campaign spending took place in only 15 states representing 36.6% of the nation’s eligible voter population, effectively sidelining nearly two-thirds of all Americans.

* Voter turnout in those 15 contested states was 67%, while turnout in the remaining states was 61%. Voter turnout declined in more a third of  states despite the public’s high level of interest in the nation’s first open-seat presidential election in half a century.

It’s a bit surprising that none of these widely-known flaws in the current system made it into the brief section called “Weaknesses of the Electoral College.” But then again, maybe it’s best that we not talk about what’s wrong with the Electoral College, since “it remains likely the only way Americans will continue to elect their president.” Let’s hope not–maybe we can do something about it.

California’s complex voting and election system has recently been faced with another obstacle. The California Appellate Court in Greene v Marin County Flood Control District is currently debating whether the secret ballot ought to be mandated in certain special elections.

Special elections in California are used in exceptional situations, such as the recall of an elected official, a vacancy to be filled, or a special ballot measure that needs to be voted on before the next regular election. Special elections are largely unique to California, and they tend to involve a complicated system of inauguration, often because of other, sometimes contradictory, laws in the state.

Proposition 218, which was passed in 1996, mandates that voters must approve of all taxes and most charges on property owners in order to limit potential abuses of government revenue-raising power. 

Prop 218 took the form of an amendment to the Constitution, creating Article 13, section D of the California Constitution. A quick text excerpt: “Voter Approval for New or Increased Fees and Charges. Except for fees or charges for sewer, water, and refuse collection services, no property related fee or charge shall be imposed or increased unless and until that fee or charge is submitted and approved by a majority vote of the property owners of the property subject to the fee or charge or, at the option of the agency, by a two-thirds vote of the electorate residing in the affected area. The election shall be conducted not less than 45 days after the public hearing. An agency may adopt procedures similar to those for increases in assessments in the conduct of elections under this subdivision.”

Prop 218 also inspired the Proposition 218 Omnibus Implementation Act of 1997, which detailed the procedures for the principles outlined in the Constitution. Part of the Act specified that the ballot must be “in a form that conceals its contents once it is sealed by the person submitting the assessment ballot” and, once received by the agency, must “remain sealed until the tabulation of ballots . . . commences.” And during and after the process of counting the ballots, they become “disclosable public records . . . equally available for inspection by the proponents and the opponents of the proposed assessment.”

Notably, the Act also required that the special elections “shall not constitute an election or voting for purposes of Article II of the California Constitution or of the California Elections Code.” The California constitution requires secret voting in Article 2, section 7. The text simply says, “Voting shall be secret,” but it is under the Article 2 heading of “voting, initiative and referendum, and recall,” which does not explicitly include special elections.

This confusing theoretical situation of whether or not special election ballots ought to be secret is compounded by the facts of the case. In Greene v Marin County, voters’ names and addresses were printed on the ballots, and voters signed their ballots. Because the ballots become public record as soon as the election has ended to ensure tabulation accuracy, it seems as though there is no voter privacy at all.

This issue will (hopefully) soon be decided by the California Appellate Court. Although the Constitution does not explicitly require the votes to be secret, a secret ballot is integral to the functioning of a democracy. If the court ruled that way, it would only necessitate a more logical ballot design, so that special elections can be run like regular ones. And if the court rules the other way, the elimination of secret ballots bodes for an ominous future for the safe functioning of Californian democracy.

As a colleague of mine noted earlier this year, choice voting has been used to select Academy Award nominees since the 1930’s. The Academy wants the nominees to reflect the views of as many Academy members as possible so that they feel well-represented  by their choices on Oscar night. Each of the five nominees has the strong support of nearly a fifth of Academy voters, collectively making nearly every Academy voters invested in the outcome.

The importance of using choice voting with ranked ballots can be illustrated by a quick thought experiments. Suppose the Academy used a winner-take-all method for nominees, with each voter having five votes. Oscar night would quickly lose some of its entertaining diversity, with one kind of acting or one sort of movie dominating each category.

Or suppose the Academy instead used a non-transferable ballot system, with each member casting only one vote, and the top five vote-getters becoming nominees. There are at least two ways such a “single non-transferable vote” system (which in fact is the system used in Afghanistan) could easily produce skewed results.

For the purposes exercise, let us presume that 10% of the voters suffer an unfortunate head injury which compels them to vote for last year’s insipid Mike Myers vehicle The Love Guru. Considering the extent to which votes are likely to be divided among the plethora of other candidates, The Love Guru would have a good to excellent shot at becoming a nominee. Choice voting prevents this tragedy from happening; the voters in full command of their faculties will not rank Myers’s comprehensive demonstration of lame bodily function humor, allowing better films to win as preferences are allocated in later rounds.

The other possible misfire would occur in a year when one film receives an overwhelming number of votes. Suppose The Love Guru was stacked up against Titanic, or Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, both of which were tipped to take the statue well before the nominations were announced. If one of these films received – for example — 75% of the nomination votes in a plurality contest, it would be quite easy for an aesthetic tragedy to win a place in the sharply reduced vote pool (7% of the vote would ensure a place and 4% might be enough). Thus, choice voting serves as a safety, producing reasonable consensus outcomes in a massive field.

Once the nominees are chosen, however, the Academy likes surprises. The winner is determined by plurality vote. Right now, in a fractured field, the winner could have as little as just over 20% of the vote and actually have little support from nearly 80% of Academy voters. With the expansion to 10 nominees, the winner actually could have the support of barely 10% of Academy voters - about the same as it takes to get a nominee for best picture with the doubling of nominees and halving of the “victory threshold.”

Yes, the Academy enjoys those surprises, but perhaps it’s time  for it to adopt instant runoff voting for best picture. Academy voters certainly are already experienced at ranking candidates, and perhaps surprises due to the distortions of plurality voting are best for lesser categories than the best picture of the year. True, the Academy is not an institution that needs to be held to exacting democratic standards, but its example provides an excellent case study in support of the practicality and fairness of choice voting — and could do so for instant runoff voting.

NB: The harsh view of The Love Guru contained in this post is mine alone, and has nothing whatever to do with FairVote’s official position of neutrality in artistic matters.

Of our nation’s 99 state legislative chambers, 29 have passed the NPV plan in 18 states. It is now the law in five states representing nearly a quarter of the electroal votes necessary to trigger a national popular vote.

These problems have led most prognosticators to predict gains for the center-left Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) along with losses from the governing center-right Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). The socialist Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) – associated with the unpopular leadership of the controversial Andrés Manuel López Obrador – is expected to lose ground as well. Though López Obrador very nearly won the presidency in 2006; his ungracious post-election behavior has alienated many voters from the PRD. The ‘voto nulo’ movement’s success may be partly due to the PRD’s fall from grace; the major alternative is now the PRI, which ruled Mexico in an increasingly heavy-handed and corrupt fashion for 71 years until voters cast the party out of the presidency and into the wilderness in 2000. Thus, the contest is between different flavors of the establishment, leading to voter disenchantment and resentment.

A final explanation for the success of ‘voto nulo’ can be derived from a quirk in the electoral system.  In most MMP systems, balloting entails two votes; one for a constituency candidate, the other for a party; constituency seats are decided by plurality rules, the top-up seats are then allocated to ensure that each party has roughly the same percentage of seats as votes. Conversely, the Mexican system allows only one vote, for a constituency candidate. These votes do double duty, based on the affiliation of a given constituency candidate, they also count as party votes. According to a study by Professors Clemente Quinones and Richard Vengroff of the University of Connecticut, this unorthodox method was implemented in the 1980s by the PRI, which hoped it would decrease sincere voting and allow the party to remain in office. However – to briefly summarize – the study concludes that most voters adapted to the system after a period of strategic voting, and largely returned to casting sincere ballots by the 2000 election (when the PRI lost power). Mexico’s democracy is still learning to walk upright as it were, the long period of PRI domination only receded 9 years ago. It seems that voters are upset less with their system of voting than with the national political culture. However, Mexico has developed into an impressively open and pluralistic polity in a short period of time; those considering the arguments of the ‘voto nulo’ movement should keep in mind that the Mexican MPP system ensures that diverse views will be represented; for those who cast valid ballots, that is.

If the myriad state requirements aren’t enough to muddle the situation, the inherent problems in the current federal certification process merely add frustration to the existing chaos. One of the primary problems with the process is that although the EAC accredits Independent Testing Authorities (ITAs) to evaluate manufacturers’ products, the EAC does not have the legal authority to collect testing money from the manufacturers. Instead, the manufacturers select the testing facility of their choice and pay that ITA directly. The conflict of interest is clear in this situation, in which the success of the manufacturer’s product depends on the strength of the ITA’s testing evaluation.

It gets worse. Adding further complications, there are currently only four EACaccredited ITAs and, as a result, the testing backlog creates a more time consuming and costly certification process for manufacturers (and ultimately taxpayers). The EAC must do something to remedy this situation, but as a historically under-funded agency, they do not have the means to run testing of their own to verify the results of the ITAs. Instead, the EAC uses a Quality Monitoring Program to hold manufacturers accountable for their adherence to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). Unfortunately, the EAC’s inadequate budget has diminished the vigilance of the program, as well as the EAC’s enforcement ability.

Yet another issue of controversy is what many people believe to be a general lack of transparency. The EAC publishes all test plans and reports, but their formal feedback loop is severely limited. Although they include a process by which election officials may report anomalies within specific voting systems, this process excludes valuable insight from voters, technical experts, and the vendors themselves. Additionally, vendors used by states who do not require EAC certification may enter into contractual agreements that prevent the release of testing records, reports, and source code review – all of which is an integral part of auditing machines and public transparency.

The next iteration of the VVSG, a revision of the 2005 guidelines, has a chance to address all of these concerns. The system by which vendors select and directly pay ITAs must be done away with or, at the very least, the EAC should have authority to get around potential conflicts of interest. To maximize transparency EAC’s feedback loop must be expanded beyond election officials, and state contracts should not allow important auditing data to be considered “privileged information” for the manufacturer’s eyes only. If these problems continue to go unaddressed, voting systems certification and regulation will continue to suffer from the same limitations that have been hindering the process since federal legislation was first introduced through the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. As a country that champions the importance of every vote, it is integral that we reform voting systems regulation in a way that better maintains voter confidence and overall election integrity.