fairvote-2009 blog

Philippines Holds Elections Using Degree of Proportional Representation

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:23:58 -0700

<div class="image center" style="width: 600px;"><img src="assets/Philippines.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="450" /></div>
 
The results from Monday's midterm elections in the Philippines are in, with President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's Liberal Party and his ruling coalition "Team PNoy" (named after their leader) coming out on top. Although President Aquino himself was not up for reelection (his 6-year term expires in 2016, after which he may not run again), success in the elections was considered vital for his agenda. In addition to maintaining its control of the House of Representatives, Team PNoy is poised to <a href="http://2013electionresults.comelec.gov.ph/">pick up nine of the 12 contested Senate seats</a> this cycle, making Aquino the first president since the restoration of democracy in 1986 to have majorities in both houses of Congress.
As a former American colony that elects a component of its national legislature using proportional representation, the Philippines' elections are of particular interest. But because of the unusual nature of the proportional seats and the unique characteristics of the politics of the Philippines, few conclusions can be drawn from these elections about how proportional systems could work in other American-style democracies.
The elections in the Philippines come on the heels of a controversial decision by the country's Supreme Court on its party list system, used to elect 20% of the seats in the House of Representatives. Under the terms of the <a href="http://www.gov.ph/the-philippine-constitutions/the-1987-constitution-of-the-republic-of-the-philippines/the-1987-constitution-of-the-republic-of-the-philippines-article-vi/">Philippines' 1987 Constitution</a>, 80% of the seats in the House are comprised of single-member geographic districts, with the rest of the seats reserved for at-large party list seats. The party list component of the House does not follow the traditional model of simply giving each party seats in proportion to their nationwide vote share. Instead, the framers of the 1987 Constitution mandated that the party list must represent "labour, peasant, urban poor, indigenous cultural communities, women, youth, and such other sectors as may be provided by law, except the religious sector." The goal of this system, as articulated in a <a href="http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1995/ra_7941_1995.html">1995 law</a>, was to "enable Filipino citizens belonging to the marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations and parties... to become members of the House of Representatives."
The results of the party list have been mixed. Because parties running for list seats needed to be independent of the national parties, the system provides the opportunity for marginalized groups to express themselves in government. In reality, however, critics have noted that many of the representatives coming from the PR tier are relatives of the prosperous and well-connected political elite that dominates Philippine society. Nevertheless, the party list has created a small degree of proportional representation and allowed groups representing senior citizens, women, farmers, and others to participate in governance.
The manner in which parties are elected to the PR tier is unique and somewhat complex. All parties that receive 2% or more of the vote receive a seat, although a party receiving 6% or more of the vote is capped at three seats. Since a <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/philippines-to-extend-use-of-proportional-representation">2009 Supreme Court ruling</a>, any of the 55 seats in the PR tier that remain are allocated to parties receiving less than 2% of the vote until all seats are filled.
That brings us back to the <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/385839/supreme-court-rules-party-list-not-only-for-marginalized">most recent Supreme Court ruling on April 5th, 2013</a>, which altered the nature of the PR tier just over a month before the election. The Court ruled that national and regional parties could now run in the party list along with marginalized and underrepresented groups. The Court remanded to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) the petitions of 39 parties that Comelec had previously denied entrance to the party list. Although the major parties, such as Aquino's Liberal Party, may not run directly in the PR tier, the ruling allows for larger parties, potentially affiliated with the major parties, to run in the elections.
Reaction to the ruling has been divided. Unsurprisingly, previously-banned parties that are now allowed to participate, such as the Ako Bicol party, <a href="http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/04/11/13/no-domination-rich-sc-party-list-ruling-ako-bicol">support the ruling</a>, arguing that it provides much-needed reforms and includes safeguards to protect the system from abuse by the rich and powerful. Constitutional scholar and retired justice Vicente Mendoza <a href="http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/04/15/930819/sc-ruling-party-list-system-backed">lauded the decision</a> as well, noting that the intent of the Constitution all along was to open up the party list to non-sectoral groups after a certain amount of time. Criticism of the ruling, however, has been strong as well, with party list groups as well as watchdogs warning that the decision "opened the floodgates for powerful, filthy rich and long-established personalities and groups to infiltrate and dominate the world of real marginalized and underrepresented sectors," as <a href="http://opinion.inquirer.net/51361/sc-opened-floodgates-for-rich-to-swamp-party-list-system">one recent op-ed in the Philippine Daily Inquirer</a> put it.
But a look at the party list winners of Monday's elections shows that the claims of both those supporting and opposing the ruling were likely overstated. The <a href="http://2013electionresults.comelec.gov.ph/" target="_blank">latest vote totals released by Comelec</a> show the Buhay party list in the lead, with a little over a million votes (4.7% of total votes cast). Buhay is a pro-life party founded by the multimillionaire leader of the charismatic Catholic religious group El Shaddai, Mike Velarde, and had been allowed to run and win seats in the 2010 election. Fourth-place finisher Akbayan, meanwhile, has members serving in the executive branch and was <a href="http://www.tempo.com.ph/2013/05/aquino-endorses-akbayan/#.UZZJ7kpreSo" target="_blank">explicitly endorsed</a> by President Aquino; it too has been running in the PR tier for years. The Court's ruling did little to affect the underlying fact of the concentration of political power in the elite families of the Philippines, a problem that is by no means unique to the party list. Philippine society on the whole is dominated by celebrities and a handful of political dynasties. The presence of the wealthy elite in the PR tier is less a cause than it is a symptom of deeper problems in the politics of the Philippines.
Consequently, the success or failure of the Philippines' current party list system cannot be used to predict the results of applying proportional representation to other countries currently using winner-take-all, simply because the system itself and the politics surrounding it are so unusual.
Furthermore, there is not an obvious electoral solution to prescribe for the Philippines to address all the unique challenges its political system faces. However, many of the problems that continue to plague elections in the Philippines, such as uncompetitive elections and distorted outcomes, are common in winner-take-all systems. Shifting away from the current party list system, which comprises a small tier that gives a few representatives to minor interests, to a more broadly proportional system that accurately represents all parties, viewpoints, and interests in the nation would likely benefit the Philippines in the long term.

Help FairVote MN's Ranked Choice Voting Video Win Thousands of Dollars For Fairer Elections!

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:16:41 -0700

Today is the last day to show your support for ranked choice voting and FairVote Minnesota in the Looking@Democracy contest. <a href="http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15145-who-s-your-favorite-president-how-ranked-choice-voting-works#vote_submission_15145">Vote now!</a>
In the <a href="http://lookingatdemocracy.org/">Looking@Democracy contest</a>, artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, and others compete to make the most compelling media presentation on how to improve American democracy. There is $100,000 in prize money to be won by the contest's eleven total winners, and where better for that money to go than to an innovator in the world of democracy?
One important contestant is FairVote ally <a href="http://fairvotemn.org/">FairVote Minnesota</a>, which entered a fun video about the benefits of ranked choice voting (instant runoff voting) elections. In the video, stacks of coins are used to represent ranked choice votes for favorite president. The video lucidly demonstrates how ranked choice voting allows voters to have more than two choices and still be confident that the winner will have real majority support.
<a href="http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15145-who-s-your-favorite-president-how-ranked-choice-voting-works#vote_submission_15145">Check out their video at the contest page</a>. If you like it, click the big red "VOTE" button. You'll be asked to either log in through Facebook or create an account on their page, either of which take very little time and effort. After that you can leave a supportive comment or check out the other videos entered in the contest. Finally, don't forget to <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting">learn more about ranked choice voting</a> and what it can do for your community.

Election Administration Under National Popular Vote: Simpler Than You Might Think

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:18:01 -0700

<div class="image left" style="width: 550;"><img src="assets/Connecticut-state-house.jpg" alt="" width="550" height="367" /></div>
 
Connecticut State Capitol
The National Popular Vote plan has been making great strides in state legislatures around the country. A few weeks ago, it passed the Oregon House of Representatives, and it is poised to pass other legislative chambers in the coming months, including in Connecticut, a state I had the privilege to call home for four years.
Unfortunately, there are still some misconceptions out there about what the bill does and what that would mean for presidential elections. A few of these misconceptions were recently expressed by Luther Weeks of Connecticut Voters Count, a Connecticut-based election integrity organization, in a comment made under <a href="http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/archives/entry/dukakis_takes_bus_to_hartford_to_pitch_national_popular_vote/">an article</a> about former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’ recent visit to Connecticut to support the passage of the National Popular Vote there. Weeks' concerns center around questions of election administration under National Popular Vote, namely, whether there is an official national popular vote count based on which compacting states would be able select their electors, and how a recount might work under a national populate vote. He also worries that a lack of uniformity in state voting procedures could make the votes in some states count more than others.
His concerns are not unusual among skeptics of the National Popular Vote plan. Luckily, each question is easy to answer. 
An Official National Popular Vote Count
Some question whether there is an official national popular vote count for the purposes of this bill, since under National Popular Vote, compacting states select their slate of electors based on who won the popular vote in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The quick answer is that there is an official national popular vote count.  The National Popular Vote bill defines the national popular vote count as the summation of the popular vote count in every state, as certified by the chief election official in each state. Under section 6 of Title 3 of the United States Code, every state is required to report its official vote count in a Certificate of Ascertainment to the Archivist of the United States prior to the mid-December meeting of the Electoral College. Since every state is required to report its official vote count prior to the meeting of the Electoral College – more specifically, six days prior to the meeting, as specified under section 5 of Title 3 of United States Code – states party to the National Popular Vote plan will be able to determine the official national popular vote total by adding up the vote totals reported in each Certificate of Ascertainment prior to the meeting of their own electors.
Recounts under National Popular Vote
Luther Weeks was correct when he pointed out that there are no national recount or audit laws. Under the National Popular Vote plan, each state would be responsible for conducting recounts within their own borders, just as they are under the current system. Thus, under the National Popular Vote plan, if a presidential candidate desired a recount in every state, they would need to request one in every state, in accordance with each states’ individual recount procedures. In effect, recounts under the National Popular Vote plan would operate the same way that they do today, on a state-by-state basis. Of course, recount are extremely rare, and are also extremely unlikely to alter the outcome of an election. Between 2000 and 2012, of the 4,072 statewide elections that took place, only 22 resulted in a recount. Of those 22 elections, only three resulted in a different candidate winning than after the original count, and the average change in the outcome was a decrease in the margin of victory of 294 votes. Under a national popular vote, a recount would be highly unlikely, but if it were to occur, individual states would control how those recounts were conducted, just as they do under the current system.
Voter Fraud and Error
Some claim that the current system is preferable to a national popular vote because under the current system, any fraud occurring in one state would only affect the electoral votes in that state, and not nationwide. However, even if under the current system, fraud would only affect the electoral votes in one state, if that state was the last state that a candidate needed to reach the winning threshold of 270 electoral votes, than the fraud in that state could easily affect who becomes the next president. Therefore, under the current system, fraud and error would be more likely to change the outcome of an election than under National Popular Vote.
For example, in 2000, a flip of 527 votes from George W. Bush to Al Gore in Florida would have made Gore president, while under a national popular vote, and a flip of 250,000 would have been necessary to change the outcome. In 2004, flipping 60,000 votes in Ohio would have made John Kerry, not George W. Bush, president, while nationwide, 1.5 million Bush supporters would have needed to vote for Kerry to alter the outcome. It is hard to imagine a national popular vote, in which about 130 million votes are cast, with margins as narrow as we saw in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.
Equality Between States
Under National Popular Vote, every vote would be equal, unlike under our current winner-take-all system, when a vote in Ohio is far more likely to alter the result of the election than a vote in Connecticut, and is therefore valued far more highly by presidential candidates. It is true that states that suppress their voter turnout will contribute fewer votes to the national popular vote total than they could, and it is at the discretion of those states’ legislators to change their election rules to increase their share of the national popular vote by enfranchising more of their citizens. In this way, National Popular Vote promotes fairness in presidential elections, while our current system perpetuates an unacceptable inequality that must be changed.
Got any more questions? Email Andrea at <a href="mailto:alevien@fairvote.org">alevien@fairvote.org</a>. Also, you can find more detailed answers to these questions in Chapter 9 of the new edition of Every Vote Equal, available for free download at <a href="Every-vote-equal.com">Every-vote-equal.com</a>.

The Elizabeth Colbert-Busch Guide to Running in the Other Party’s Safe Districts

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:51:07 -0700

<div class="image center" style="width: 600;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600325-Colbert-busch.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="325" /></div>
AP Photo
 
It's no secret that congressional elections have a bit of a competitiveness problem. Most congressional districts invariably vote for either Republicans or Democrats. In those districts, the minority party's candidates have no hope of winning elections, and their voters have no hope of winning representation. Take the 2012 election, when Democrats didn't pick up a single seat in the 201 districts where Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by more than 4% and Republicans didn't pick up a single seat in the 167 districts where Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by at least 11%. That's an awful lot of safe districts.
But maybe you're foolhardy enough to believe you could actually break through those impenetrable partisan walls. You're a Democrat in a red district or a Republican in a blue district, and you want nothing more than to represent your district in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Well, with this election-tested* guide, you too can fruitlessly struggle to overcome our increasingly hyper-partisan winner-take-all congressional elections. If you follow the guide closely, you might even feel like you have a real chance at winning your race before your <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/07/mark-sanford-wins-south-carolina-special-election/" target="_blank">inevitable failure</a> on Election Day.
Before we get started, it goes without saying that you need to run a strong campaign, not have any personal baggage, raise <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/blogs/hotlineoncall/2013/04/colbert-busch-outraises-sanford-nearly-two-to-one-26" target="_blank">at least twice as much money</a> as your opponent, and <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/elizabeth-colbert-busch-goes-there-on-argentine-affair-in-debate-with-mark-sanford.php" target="_blank">decisively win any debates</a>.
Once you've got that down, just follow these four simple steps.
*Guide tested in South Carolina District 1 special election between Elizabeth Colbert-Busch and Mark Sanford, May 7, 2013. SC-1 voted for Mitt Romney at 11 points above his national average in 2012. Sanford won the election with 54% of the vote.
1. Timing is everything. Whatever you do, don't run in the general election. General elections have a high turnout and are highly predictable. Voters are unlikely to split their tickets. Instead, wait until a special election - that is, until your current representative is appointed to a higher office, retires mid-term, resigns in disgrace, or dies. It should happen eventually, if you don't die of old age first yourself. Special elections tend to garner national attention, and they allow more emphasis to be placed on the individual candidates.
2. Support the other party's policy positions. There's no way you can get elected just by representing the viewpoints of your party's supporters. Don't completely forsake them, but also don't be afraid to <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/katenocera/colbert-busch-calls-obamacare-extremely-problematic" target="_blank">register your opposition</a> to your party's most important legislative accomplishment in recent memory. 
3.  Family fame. You're going to want to have a close relative who is a popular celebrity. Not just a B-lister; this should be someone who has a <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/" target="_blank">personal legion</a> of fans from both parties and, preferably, a TV show on which to advertise your candidacy and mock your opponent.
 Speaking of which...
4. Choose your opponent wisely. This may be the most important step. If you're facing an average or even mediocre candidate from the other party, you will lose. Your opponent needs to be embarrassing. 
Here's an example of an opponent who was bad, but not bad enough: in 2008, Representative Henry Brown (R), incumbent of South Carolina's District 1 (61% Republican), was <a href="http://schotlinepress.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/south-carolina-congressman-henry-brown-pays-reduced-fine-for-2004-forest-fire/" target="_blank">forced to pay a fine</a> for starting a fire that ended up burning down 20 acres of a national forest. Brown still won his election by 4%.
No, you'll want an opponent who's done something even more embarrassing than recklessly causing massive environmental destruction. Something like a sex scandal. Better yet: a <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24164.html" target="_blank">sex scandal funded by taxpayer money.</a>
In case the scandal took place a while ago, try and keep it current. Make sure your opponent does something new to remind everyone of the really scandalous thing he or she did, like <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24164.html" target="_blank">trespassing on an ex-spouse's property</a>. It should ideally be shameful enough that your opponent's national campaign committee <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/17/nrcc-pulls-support-from-sanford-campaign/" target="_blank">pulls out all its funding</a> from the race.
DISCLAIMER: If you somehow manage to make all of that happen, don't get too excited. You will still <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/07/politics/sanford-house-race/index.html?hpt=hp_c2" target="_blank">almost certainly lose</a>. And if you do win the special election, you'll probably just lose in the next general election anyway. But at least you did everything you could to strike a blow for disenfranchised minority party voters all over the country!
Except for one thing: if you get tired of waiting for that perfect storm to hit your district, you could always help the U.S. House switch to using multi-member districts elected under <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/fair-voting-solution" target="_blank">fair voting methods</a> that would guarantee minority party voters the ability to elect a candidate in every district in the country. No sex scandal necessary - just a federal statutory change.

How Districts Plus Has Worked for German Elections

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:44:35 -0700

<div class="image center" style="width: 600;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600400-bundestag.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /></div>
 
FairVote has <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/how-to-guarantee-accountable-legislatures-under-choice-voting-without-hurting-third-parties">posted</a> <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.fairvote.org/japan-s-electoral-unfairness-goes-deeper-than-malapportionment">several</a> <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.fairvote.org/the-future-of-egyptian-democracy-hinges-on-the-fight-over-its-electoral-law/">times</a> recently about the benefits that a <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.fairvote.org/districts-plus">Districts Plus</a> electoral system (also known as mixed member proportional representation) can confer: namely, combining the advantages of local, personal representation with overall proportionality. But you don't have to take our word for it. Districts Plus-like systems have been proven to be effective in national elections in some of the world's most robust democracies.
Headlining that list is the Federal Republic of Germany, which has used a version of mixed member proportional since the Bundestag was established in 1949 under the guidance of the United States. Germany's current system allows voters to cast two votes: one for a representative in their single-member district, and another for a nationwide party list that will compensate parties for any distortions caused by the single-member districts. Thus, Germans have both local representatives and a parliament that accurately represents the political views of the whole of Germany.
Despite its success, the German electoral system has attracted some undeserved negative attention of late - enough that in November of 2012, Foreign Policy ranked Germany at the bottom of its list of the <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/06/5_voting_systems_worse_than_electoral_college?page=0,2">five electoral systems worse than the Electoral College</a>. But this criticism has been enormously overstated.
Here's the background: on July 25, 2012, Germany's Constitutional Court <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-high-court-demands-improvements-in-election-laws-a-846558.html">ruled</a> the current electoral system unconstitutional due to the problem of "overhang seats." It was the second time that the court had declared the system unconstitutional in four years, and it temporarily left Germany without an electoral law.
The issue, in short, was that Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party was winning so many constituency (single-member district) seats that the party list seats were unable to compensate for the distortion. After the 2009 election, the 598-seat Bundestag proportionally reflected the votes that each party received in Germany's states. Because the CDP won more seats via constituencies than its proportion of the vote in several states, however, these extra or "overhang" seats were added to the Bundestag, creating a legislature of 622 seats.
Of course, the extra seats created a small degree of disproportionality in CDP's favor. The overhang seats also led to the <a href="http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=6367#comments">unusual phenomenon</a> where voting for a party in a region where they won overhang seats could actually lead to that party winning fewer nationwide seats, which is what the court objected to.
It's worth remembering that these problems only seem significant in the context of an electoral system that is almost completely proportional and in which opportunities for strategic voting are minimal. In the U.S., our distorted and strategy-prone electoral system wouldn't register an issue this miniscule. Given that context, Foreign Policy's dubious honor is absurd.
Fortunately, Germany now seems to have addressed the small flaws in its system, as the Bundestag <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/21/us-germany-election-idUSBRE91K16420130221">passed</a> a new electoral law in February that guarantees that parties will receive "balance seats" to compensate for any disproportionality caused by overhang seats. While this new law may result in a larger legislature, it will ensure that the Bundestag more accurately reflects the votes of the German electorate.
The overhang seat controversy has shown that Germany is able to recognize the flaws in its electoral system and correct them. The United States would do well to follow its lead. While a German-style Districts Plus system could not be implemented nationwide in the U.S. without a constitutional amendment, it could realistically be used by many state legislatures that suffer from distorted outcomes and uncompetitive elections. In fact, FairVote has <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/assets/Independent-Redistricting-and-Districts-Plus.pdf">proposed such a plan</a> for the Michigan State House of Representatives.
To be a voter in Germany is to know that your vote will always have an effect on the outcome of an election, regardless of how competitive your local district is. Even when large parties such as the Christian Democrats prevail in the Bundestag elections, other parties and viewpoints are still able to win representation and influence policy. American voters need look no further than Germany to see just how much better their experience with democracy could be.

Winner-Take-All Elections Exacerbate Kenya's Ethnic Tensions

Thu, 02 May 2013 08:49:25 -0700

<div class="image center" style="width: 480;"><img src="assets/Kenyaboxes.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="320" /></div>
 
On March 30th, the Kenyan Supreme Court <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/world/africa/in-tense-kenya-court-upholds-election-results.html?_r=0">upheld</a> the election of Uhuru Kenyatta to the Kenyan Presidency, dismissing claims of electoral fraud brought by his primary challenger, Raila Odinga.  While the court's decision was met with some protests and scattered reports of violence, these disturbances paled in comparison to the chaos surrounding the 2007-2008 Kenyan electoral crisis, which left over 1,000 people dead and many more injured.  The relative peace surrounding this year's contest, along with Odinga's decision to respect the court's ruling instead of calling for mass demonstrations, have led some to declare the 2013 elections a victory for Kenyan democracy.
Still, the election's results demonstrate that politics in Kenya remain highly contentious, with the electorate <a href="http://geocurrents.info/geonotes/intense-ethnic-divisions-in-the-2013-kenyan-election#ixzz2RPICMZ72">fracturing sharply along ethnic divides</a>.  Despite concerted efforts to push voters away from ethnic politics and towards consideration of the candidates' résumés and policies, the largest parties in the political coalitions that nominated Kenyatta and Odinga are each closely tied to one of Kenya's largest ethnic groups.  Kenyatta is Kikuyu, while his running-mate, William Ruto, is Kalenjin.  The pair won lopsided victories in areas with majority Kikuyu and Kalenjin populations.  Odinga, who is Luo, and his running mate Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, who is Kamba, won by wide margins in Luo and Kamba areas of the country.
These ethnic divides are more salient in Kenyan politics than any regional or ideological differences.  As the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/world/africa/kenya-presidential-election.html?_r=0">noted</a> after this year's election, "some areas voted 95 percent for the politician from their ethnic group, while other areas, equally poor, with people in very similar circumstances, voted 95 percent in the opposite direction."  The dominance of these ethnic cleavages is reinforced by the traditional practice of Kenyan leaders <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/09/kenyan-cauldron/?page=">rewarding their ethnic constituencies</a> with land, import licenses, and other benefits, to the exclusion of other groups.  Though Kenyatta has billed himself as a reformer, there is little evidence that he will depart from this pattern of ethnically-based patronage politics.
Kenya's largely winner-take-all electoral system exacerbates these ethnic tensions in ways that other electoral systems might avoid.  Like many former British colonies in East Africa, most of Kenya's legislators (47 of 68 senators, and 337 of 349 members of the National Assembly) are elected through winner-take-all contests in single-member districts.  Because Kenyan counties tend to be much more ethnically and politically homogenous than Kenya as a whole (while Kenyatta received just over 50% of the vote nationally, in most districts he received either over 80% or less than 30% of the vote), minority groups in many of these districts stand little chance of ever electing representatives to the Kenyan National Assembly or Senate. 
Non-competitive elections like these are a common feature of single-member district systems around the world.  Winner-take-all also often leads to distortions between the demographics of the electorate and the composition of government, as <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201301301143.html">has been the case</a> in previous Kenyan elections.  For example, in 1992 the Kenyan African National Union party (KANU) won a 53.2% majority of seats in parliament with just a 24.5% share of the popular vote.  In 1997, KANU again won a majority of the seats in parliament, this time with 38.4% of the popular vote.
Kenyans of all ethnic groups would be better served if country's newest constitution, adopted in 2010, had abandoned the British tradition of single-member districts and winner-take-all elections in favor of a multi-member district system of proportional representation.  If each Kenyan electoral district elected multiple representatives, Kenyans of ethnic groups that are in the minority in their district would still be able to have their voices heard in government, and the potential for continued distortions between the popular vote and government would be reduced. 
The single transferable vote method of electing representatives in multimember districts, which FairVote refers to as <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/choice-voting#.UYFfo6JSurA">choice voting</a>, would provide Kenyan politicians with much-needed incentives to reach across ethnic divisions in order to earn high rankings from voters in other groups. This would have a moderating effect on Kenya's polarized ethnic politics, as candidates would be rewarded for broadening their appeal beyond their ethnic base. <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting">Instant runoff voting</a> could provide similar benefits in elections for single-seat offices such as the Kenyan presidency by encouraging candidates to build broad coalitions and reach out to their opponents' supporters, potentially reducing the likelihood of future post-election violence.
The tendency of ranked choice systems and proportional representation to foster constructive dialogue and deescalate political tensions should make it an attractive choice not only in the ethnically-polarized Kenya but also in the increasingly dysfunctional and partisan political environment of the United States.

FairVote Maps the 2012 Presidential Campaign

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:57:43 -0700

<div class="image left" style="width: 600px;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600309-event-map.png" alt="" width="600" height="309" /></div>
 
 
For some time now, we have known that presidential candidates focus their attention and energy on swing states. They do this because under the winner-take-all method of allocating Electoral College votes, the only states that matter are the ones that could go for either the Democrat or the Republican, while the ones that are squarely for one party or the other do not matter. For example, in 2012, the presidential candidates focused on only ten states. Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire were the only states in which Barack Obama and Mitt Romney held public campaign events after the Democratic National Convention, and those same ten states received 99.6% of all the Obama and Romney campaigns' television advertising money spent nationwide between April 11 and Election Day.
But where within the swing states did the candidates travel? Did they travel everywhere within these swing states, or just to the largest cities? How did geography and demography within swing states affect their campaign strategy?
Now, we have the answers.
FairVote has published a <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=203902443974975889724.0004db311792dcb29efc8&msa=0">new map </a>charting in detail when and where the presidential and vice presidential candidates campaigned after the 2012 Democratic National Convention in early September. Overall, the candidates attended 253 events in 168 different cities and towns, 59% of which were held in just three states (Ohio, Florida, and Virginia).
As we can see from <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=203902443974975889724.0004db311792dcb29efc8&msa=0">our map</a>, while the candidates did spent a lot of time in the largest swing state cities and their suburbs, they also traveled to more remote areas in search of votes as well. For example, in Ohio, the candidates traveled to 49 different cities and towns over the course of 73 different events. 37 of those events (50%), were in the three largest metropolitan statistical areas (urban cores and their surrounding suburbs), or MSAs, in Ohio. However, 48% of all Ohio residents live in these three metro areas, so the candidates' attention to voters there is not surprising. Conversely, Iowa's five largest MSAs contained only 37% of its population, and therefore the candidates held only 44% of their events there.
Below is a roundup of how the candidates divided their time in the most targeted swing states. As we will see, the candidates gave areas within swing states attention in proportion to their population size.
For a more detailed look, check out our<a href="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=203902443974975889724.0004db311792dcb29efc8&msa=0"> Google Map</a>, and for a look at our work, you can find our spreadsheet <a href="assets/CNN-city-visits.xlsx" target="_blank">here</a>.
<h3>
<div class="image left" style="width: 337;"><img src="assets/Key.png" alt="" width="337" height="255" /></div>
 </h3>
<h3> </h3>
<h3> </h3>
<h3> </h3>
<h3> </h3>
<h3> </h3>
<h3> </h3>
<h3> </h3>
<h3>Ohio</h3>
<div class="image left" style="width: 422px;"><img src="assets/Ohio.png" alt="" width="422" height="412" /></div>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Number of campaign events held in state: 73 (29% of all visits)
Number of cities and towns visited in state: 49
Three Biggest MSAs: Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati (contain 48% of the state's population and 52% of events held)
Number of Events in these MSAs: 38
Number of individual cities and towns within these MSAs that were visited: 23
<h3>Florida</h3>
<div class="image left" style="width: 600px;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600472-Florida.PNG" alt="" width="600" height="472" /></div>
 
Number of campaign events held in state: 40 (16% of all visits)
Number of cities and towns visited in state: 28
Four Biggest MSAs: Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville (contain 63% of the state's population and 70% of events held)
Number of Events in these MSAs: 28
Number of individual cities and towns within these MSAs that were visited: 19
<h3>Virginia</h3>
<div class="image left" style="width: 600px;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600298-Virginia.png" alt="" width="600" height="298" /></div>
 
Number of campaign events held in state: 36 (14% of all visits)
Number of cities and towns visited in state: 22
Three Biggest MSAs: Washington, Virginia Beach, Richmond (contain 69% of the state's population and 69% of events held)
Number of Events in these MSAs: 25
Number of individual cities and towns within these MSAs that were visited: 13
<h3>Iowa</h3>
<div class="image left" style="width: 600px;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600363-Iowa.png" alt="" width="600" height="363" /></div>
 
Number of campaign events held in state: 27 (11% of all visits)
Number of cities and towns visited in state: 18
Five Biggest MSAs: Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Waterloo, Iowa City (contain 37% of the state's population and 44% of events held)
Number of Events in these MSAs: 11
Number of individual cities and towns within these MSAs that were visited: 7
<h3>Colorado</h3>
<div class="image left" style="width: 600px;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600445-colorado.png" alt="" width="600" height="445" /></div>
 
Number of campaign events held in state: 23 (9% of all visits)
Number of cities and towns visited in state: 15
Biggest MSA: Denver (contains 51 % of the state's population and 48% of events held)
Number of Events in these MSAs: 11
Number of individual cities and towns within these MSAs that were visited: 8
<h3>Wisconsin</h3>
 
<div class="image left" style="width: 458px;"><img src="assets/Wisconsin.png" alt="" width="458" height="558" /></div>
 
<div class="image left" style="width: 600px;"> </div>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Number of campaign events held in state: 18 (7% of all visits)
Number of cities and towns visited in state: 13
Three Biggest MSAs: Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay (contain 42 % of the state's population and 56% of events held)
Number of Events in these MSAs: 10
Number of individual cities and towns within these MSAs that were visited: 8
<h3>Nevada</h3>
<div class="image left" style="width: 600px;"> </div>
 
<div class="image left" style="width: 330px;"><img src="assets/Nevada.png" alt="" width="330" height="432" /></div>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Number of campaign events held in state: 13 (5% of all visits)
Number of cities and towns visited in state: 4
Two Biggest MSAs: Las Vegas and Reno (contains 94% of the state's population and 100% of events held)
Number of Events in these MSAs: 13
Number of individual cities and towns within these MSAs that were visited: 4
<h3>New Hampshire</h3>
<h3>
<div class="image left" style="width: 160px;"><img src="assets/New-Hampshire.png" alt="" width="160" height="295" /></div>
 </h3>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Number of campaign events held in state: 13 (5% of all visits)
Number of cities and towns visited in state: 9
Biggest Combined Statistical Area (encompassing mutliple MSAs): Boston (contains 78% of the state's population and 92% of events held)
Number of Events in these MSAs: 12
Number of individual cities and towns within these MSAs that were visited: 8
 
 
As we can see, there is some variation between states in the way that candidates travel within them, but the candidates do usually travel to areas based on their population sizes. The variety comes from that fact that some of these states are far more urban than others, and therefore, the concentration of campaign events are less dispersed in these states than in more rural states. In Nevada, for example, 94% of the population lives in the areas surrounding the state's two largest cities (Las Vegas and Reno). This population distribution incentivized the candidates to campaign only in these cities and their suburbs, since that was where most of the voters were. Conversely, in Iowa, the five largest MSAs only combined to make up 37% of the state population, incentivizing the candidates to travel throughout the state and visit different locations (18, to be exact), in search of votes.
Although it is impossible to know exactly how presidential campaigns would be run under a <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/national-popular-vote" target="_blank">national popular vote</a>, it is reasonable to assume that in an election in which every vote, in every state, was equally important, presidential and vice presidential candidates would divvy up their campaign attention nationwide in proportion to each area's share of the population. In that case, every state would host at least one event with a presidential or vice presidential candidate, and the midsized and larger states would receive multiple events, in both their urban and rural areas. A larger cross-section of the country would experience presidential elections and have a say in who becomes our commander in chief, and therefore, when <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/national-popular-vote" target="_blank">National Popular Vote </a>passes, our presidential elections will be better for it.

FairVote’s Top Ten List: The Breakdown of Winner-Take-All Elections

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:35:12 -0700

Want the facts faster? Take a look at this <a href="assets/Top-Ten-Facts-about-WTASHORT.pdf">one-pager</a> on our top 10 indicators of the breakdown of winner-take-all.
Geography has become an increasingly rigid indicator of which political party will win a state or legislative district in the United States. Voters are far more likely to vote only for candidates from a single political party, and to vote for that same party from election to election. When there is a shift in an area's underlying partisanship, it is now more likely to be away from the national political center than towards it.
The end results of these trends include:
- A Congress that is more partisan in its voting behavior than at any time in recent history, and legislative leaders who consistently use every procedural tool available to dominate the opposing party when in the majority, or to obstruct it when in the minority.
- A partisan voting consistency that means less ticket splitting in votes for president, Congress, and state elections.
- A pattern of majority domination that removes that vast majority of states from the battleground in presidential elections. This pattern incentivizes candidates to allocate more than 99% of their attention and resources on courting voters in just 10 states.
- A partisan consistency in congressional districts that makes it difficult for either party to make gains in the House outside of a shrinking band of competitive districts. The vast majority of incumbents are secure in their districts and do not have to worry about reelection.
Top political analysts have been addressing these trends, including the Washington Post's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/washington-confronts-still-divided-america/2013/04/12/3b5167e4-a386-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html">Dan Balz</a>, the Cook Political Report's <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/cook-report/the-republican-advantage-20130411" target="_blank">Charlie Cook</a> and Crystal Ball's <a href="http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/holding-on-to-a-house-majority/" target="_blank">Rhodes Cook</a>. But one factor consistently overlooked by these analysts is that this partisan gridlock can be remedied with a simple change in electoral rules. By doing away with winner-take-all voting laws, by which 50% + 1 of the vote earns 100% of representation in a single state or district, political polarization could be substantially remedied, and voters would find themselves more accurately represented in their legislative bodies.
Many people wring their hands over how district lines are drawn, highlight the dangers of voting laws designed to reduce voter participation, or bemoan the role of money in politics. But however important these issues may be, they collectively have a minor effect on electoral outcomes when contrasted with the overwhelming power of winner-take-all voting rules. Under winner-take-all, once a candidate in a race for a congressional seat or a state in a presidential race has a partisan balance three percentage points or more away from the national vote, the odds of a victory for supporters of the minority party plunge.
Once an area's partisanship is six percent or more away from the national vote, any party shift is nearly impossible.
Fortunately, we can ditch the winner-take-all voting laws that have impaired our electoral process for far too long. With simple changes to federal and state statutes, the US can be on its way to better and fairer elections. The United States has a long history of using different voting rules that would, absent any other changes, dramatically improve elections, representation, and legislative behavior. To underscore the urgency of consideration of these reforms, FairVote has made a list of the top ten biggest indicators that winner-take-all elections have contributed to the polarization and stagnation that plagues our political process.
Definition of terms: 
A swing state or congressional district is one that voted within three points of the national popular vote for president (47%-53% partisanship), meaning that their partisanship leaning is similar to the nation's as a whole. Presidential elections in states and congressional elections in districts (especially if there is an open seat or a first-term incumbent) within this partisanship band are likely to be competitive in a nationally competitive election. 
A safe state or congressional district is one that voted at least 8 percentage points more Democratic or Republican than the national popular vote for president (42%-58% partisanship). Barring a landslide election for one party nationally, there is virtually no chance that any of these states or districts held by the majority party will be won by the minority party.
Presidential Elections
1. Decreasing state competition: In 1988, safe states collectively held only 40 electoral votes. In 2012, they held 247 electoral votes. During that time the number of electoral votes held by swing states shrunk by nearly half, from 272 to 140.  
2. Consistent voting patterns: Between 2000 and 2012, 41 states voted for the same party in every presidential election. In both 2008 and 2012, 35 of these states received less than 1/100th of the attention from the presidential campaigns that they would have received if every state received attention in proportion to its population.
3. More partisan rigidity: The number of states where partisanship shifted by five or more percentage points between elections has decreased from an average of 23 states between 1960 and 1976 to an average of three between 2000 and 2012.
Congressional Elections
4. Decreasing district competition: Between 1998 and 2012, the number of swing districts decreased from 121 to 47. There are now 284 safe congressional districts, up from 179 in 1998.
5. Increasing dominance of partisanship over local factors: Only six incumbents remain in seats that favored the other party by a margin of more than eight percentage points in the 2012 presidential election, down from 34 such incumbents after the 2006 election and down from 47 after the 1992 election. In 2012, neither party took a seat away from the other party in a district that favored the opposing party by more than eight percentage points. Only six percent of districts (26) voted for different parties for president and Congress in 2012.
6. More partisan rigidity: Comparing partisanship in current congressional districts based on the 2008 presidential elections and 2012 presidential elections, only 30 districts (7%) experienced a partisanship shift of five or more percentage points - and all but four of those districts trended in the direction of the previous majority party, making them less competitive.
7. More regional domination: In 2012, large areas of the nation were dominated by one party. Democrats swept all 21 House seats in New England while Republicans won all 22 seats in the belt of states running from Arkansas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. In 1992, Republicans held 10 House seats in New England and Democrats held 14 House seats in this line of midwestern and western states.
8. More racial connection to partisanship: White Republicans represent 66 of 70 majority-white U.S. House districts in the adjoining nine states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. In 1991, 50 white Democrats represented these states, nearly all in white majority districts.
State Elections
9. More monopoly-controlled states: In 38 states, one party controls the governor's mansion and both state legislative houses - and the presidential candidate from the same party won 31 of those states in 2012. This is the largest number of states with one-party-monopoly governments since World War II.
10. More partisan rigidity: In North Carolina's 2012 elections for its 120-seat House of Representatives, 119 seats were won by the candidate with a partisan advantage in his or her district. In New Jersey's first election since its new two-member legislative districts were drawn by a commission in 2011, all 40 assembly districts elected two members of the same party.
As we can see, the phrase "all politics is local" has been replaced with "all politics is partisan."  To see how we can fix presidential, congressional, and state legislative elections, visit
Presidential Elections: <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/national-popular-vote">www.fairvote.org/national-popular-vote</a>;
Congressional Elections: <a href="http://www.fairvoting.us/">www.fairvoting.us</a>;
Have your own favorite example of winner-take-all breakdown? Send it to us at <a href="mailto:info@fairvote.org">info@fairvote.org</a>.

Remembering Bob Edgar

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:31:15 -0700

When my husband, Rob Richie, shared the news of the death of Common Cause president Bob Edgar with me this morning I felt a rush of shock and sadness. I met Bob in the fall of 1982 at an event in Media, Pennsylvania – when I was 18 and in my first semester at Swarthmore College. A number of us were active on campus on a range of issues and we found in Bob an eloquent and tenacious representative in Congress.
I soon began to volunteer in his district office, amidst tough fights on abortion rights and middle-east policy and later worked on his bid for the US Senate in 1986. During that campaign I had the honor to hear him speak truth to power many times a day for months on end. In between events and appearances he would educate me about immigration legislation and weapons systems and the complexities of government.
Over the ensuing 25 years I had the pleasure of hearing Bob speak in larger settings, at gatherings of Quakers and activists and political consultants. His message was always grounded deeply in his faith and in his passion for change.
During his tenure as president of Common Cause, our paths crossed again, this time as colleagues in the struggle to improve the very core of democracy. The issues he championed—including campaign finance reform, the filibuster and FairVote priorities like a national popular vote for president, universal voter registration and redistricting reform -- are all grounded in the profound understanding that every voice in a democracy is vital to its strength. Kathay Feng of California Common Cause today wrote that “one of the things Bob tried to teach all of us was to remember the humanity of each and every person.”
Bob Edgar’s lived his life as if in direct response to this admonition from Quaker founder George Fox in 1656:
“Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.”
His tireless advocacy for peace, justice and democracy has opened many hearts and minds.

Taking on American Political Dysfunction without Changing the Constitution

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:15:58 -0700

<div class="image center" style="width: 530;"><img src="assets/parliament-in-DC.JPG" alt="" width="530" height="287" /></div>
 
In his draft paper on <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2243798">Political Dysfunction and Constitutional Change,</a> University of California-Irvine professor Rick Hasen makes a powerful case for the need for out-of-the-box thinking on American political reform. But he also makes a curious omission. Fair voting alternatives to winner-take-all elections do not receive a single mention in the paper, even though they were <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/the-chairman-s-corner-fairvote-reforms-featured-in-mann-ornstein-book">promoted</a> in one of Hasen's major sources, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein's 2012 book It's Even Worse Than It Looks.
Hasen has a well-deserved reputation as one of our most thoughtful law professors, and his paper has generated <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/04/06/the_republican_party_is_officially_broken/">considerable</a> <a href="http://www.psmag.com/politics/united-states-united-kingdom-politics-parliament-54769/">reaction</a> in the political blogosphere. It posits three basic claims: 1) The government of the United States is currently dysfunctional, 2) that dysfunction could be solved by switching to a parliamentary system of governance - that is, government where the executive is chosen by the legislature, and 3) if the problem of dysfunction does not eventually solve itself, none of the commonly proposed subconstitutional rule changes will end dysfunction without switching to a parliamentary system.
Hasen's first claim is difficult to dispute. Between the never-ending budget crisis and a consistent inability to enact policies that most Americans favor, the U.S. government - in particular, Congress - is simply not doing its job effectively. The cause, as Hasen correctly points out, is increasing polarization within Congress, which is at its highest point since the end of Reconstruction. That polarization in turn is grounded in most voters' increasingly rigid party preference - a trend that FairVote has highlighted for <a href="http://archive.fairvote.org/reports/monopoly/contents.html">more than 15 years</a>.
We're not going to argue one way or another on Hasen's second claim about a parliamentary system. While it's true that switching to a system in which the majority party could pass any law it wanted would increase legislative output and decrease gridlock, doing so would be a drastic step that would require a complete restructuring of American politics. No reform option should be dismissed just because it is unfamiliar, but as Hasen himself writes, "we should not lightly change the fundamental rules of our governance."
We do take issue with Hasen's third contention that, absent adoption of a parliamentary system or government dysfunction correcting itself with time, no subconstitutional changes proposed by others are likely end such dysfunction. On the one hand, Hasen convincingly explains the limitations of some subconstitutional rule changes, most notably filibuster reform, independent redistricting and the adoption of open primaries. Fairvote has also pointed out the limitations of open primaries and <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/california-and-the-limits-of-independent-redistricting-commissions-with-winner-take-all">independent redistricting</a> as reform solutions, although the latter certainly has merit if applied consistently and with attention to fair representation. As for the filibuster, we have drawn attention to its problematic nature over the years, <a href="http://archive.fairvote.org/filibuster/">dating back</a> to when the debate centered on Republicans complaining about Senate Democrats blocking the majority. Even so, while filibuster reform would allow more bills to make it through the Senate, it would do nothing to address the underlying causes of polarization.
After dismissing those three reforms, however, Hasen jumps straight to the conclusion that "tinkering with the internal rules of Congress or the external rules of election are likely to make only modest inroads at best in the polarization and dysfunction currently affecting our national politics." That's true, if you're only tinkering. But we're not limited to merely tinkering with our election rules; in fact, the electoral reforms mentioned by Hasen are just the tip of the iceberg of possible changes that could be made to American elections without requiring a constitutional amendment.
The biggest oversight is the potential use of candidate-based methods of proportional representation proven in American elections, which FairVote calls "fair voting." Fair voting is based on the simple and intuitive principle that legislatures should more accurately reflect the political views of all Americans. Voters would still vote for specific candidates under fair voting, but those votes would give them legislators who represent them philosophically as well as geographically. Our preferred fair voting method, <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/choice-voting">choice voting</a> (also known as the "single transferable vote"), encourages candidates to campaign for support outside of their base because it allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference.
We've drawn fair voting plans for every state, showing how combining existing districts into larger districts with between three and five members would have a dramatic impact on voter choice and fair representation. A fair voting plan could be implemented nationwide through federal statute, and would be fully constitutional. Fair voting methods have already been used effectively in important American elections, including for more than a century in elections to the <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/assets/2012-Redistricting/IllinoisCumulativeVoting.pdf">Illinois House of Representatives</a> and for <a href="http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=647">local elections in major cities</a> like Cincinnati, Cleveland, Sacramento and New York. Proponents of fair voting for congressional elections include the Democrats' third-ranking <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2482&dat=20010305&id=vWFJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VwoNAAAAIBAJ&pg=5211,2111077">House Member James Clyburn</a>, along with intellectual heavyweights like Mann and Ornstein (who also advocate for the consideration of another FairVote proposal, ranked choice voting in single winner office elections).
Unlike the "tinkering reforms" Hasen dismisses, adopting fair voting would have real and powerful effects on American governance. No longer would only two party poles be represented in Congress. Instead, viewpoints from varying degrees of the right, center, and left of the American political spectrum would all have a voice in the legislature. With a stronger political center and nearly all Members of Congress sharing constituents with Members from another party due to the use of multi-member districts elected under non-winner-take-all rules, Members would be much more likely to cooperate across the aisle. Because fair voting would make every district competitive in every general election, the phenomenon of legislators being threatened only by politically extreme primary challengers would disappear.
Hasen is clearly willing to look abroad for reforms, suggesting the British Westminster system as one possible model for an American parliament, but he avoids the fact that <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/PR-in-most-robust-democracies">most of the world's robust democracies</a> have rejected American-style winner-take-all voting rules.
It is possible that Hasen omitted fair voting just because he doesn't think it's a realistic or achievable reform. But for someone considering rewriting large swaths of the U.S. Constitution, that's not a very persuasive reason (not that it's a good argument for anyone to ignore fair voting, as FairVote <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/scholars-like-nathaniel-persily-shouldn-t-count-out-fair-voting">pointed out last month</a> in challenging another election law luminary, Nathaniel Persily, to acknowledge the potential of fair voting).
The paper concludes on a note of caution, as Hasen writes that "it is worth waiting to see if the political system self-corrects" before shifting to a parliamentary system. That could be a very long wait, with a lot of ineffective governance and harm done to the American people in the process.
There's no need to wait to adopt fair voting. The negative effects of winner-take-all congressional elections have <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/dubious-democracy-updated-fairvote-report-shows-dysfunctional-house-elections">never been clearer</a> and fair voting is <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/fair-voting-in-the-united-states">completely consistent</a> with American political traditions. Even if the current era of partisan gridlock does prove to be a transitory phase, fair voting would still have numerous other benefits for American elections. For one, if implemented in tandem with independent redistricting commissions, fair voting would effectively remove all partisan bias in House races - a bias that currently leaves Democrats needing <a href="http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/midterm-forecast-democrats-may-gain-house-seats-in-2014-but-majority-probably-out-of-reach/">more than 56 percent</a> of the vote to earn a one-seat majority in 2014.
With fair voting, Republicans could win seats outside their strongholds, helping to broaden the appeal of the party in a way that would make them more competitive in presidential elections. If Jonathan Bernstein is right in his <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/04/06/the_republican_party_is_officially_broken/">response</a> to Hasen that a broken Republican Party that is the real source of government dysfunction, fair voting would give Republicans the right incentives to get their party back on track.
Furthermore, fair voting would be an ideal solution to controversies over how best to elect racial minorities, as explained by FairVote staff in a <a href="http://lawreview.richmond.edu/the-right-choice-for-elections-how-choice-voting-will-end-gerrymandering-and-expand-minority-voting-rights-from-city-councils-to-congress/">recent University of Richmond Law Review article</a> and a <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/a-representative-congress-enhancing-african-american-voting-rights-in-the-south-with-choice-voting">blog post</a> on Congressional elections in the South. It would very likely boost representation of women far more than millions of more dollars spent on funding individual women candidates, as highlighted by FairVote's <a href="http://www.representation2020.com/">Representation 2020 project</a>. It would give every voter a meaningful choice, far more than any redistricting reform proposal that keeps winner-take-all elections in place.
To be sure, we still may well get presidents of one party and congressional leaders of another. No system can guarantee effective governance, but fair voting would give us a more representative legislature with individual members having more freedom and opportunity to work across the aisle to get things done. We would need to pay attention to details like handling constituent service demands, but the longstanding use of multi-seat legislative districts in many states shows that can be done well.
Hasen is right to look beyond the status quo of Washington politics toward real reform options. But he's wrong to ignore lessons from our own history and the powerful logic that the single-member district is a poor way to elect an increasingly diverse population. Let's evaluate all the options for making the current Constitution work - not just the timid ones.

Electoral Reform on the Move in Canada

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:15:17 -0700

Things are looking up for electoral reformers in Canada.
A <a href="http://www.thebulletin.ca/cbulletin/content.jsp?ctid=1000161&cnid=1003394">new poll</a> from Environics, a Canadian research firm, shows that 70% of Canadians would favor a move to proportional representation for Canada's Parliament. That support transcends party lines, with at least 60% of Conservatives, Liberals, and New Democrats preferring any kind of proportional representation to Canada's current winner-take-all system. Respondents identifying with the New Democratic Party, which currently controls nearly a third of seats in the House of Commons, were especially enthusiastic, backing proportional representation at an 82% rate.
<a href="http://www.fairvote.ca/">FairVote Canada</a> has led the movement for fair voting, and the conversation about serious electoral reform is likely to be particularly relevant in advance of the 2015 elections, as <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/04/11/pol-nanos-liberals-ahead-of-conservatives-in-new-poll.html?cmp=rss">national polls</a> show an electorate split among Canada's three major parties.
And it's not just proportional representation - last week, the Liberal Party <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/04/10/liberal-leadership-vote-numbers-ndp_n_3055096.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-politics&just_reloaded=1">held its leadership elections using ranked choice voting</a>. The elections went smoothly, though the winner was never in doubt: Justin Trudeau received over 78% of first choice rankings en route to a landslide victory. Trudeau himself has <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/04/14/it-may-be-light-but-justin-trudeaus-policies-offer-glimpse-at-next-liberal-platform/">advocated</a> for using ranked choice voting for the House of Commons, and the Liberal Party as a whole <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/01/15/liberal-convention-ottawa-2012-preferential-ballot_n_1207701.html">voted last January</a> to support ranked choice voting for all future national elections.
The Liberal Party used a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bn9PHsJFZtk#!">somewhat unconventional</a> method of ranked choice voting in its leadership election, as Trudeau was not elected by direct popular vote. Each Canadian federal district (a "riding") received an equal number of points, and those points were allocated to candidates in each riding in proportion to the number of first choice rankings they received. Had no candidate won a majority of points after the first round of point-allocation (as Trudeau did), the voters who ranked the candidate with the least number of points first would have had their votes transfer to their second choices, giving points to those candidates instead. That process would have continued until a candidate had a majority of points, as in a traditional <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting">instant runoff voting</a> election.
Regardless of the added complexity of the point system, however, the Liberal Party's use of ranked choice voting allowed voters to honestly express their preferences on their ballots, preventing any possibility of "spoiler" candidates or a candidate winning with a small plurality of support.
Meanwhile, the movement for ranked choice voting is gaining steam in Toronto, where Dave Meslin is leading an <a href="http://www.123toronto.ca/main.htm">initiative</a> to win RCV for Toronto's mayoral elections. With the backing of <a href="http://www.fairvote.ca/en/press-release/2013-04-11/fair-vote-canada-demands-ranked-ballot-to-elect-mayor-of-toronto">FairVote Canada</a>, Meslin's Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT) has a strong chance to succeed in advance of the mayoral election in 2014. Toronto is certainly a city in need of voting reform - its current mayor, Rob Ford, won election <a href="http://torontoist.com/2010/10/which_wards_voted_for_who_for_mayor/">without a majority of support</a> in 2010.
As the United States makes slow but steady progress toward a fair electoral system, it's nice to see our northern brethren keeping up.

Takoma Park Promotes the Vote: Will More Cities, Campuses and Organizations Take Action?

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:52:21 -0700

<div class="image left" style="width: 600;"><img src="assets/Patty/_resampled/ResizedImage600429-TP-Blog-5-1.JPG" alt="" width="600" height="429" /></div>
 
 
Last night, the Takoma Park city council passed a charter amendment by a 6-1 vote on first reading that, if approved when before the council again in the coming month, will be in the best tradition of cities and states leading the nation in advancing voting rights. It would establish same-day voter registration and extend voting rights to residents after they turn 16 and after incarceration. Here's why we think it's important.
FairVote's motto is "respect for every vote and every voice." Our reforms are grounded in the belief that bringing more people to the table is the best way to strengthen democracy. Elections with high turnout, real voter choice and fair representation are a nonpartisan way to help representative democracy in our nation, states and cities.
Although changing the Constitution should be an option, most of our reforms can be won by statute, such as the: <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/national-popular-vote">National Popular Vote Plan</a> to guarantee election of the winner of the most popular votes in presidential elections; <a href="fair-voting-solution/">fair voting forms</a> of proportional representation to elect Congress and state and local legislators; <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting">ranked choice voting</a>(instant runoff) for our single winner offices; and <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/universal-voter-registration">voting access reforms</a> designed to provide for high rates of participation with election integrity.
The one proposed constitutional amendment we highlight is establishing an <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/right-to-vote-amendment">affirmative right to vote</a>. Adding such language to the Constitution would underscore our nation's commitment to the right to vote and raise the level of scrutiny to any laws that fail to uphold voting rights.
Guided by that vision, we have designed our <a href="http://www.promoteourvote.com">Promote Our Vote</a> project to encourage immediate action in cities, campuses and organizations to put life into the goal of a constitutional right to vote through concrete action to boost turnout. As underscored by <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/fairvote-report-low-turnout-plagues-u-s-mayoral-elections-but-san-francisco-is-highest">our report </a> on mayoral elections, single digit voter turnout is all too common in city elections, with particularly stark disparities as measured by race, income, education and age.
Last year, we did a <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/revealing-evidence-of-who-votes-and-who-doesn-t-in-local-elections">voter survey</a> in a hotly contested special election in our hometown of Takoma Park (MD) that showed remarkable differences in who participated. Turnout was up overall from the most recent mayoral election, but was still less than 20% of registered voters. Furthermore, we found that: people of color were 74% of residents, but only 35% of voters; younger adults were 42% of residents but only 7% of voters; and people with graduate or professional degrees were 56% of voters, but only 10% of residents.
Historically, states and cities have been the laboratories of democracy in expanding suffrage and voter access. Promote Our Vote advances <a href="http://www.promoteourvote.com/take-action.html">resolutions </a> for cities, campuses and organizations to endorse an affirmative right to vote in the Constitution and commit to concrete actions to improve voter turnout, protect voter access when threatened and consider expansion of suffrage rights.
Takoma Park city councilor <a href="http://timmale.com/1/post/2013/03/summary-of-voting-and-election-initiatives.html">Tim Male</a> liked the right to vote resolution. Finding a strong ally in fellow councilor <a href="http://sethgrimes.blogspot.com/2013/04/reminder-hearing-on-electoral.html">Seth Grimes</a> and support from Mayor Bruce Williams, he introduced it to his council colleagues. In so doing, the council decided to move forward on changes for this November's election. The council last night voted to approve the first reading of a charter amendment that would establish same day voter registration in city elections, extend voting rights to more people with felony convictions and make Takoma Park the first city in the United State to join what has become an international movement to extend suffrage rights to people after they turn age 16. The council may also form a task force to consider other ways to increase turnout such as a revision of the landlord code to ensure candidates have greater access to speak with tenants in apartment buildings.
These ideas came directly from councilors' experience. After Grimes introduced Election Day registration, councilors talked about spending time on the campaign trail with residents only to find out they weren't registered and it was past the registration cutoff date. With Maryland this year adopting a <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-04-08/news/bal-early-voting-expansion-approved-20130408_1_voting-system-early-voting-same-day-registration">new law</a> to establish same day registration during early voting, it was all the easier for the city to go one step farther. Another councilor talked about residents who wanted to vote, but could not due to being on parole or under supervision.
The idea of ensuring candidate access to residents in apartment buildings grew from candidates discussing how much easier it was to engage with homeowners in single-family dwellings than tenants in apartment buildings that were closed to them. It turns out that <a href="https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=211b.20">Minnesota has a law</a> with proven procedures for establishing candidate access to apartments in campaign season.
The proposal to extend voting rights to people after they turn 16 may surprise some readers, but the latest research is a revelation. All evidence suggests that cities will increase turnout by allowing citizens to cast their first vote after turning 16. The reason is simple. Many people at 16 and 17 have lived in their communities for years and are taking government classes in high school. That combination results in more people exercising their first chance to vote if they are 16 or 17 than if they are unable to vote until they have left home and school.
Keep in mind that a voting age of 18 means that many people won't get a chance to vote in city election until they are nearly 20. <a href="http://www.promoteourvote.com/uploads/9/2/2/7/9227685/leaving_the_nest_and_the_social_act_of_voting.pdf">A detailed study</a> of voting age and voters in Denmark found that 18-year-olds were far more likely to cast their "first vote" than 19-year-olds, and that every month of extra age in those years resulted in a decline in "first vote" turnout.
Allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections will enable them to vote before leaving home and high school, and establish a life-long habit of voting.
Austria is among a growing number of nations like Argentina, Germany and the United Kingdom that have extended voting rights to people at 16 for national, regional or local elections. <a href="http://www.timmale.com/uploads/2/9/2/2/2922364/results_voting_at_16_handout.pdf">Evidence from Austria</a> confirms that extending voting rights to people after they turn 16 promotes higher turnout for first-time voters and over time. Austria's experience also shows that 16- and 17-years-olds are ready for voting as far as making choices that accurately reflect their views.
Long-time backers of a lower voting age, like the <a href="http://www.youthrights.org/issues/voting-age/">National Youth Rights Association</a>, make a fairness argument as well. Turning 16 has special significance in our culture. At age 16, we can drive, pay taxes and for the first time work without any restriction on hours. Many states already allow citizens under 18 to vote in Democratic and Republican primaries for president, Congress and governor. Many states like Maryland allow people to start <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/voter-preregistration-4#.UWvxRLWG3h4">registering to vote at 16</a>, making it administratively easy to extend voting rights.
The idea has taken hold here. Testimony at a public hearing was overwhelmingly positive, the local Gazette endorsed a lower voting with a <a href="http://www.gazette.net/article/20130403/OPINION/130409681/1033/takoma-park-smartly-trying-to-lower-voting-age-to-16&template=gazette">long editorial</a> and letters of support have come in from our state senator Jamie Raskin (<a href="http://www.promoteourvote.com/uploads/9/2/2/7/9227685/jamie_raskin_letter_to_takoma_park.pdf">see letter</a>), Congressman Keith Ellison (<a href="http://www.promoteourvote.com/uploads/9/2/2/7/9227685/keith_ellison_letter_to_takoma_park.pdf">see letter</a>) and leading scholars on youth engagement, such as CIRCLE's invaluable Peter Levine (<a href="http://www.promoteourvote.com/uploads/9/2/2/7/9227685/circle_letter_to_takoma_park.pdf">see letter</a>). I have little doubt that the practice will quickly spread. Indeed, already the mayor of Orange, Ohio has <a href="http://www.chagrinvalleytimes.com/NC/0/5169.html">taken note</a> of Takoma Park's potential action, and the one skeptic on Takoma Park's city council came up with excellent ideas of how to introduce local government and voting to young people if the amendment were adopted.
Democracy is too important to be a spectator sport. Let's vote, of course, but also consider getting directly involved in reform work. <a href="http://www.fairvoteaction.org">FairVote Action</a> presents action ideas for all of our reform ideas. If you like the idea of your city, campus or organization having the kind of substantive, generative conversation on the right to vote that has taken place in Takoma Park, visit <a href="http://www.promoteourvote.com ">Promote Our Vote</a>, look at its resources and take action.

Japan's Electoral Unfairness Goes Deeper than Malapportionment

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:58:17 -0700

<img style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" src="assets/Devin/_resampled/ResizedImage600332-Japan-Blog-Post-April-2013.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="332" />
 
On March 26, Okoyama's High Court <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japanese-courts-press-for-electoral-reform/2013/03/26/496b93dc-962e-11e2-894a-b984cbdff2e6_story.html">ruled</a> that Japan's 2012 lower house elections were invalid. The case followed several other similar decisions by courts throughout Japan, including from the Hiroshima High Court the day before and from Tokyo's High Court on March 6. The issue of contention is the apportionment of representatives to voters - that is, the relative weight that each Japanese voter receives in terms of seats in the legislature. In the 2012 election, some voters - mostly those in rural districts - had as much as <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/07/national/vote-disparity-in-12-unconstitutional/#.UVtEBTc0iSq">2.34 times</a> as much voting weight as others.
The apportionment crisis is undoubtedly damaging to the legitimacy of Japanese democracy. All votes should, indeed, carry roughly equal weight. But malapportionment is not the source of the most pernicious unfairness in the Japanese electoral system. Japan uses a parallel system for electing its lower house, analogous to the similarly problematic Egyptian system we <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/the-future-of-egyptian-democracy-hinges-on-the-fight-over-its-electoral-law/#.UWMbhaKG2So">critiqued last month</a>. While 180 of the Japanese parliament's 480 seats are elected through closed list proportional representation, the remaining 300 representatives are elected in winner-take-all, single member districts. In a parallel system, proportional representation seats do not compensate for distortions caused by winner-take-all seats.
There was plenty of distortion left uncorrected after December 2012. The story of the election was that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had held power almost without interruption since 1955 before <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/assets/Uploads/reports/Japan-Report-Final.pdf">finally being defeated by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2009</a>, bounced back to win the election in an apparent landslide. The LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komeito Party, now control a supermajority of more than two-thirds of seats in the House of Representatives, which would seem to imply broad popular support for their policy proposals. In reality, the LDP actually received about <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21568752-party-comes-back-dead-still-remembers-where-find-switch-printing">four million fewer votes</a> in 2012 than in their 2009 defeat.
That's partly because voter turnout decreased significantly in 2012 from 2009, but the LDP still received less than 28% of the PR vote and less than 40% when combined with the vote share of New Komeito. That's a higher percentage than any other party or coalition, but far from a majority - much less a supermajority - of nationwide support. The distortion stems from the fact that the LDP won 79% of the winner-take-all seats that comprise the bulk of the House.
LDP leader and current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has translated his party's plurality support into an aggressive policy agenda, <a href="http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/to-japan-china-row-add-one-potential-provocateur/">confronting China over the Senkaku Islands</a> and <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-11/japan-s-abe-unveils-10-3-trillion-yen-fiscal-boost-to-growth.html">implementing a dramatic economic stimulus program</a>. Regardless of the merits of these policies, they were not voted for by most of the Japanese electorate. Yet because the House of Representatives can override any veto by the upper House of Councillors, voters will not even have the power to affect Abe's policies in this July's upper house elections.
Malapportionment may have contributed to the distorted outcome in 2012, but significant distortions can easily occur in single-member district systems regardless of whether there are equal numbers of people in each district. Japanese electoral reformers should be most concerned with eliminating the parallel nature of Japan's voting system. One option that Japan could consider is moving to what FairVote calls a "<a href="http://www.fairvote.org/districts-plus">districts plus</a>" system, where the 180 proportional seats would be allocated to parties to compensate for any distortions caused by the single-member district elections. Similar systems are used in national elections for countries such as Germany and New Zealand, and are typically referred to as "mixed member proportional representation." Incredibly, even allocating all 180 proportional seats to non-LDP parties would not have been enough to give each party the seats they deserved based on their share of the proportional vote, but it would have at least forced the LDP to form a coalition to control a majority of the House.
Districts plus systems not only guarantee more representative governments, but they also greatly simplify the districting process. If every vote counts equally towards the composition of the legislature, the import of where district lines are drawn is significantly lessened. Cases of malapportionment in Japan and partisan gerrymandering in the U.S. would be rendered inconsequential under districts plus. The Japanese courts are right to be taking action to correct the flaws in the Japanese electoral system - but simply redrawing district lines is not enough to ensure fairness.

Getting a Real “Colbert Bump” for Women’s Representation Takes Fair Voting Systems and Better Party Rules

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:38:27 -0700

<img src="assets/Patty/r-ELIZABETH-COLBERT-BUSCH-WINS-large570.jpg" alt="" width="570" height="238" />
 
After voters in South Carolina rejected four women running as Democratic Party nominees in the 2012 congressional elections, the state in a special election this May again has a chance to elect its first female House members since 1990. The likely continuation of an all-male delegation provides lessons for what it will take to achieve gender parity in Congress: a combination of gender-conscious party rules and fair voting methods.
In December, Gov. Nikki Haley appointed fellow Republican Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy created by Jim DeMint's sudden retirement. The appointment resulted in the Senate's first African American Senator in nearly two years and created a vacancy in the state's 1st congressional district.
The resulting special election has drawn particular attention because Democrats have nominated Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sister of Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert. After easily winning the Democratic primary with <a href="http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/45550/115695/en/summary.html">96% of the vote</a>, Colbert Busch will face the winner of a Republican primary runoff in which the favorite is former Gov. Mark Sanford, who is seeking a political comeback four years after his <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/24/south.carolina.governor/index.html?_s=PM:POLITICS">much-publicized</a> extramarital affair.
Even though <a href="http://www.talkradionews.com/congress/2013/03/26/sanford-colbert-busch-polling-neck-and-neck.html#.UVL8JhyG3h4">polls </a> suggest a very close race, Busch faces a tough challenge in the general election in a state without a single woman in its national delegation and heavy Republican partisanship. In 2012, Mitt Romney won the 1st congressional district by 18 percentage points. With few voters today splitting their ticket in presidential and congressional elections, South Carolina's Republican House candidates have a huge advantage.
Even with Nikki Haley as governor, South Carolina has one of the nation's worse <a href="http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/resources/state_fact_sheets/SC.php">records </a> for electing female candidates. It has never elected a woman to the U.S. Senate and only five women have been elected to the U.S. House, four of which were elected in special elections to fill vacancies caused by the deaths of their husbands.
Gov. Haley is South Carolina's only female statewide elective executive; and only three other women have filled statewide positions in the past: Nancy Stevenson was lieutenant governor (1979-1983), while Barbara Nielsen and Inez Tenenbaum were superintendents of education (Nielsen from 1991-1999, and Tenenbaum from 1999-2007).
Before ascending to 49th place in 2012, South Carolina had the lowest percentage of women in its legislature for a decade. In 2012, Republican <a href="http://katrinashealy.com/">Katrina Shealy</a> broke through the state's all-male Senate. She was the first woman in four years to be elected to the institution, which has never held more than three women at a time, accounting for a mere 6% of the chamber.
Women have a hard time winning general elections in South Carolina, but it's not due to a lack of running on the Democratic side. While Republicans did not nominate a single female candidate for a House race in 2012 - and last did so in 2008 - four of the six Democratic <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/state/SC/house">nominees </a> were women. But they all lost, by an average of nearly 20% with the biggest factor being that Romney defeated Obama in each of their districts by at least 10%. In the 1st congressional district, for example, Tim Scott defeated Bobbie Rose by 27%.
Due to winner-takes-all electoral rules, Democratic House candidates have a good chance to win just one South Carolina district, the 6th district, which has been represented for two decades by James Clyburn. Of the state's seven districts, six are controlled by Republicans with an underlying Republican partisanship of more than 57%. To put that in perspective, even while 2012 was a <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/fairvote-s-unique-methodology-shows-that-52-of-voters-wanted-a-democratic-house/#.UVNsfhfBOSo">good year for Democrats</a> nationally, they did not take over a single Republican seat in a district with a partisanship above 54% Republican.
The fact that Democratic women are running and losing in South Carolina underscores the misleading notion that women will always increase their representation simply by running for office. It's not only about women running; it's also about parties running women where they have a real chance to win.
Two reforms would boost representation of women in South Carolina by addressing that problem directly. First, within the current districts, few women will win without Republicans nominating more women. The 2010 gubernatorial primary provides a great example of how intervention can make a difference. In March 2010, Nikki Haley was polling at 12%, in fourth place. Two months later, she surged to the lead with 30%, and ultimately won 49% in the June primary with a landslide win of 65% to 35% in a runoff.
The <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2010/election_2010_governor_elections/south_carolina/south_carolina_gop_primary_for_governor_haley_jumps_ahead">May poll</a> came four days after Haley earned the endorsement of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Then at the peak of her popularity, Gov. Palin that year endorsed four Republican women in competitive gubernatorial primaries who were ultimately elected. Gov. Palin may stir controversy, but her role in boosting election of women governors cannot be denied - which helps explain why today four Republican governors are women, compared to only one Democratic governor.
South Carolina Republicans have the power to adopt gender-conscious rules to enhance women's representation. At a minimum, they should create incentives for local party arms to recruit and train more women candidates. For example, South Carolina's 7th district has a strongly Republican partisanship and was the state's only open House seat in 2012. Republicans could have recruited qualified, female, primary candidates, but men won <a href="http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Elections/2012/House/South_Carolina/7/">95%</a> of the primary vote. This year's special election in the 1st congressional district was even more abysmal; 15 of 16 Republican primary candidates were male and together won more than 99% of the vote.
Parties can go further by considering rules that parties recruit a minimum number of women candidates to run in open seat elections. Before assuming that such requirements would never gain support, consider that both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) have party rules promoting gender parity in selection of party leaders. The RNC, for example, reserves one position for a man and one for a woman from every state and territory and requires women to hold key executive positions.
But suppose South Carolina Republicans cling to gender-blind rules and continue to almost never nominate women for high office. What else can be done?
For Democrats to win in South Carolina, they need fairer methods of voting. It's not like the state doesn't have Democratic voters - Barack Obama won more than 44% of the vote in both 2008 and 2012; and Democratic candidates for the House won 41.2% of the vote in 2012.* But the state has an unfair winner-take-all voting system that gives Democrats a realistic chance to win only one of seven districts.
<a href="www.fairvoting.us">Switching to a fair voting electoral system</a>, like our proposed map with multi-seat districts and a non-winner-take-all voting system like <a href="www.choicevoting.com">choice voting</a>, would allow far more voters to elect a preferred candidate. Our plan would make it easier for Republicans to have party rules that result in more women nominees and mean that Democrats would likely win three of seven seats - making the fact that Democrats nominate more women directly meaningful for changing representation.
It's premature to write off Colbert Bush this year, of course. In special elections, voter turnout can be a big wildcard, and Mark Sanford's controversial history could make him a vulnerable candidate if he wins the nomination. Also, the "Colbert bump" due to her brother's celebrity may play a meaningful role in the race.
But in today's hyper-partisan political environment, partisanship typically trumps everything else, whether it be a candidate's personal charisma, political philosophy or campaign spending. And regardless, South Carolina will remain a troubling testament of how winner-takes-all districts and a lack of gender-conscious party rules are <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/287863-parties-must-show-leadership-in-promoting-gender-parity">the leading reasons</a> for why the United States <a href="http://www.representation2020.com/rankings.html">ranks 92nd</a> in the world for representation of women in its national legislature. It's time for real change. We need to adopt gender-conscious party rules and a fair voting system.
*Two races were uncontested, the 2nd district with a Republican incumbent and the 6th district with a Democratic incumbent.

“Battleground Texas” Still Many Years Away

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:16:08 -0700

Those seeking to make Texas a battleground state in presidential elections are failing to confront the realities of our winner-take-all voting rules for allocating electoral votes, as well as the increasing rigidity of partisan voting patterns in America. Over the next twenty years, the only way for Texas to ensure that it becomes relevant in presidential elections is to help activate the National Popular Vote plan for president.
 
<div class="image left" style="width: 600;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600213.8-Battleground-Texas.png" alt="" width="600" height="213.8" /></div>
 
 
 
Jeremy Bird, who served as National Field Director of Obama for America in 2012, recently appeared on the <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/424178/february-26-2013/battleground-texas---jeremy-bird" target="_blank">Colbert Report</a> to discuss his new organization “Battleground Texas.” Founded with fellow Obama campaign veterans, the group seeks to transform Texas from a Republican bastion into a swing state, using “the data-driven, people-focused approach that has helped win grassroots campaigns around the country.” During his Colbert appearance, Bird explained, “Anyone who wants to be our commander-in-chief, they will have to fight for Texas.”
Due to Texas’ growing Latino population, Bird’s efforts seem plausible to some. After all, Latinos nationwide voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2012. We don’t know how Latinos in Texas specifically voted, as Texas was one of many spectator states where, for the first time in years, no exit polls were conducted in 2012, but there has been speculation that in a few elections, Texan Latinos could could be shifting Texas rom red to purple.
Politicians and public figures have taken note of Texas’ changing demographic makeup and the potential effect it could have on Texan elections. In October 2012, Jeb Bush<a href="http://nymag.com/news/politics/elections-2012/jeb-bush-2012-10/"> told</a> New York Magazine’s Joe Hagan that he was worried that “Four years from now, Texas is going to be a so-called blue state. Imagine Texas as a blue state, how hard it would be to carry the presidency or gain control of the Senate.” 
On the Democratic side, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro <a href="http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/11/10/4402584/texas-dems-pin-their-hopes-on.html">has said</a>, "Within the next six to eight years, I believe Texas will be at least be a purple state, if not a blue state." Actress Eva Longoria, a Texas-native, agrees. In a <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/83081.html" target="_blank">Politico article</a> co-authored with Gilberto Hinojosa, Chair of the Texas Democratic Party, she wrote, “This might be the last presidential election during which Texas is not considered a swing state. We know that the Latino vote matters in this year’s election. And the sleeping giant of the Texas Latino vote is poised to awaken and alter the fate of every future election.”
But for all the hype, the numbers today tell a different story, making it crystal clear that if Texas becomes competitive for Democrats in 2016 or 2020, then Republicans will be getting crushed in the national popular vote. In other words, if Texas is a close state, then the national vote won’t be – and Texas voters still won’t have a chance to help determine who wins the White House. 
Even as Texas’ Latino population has rapidly grown, the state has remained strongly Republican. Democrats last won a presidential race in Texas in 1976. For the four elections from 2000 to 2012, the state’s Republican partisanship - our reliable measure of swing state status, based on how a state votes for president compared to how the nation votes - has consistently hovered at 60%. In order to be considered a swing state, a state must hold a Republican partisanship between 47 and 53%, the closer to 50% the better. This heavy Republican partisanship means that in a nationally close election in any of those years, the Republican nominee would have won Texas by a landslide of 20% (as George W. Bush did in 2000). You can see the state’s steady trajectory from swing state status in 1976 to moribund spectator status in the chart below. The area between the dotted lines in the partisanship range a state would need to be considered a swing state.
 
<div class="image left" style="width: 600;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600356-Texas-partisanship.png" alt="" width="600" height="356" /></div>
 
Having such lopsided partisanship rating is especially telling in today’s political climate, in which states rarely shift in partisanship by even two percentage points between presidential elections. Barring a landslide election for Democrats (think Reagan in 1984), in order for a Democrat to win Texas in 2016 or 2020, Texas would need to shift its partisanship by a total of at least ten percentage points.
Such a major change might have been possible a generation or two ago, but not today. Consider that from 1960 to 1984, an average of more than 19 states shifted their partisanship by 5% or more from one presidential election to the next. In the four presidential elections from 1984 to 2000, that average declined to just over eight. In the three presidential elections from 2004 to 2012, however, an average of only three states shifted their partisanship by more than 5%.
Between the 2008 and 2012 elections, for example, only three states shifted in partisanship by more than 3.9 percentage points – all small states where their shift toward Republicans made no difference. Alaska reverted back to a more Democratic partisanship (though still very Republican) without Sarah Palin on the ballot. The already rock-solid Republican state of Utah – last won by less than six percentages points a century ago – voted even more heavily for state hero Mitt Romney, a Mormon (like <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/53909710-200/population-lds-county-utah.html.csp">62% of Utahans</a>) who helped make the 2002 winter Olympics a success. West Virginia continued its ongoing Republican trend.
The New Republic’s Nate Cohn <a href="http://www.http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/electionate/110297/democrats-keep-your-eyes-texaspolitico.com/news/stories/1012/83081.html">agrees that Texas is a long way off from being a purple state</a>, estimating that Democrats won’t have a realistic chance of winning Texas until 2028. One reason is that while Texas’ Latino population is growing, white Texans may be becoming more conservative. For example, Cohn estimates that Obama’s share of Texas’ white vote decreased by 6% between 2008 and 2012.
The growth in the Latino vote-share can be overstated as well. In 2012, Latinos made up 38% of Texas’ total population, but only 26% of its voting-eligible population. Because much of the increase in Texas’ Hispanic population will come from non-citizens, the actual increase in the percentage of Texas’ voters who are Hispanic will likely only be about four percentage points by 2024, according to <a href="http://neworganizing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/NOI%20Hispanic%20Future.pdf?__hstc=215845384.2ac4739192488378f882f0691e9e3b1c.1363133782456.1363880504767.1363889878707.7&__hssc=215845384.4.1363889878707">an analysis</a> by Yale University’s David Broockman. Even if Democrats were able to register all of Texas’ adult Latino citizens to vote and turned them out to the polls, they will not be able to turn the state blue in the near future unless they make significant gains among other demographic groups (mainly whites) as well.
And of course Republicans are working hard to reverse their slide among Latino voters. By 2024 or 2028, they may have succeeded.
Regardless, it is understandable that Texans would want to “bring the fight to Texas”. Texas’ voter turnout has been consistently low over the last four elections, an average of 6.9 percentage points below the national turnout rate. In addition, the gap between the turnout rates of Texas and the nation has been growing at a rate of about one percentage point each election.  

<div class="image left" style="width: 600;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600357-Texas-turnout-new.png" alt="" width="600" height="357" /></div>

 
Considering how presidential candidates have ignored Texas over the last decade, this low turnout rate is hardly surprising. In 2012, despite containing a full 7.4% of the nation’s voting eligible population and some of the wealthiest political donors in America, Texas received a grand total of only $2,570 in television ad money after April 11, when Mitt Romney became the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Based on the size of its voting eligible population, Texas would have received at least $62 million in ad spending during that time if the candidates had based their campaigning on where the most voters lived, rather than which states were swing states. Likewise, in 2008, it received only about $64,897 during the fall presidential campaign (mid-September to Election Day), and in 2004, it received $127 during the same period.
 
<div class="image left" style="width: 600;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600354-Texas-spending.png" alt="" width="600" height="354" /></div>
 
Texans, especially politically involved ones, believe this is an injustice. During his appearance, Bird explained to Colbert, “Volunteers want to be relevant, and they want to focus on Texas”, instead of just calling potential voters in Florida and Ohio or traveling to New Mexico to canvass there. They want to campaign within their communities and to see that those seeking our nation’s highest office value their votes and opinions.
Fortunately for Bird and supporters of Battleground Texas, there is another way to make Texas relevant in presidential elections, one that may be more attainable over the next few years than is turning a solidly Republican state into a swing state. If Bird truly wants to make Texas relevant to presidential elections, he should join with the state’s Republicans to organize for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact – a reform that truly could be in place by 2016 or 2020. The National Popular Vote would make every vote for president relevant in every race, expanding the presidential campaign to every state, including Texas. In a national popular vote, Texas would draw a much larger percentage of campaign attention than it currently does - the attention that it deserves.
Bird is right. Texas voters should matter in presidential elections.  And so should all Americans. With National Popular Vote, that goal will become a reality.

New Jersey’s Booker Backs Buono: A Page from the Parity Playbook

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 13:29:44 -0700

<div class="image left" style="width: 600;"><img src="assets/_resampled/ResizedImage600400-Buono-Booker.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /></div>

 
Democrats and Republicans across the nation should take a page from Newark Mayor Cory Booker's playbook by backing female gubernatorial candidates in primary races. Booker is <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/christie_chronicles/Booker-boosts-Buono.html">lending</a> state Senator <a href="http://www.buonoforgovernor.com/">Barbara Buono</a> his support as she campaigns in Newark to be the Democratic candidate for New Jersey Governor. With only one sitting female governor, Democrats should be making every effort enhance the number of democratic women in gubernatorial races.
High profile endorsements in primaries races can improve the probability that female candidates enter general elections. All four female, Republican governors (Jan Brewer, AZ; Mary Fallin, OK; Susana Martinez, NM; Nikki Haley, SC) owe their success, in part, to Sarah Palin who <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2010/11/02/5398458-palins-mama-grizzly-governors-win?lite">endorsed</a> them in their primaries, dubbing these candidates Mamma Grizzlies. Though women, as a group, prefer Democrats, a point illustrated by an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/gender-gap-2012-election-obama_n_2086004.html">18% gender gap</a> in the 2012 election, no democrat of Gov. Palin's influence has made similar primary endorsements.
Booker is relatively well known and has a real chance of being the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Barack Obama's Illinois win in 2004. But while Booker's endorsement may be significant in his home state of New Jersey, he doesn't seem to be making gender an issue anywhere else. The only Democratic Party figures likely able to match Palin's 2010 level of influence are former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
According to a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/12/05/run-hillary-run-majority-want-a-clinton-2016-candidacy/">recent poll</a>, 57% of Americans say they would back Hillary Clinton's candidacy for president. Nevertheless, the Clintons have been slow to throw their weight behind individual, female candidates, particularly in primary races. That means Gov. Palin, who is often ridiculed by many feminists, has done more to advance women in high office than Hillary Clinton - resulting in Republicans having four times as many governors in office as Democrats.
High profile endorsements are helpful to female candidates but cannot be the overall answer to the issue of low representation. The solution doesn't rest only in endorsements of individuals, but rather in party policies that create gender-conscious rules and institutions. To achieve gender parity, major parties must identify and adhere to practices that advance female candidates on all levels of government. In Sweden, for example, party rules have <a href="http://www.idea.int/publications/wip2/upload/Sweden.pdf">led</a> directly to women holding 45 percent of the seats in its national legislature. Most of its parties promote gender parity through measures like requiring men and women to be alternated on their party lists for legislative seats.
Before assuming that such requirements would never gain support in the United States, consider that both the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and Republican National Convention (RNC) have adopted party rules to promote gender parity in selection of their leaders. Since the 1970s, the RNC has reserved one position for a man and one for a woman from every state and territory and require women to hold several key executive positions. The DNC also mandates gender parity for all leadership positions within the party's committees and associations.
Building on that foundation, our parties should adopt rules promoting gender parity in nominating candidates for elected office. As an example, national parties could create incentives for recruiting women candidates by awarding Gender Parity grants to state parties if at least a third of that state's primary candidates were women. State parties should form committees to recruit and train women candidates, funded in part by local party arms that fail to recruit a certain percentage of women candidates. More boldly, parties could mandate a certain number of women nominees.
We need more high profile, elected officials to follow Gov. Palin's example by regularly recruiting and supporting female candidates in primaries - as Booker is in New Jersey. But it's time for parties to embrace more comprehensive plans for promoting gender parity. Parties need to write their own playbooks. Writing better rules is the first step.

How to Guarantee Accountable Legislatures Under Choice Voting (Without Hurting Third Parties)

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:49:55 -0700

As I <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.fairvote.org/malta-elections-have-93-turnout-using-choice-voting">detailed on this blog</a> last week, Malta recently held a general election using <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.fairvote.org/choice-voting">choice voting</a>, a <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.fairvote.org/fair-voting-proportional-representation">fair voting system</a> with a long history of use in the United States. The election had an exceptionally high turnout, as is typical for Malta, and produced a decisive winner.
But the history of choice voting's use in Malta has not been entirely seamless. In December of 1981, Malta faced an electoral crisis after its national elections gave the majority of seats in Parliament to the Labour Party, who had led the previous government, even though the challenger Nationalist Party received the most first choice rankings. Labour successfully formed a government, but the Nationalists walked out of Parliament. Despite the use of choice voting, Malta's electoral system had produced an unaccountable government: one that was not removed from office by a majority voting for change.
Since choice voting is a proportional system, how did this disproportionate outcome happen? In any election in which seats are allocated within geographic districts (single-seat or multi-seat), wrong-winner elections can occur. Seat-to-vote distortions are most common and severe in winner-take-all elections, such as the election for Michigan's House of Representatives last November in which Republicans retained control of the legislature even though Democrats won 54% of the vote.
But wrong-winners can occasionally occur under fair voting systems as well, particularly when districts have a relatively high threshold for election - the 16.7% threshold in Malta, for instance. Furthermore, because of Malta's small legislature size and evenly divided partisanship, even a small amount of distortion can be enough to produce a wrong-winner legislature.
While this issue does not diminish the many other benefits that choice voting has given to Malta's elections, it does merit being addressed. Malta has tried to do so, modifying its choice voting system after 1981 with a series of amendments that add seats to the legislature to ensure that the party with the most first choice rankings receives the most seats. The seat addition system Malta most recently settled on is <a href="http://www.justiceservices.gov.mt/DownloadDocument.aspx?app=lom&itemid=8824">complex</a>, but this gist of it is that any party that wins seats at a seat-to-vote ratio lower than that of the party with the highest seat-to-vote ratio will be awarded additional seats until that distortion is corrected.
These changes came at a cost, however. Because they evaluate distortions only based on first choice rankings, they removed one of the biggest advantages of choice voting: namely, the elimination of strategic voting by allowing voters to rank their choices sincerely without any worry that their votes will hurt their desired election outcome. In Malta's current system, votes for minor parties that are unlikely to win any district seats do not affect the allocation of compensatory seats, thus diminishing the voting power of voters who choose to break from the two-party structure.
Fortunately, this tradeoff is not necessary. It is possible to implement a choice voting system that guarantees an accountable government without forcing voters to choose between ranking a minor party first and helping their preferred major party get the most seats in the legislature. FairVote calls such a method a "Districts Plus" system.
Here's how it could work in Malta. There are currently 65 district seats in Malta's legislature, with five representatives from each of the island's 13 districts. Districts Plus would add "accountability seats," which would compensate all parties for any distortions caused by the district system. Based on Malta's recent electoral history, it is unlikely that it would be necessary to add more than five seats after any given election.
There would be a moderate minimum threshold for parties to win accountability seats - let's say 4%. Ballots with first choice rankings for candidates of parties that did not surpass that threshold would have their accountability vote count toward the party of the next different-party candidate ranked on the ballot. After all ballots for parties below the threshold had been distributed, distortions between a party's candidates' share of the vote and the party's share of seats would be determined. The accountability seats would then be filled by the losing candidates from the disadvantaged party that had the most votes when they were eliminated from the original count.
In this way, voters would feel free to rank minor parties first but still have their ballot help their preferred major party be elected. The major party with the most first choice rankings would be guaranteed to win the most seats in Parliament. It is a simple fix and a clear improvement over the false choice between accountability and voter choice that Malta has operated under for the past 30 years.
Malta's most significant third party, the Green Party, has already proposed <a href="http://gozonews.com/11498/ad-re-submits-its-electoral-proposals/">a similar modification</a> to the one described here, in which any party could win nationwide seats if they surpass a low threshold of votes.
The combination of choice voting with Districts Plus would also be an ideal system for use in legislative elections in the U.S. In the Michigan State House of Representatives, for which FairVote has already developed a <a href="assets/Independent-Redistricting-and-Districts-Plus.pdf">Districts Plus plan</a> that maintains the single-member district system, Districts Plus could also be used to guarantee legislature accountability under a multi-member choice voting system. Michigan's 110-seat House could be made up of 30 three-seat districts supplemented by 20 accountability seats or 20 five-seat districts with 10 accountability seats. Because large distortions are much less likely under choice voting than under winner-take-all, fewer accountability seats are necessary to ensure an accountable government in a choice voting system. All other aspects of the Malta Districts Plus system described above could be applied to Michigan, or indeed any other state legislature in the U.S.
Again, it should be stressed that the addition of accountability seats is not necessary for a choice voting system to have a very high degree of proportionality. If the goal is to guarantee accountability, however, Districts Plus is the best way to ensure that voter choice and third parties are not harmed in the process.

New York Times Perpetuates Myth that Current Electoral College Rules Help Small States

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:28:58 -0700

Last week, The New York Times published a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/democracy-tested.html">long analysis</a> by Adam Liptak about the advantages conferred on small states by their outsized representation in the U.S. Senate. It's an important and revealing article, but one that is marred by its inclusion of the Electoral College as part of its analysis.
Liptak's overall argument centers on the fact that the U.S. Senate tilts federal dollars toward Americans who live in smaller states. This results, in part, because the quarter of our population that lives in the nation's 31 least populous states has 62 senators, while a full other quarter of the population, which lives in the nation's three most populous states, has only six senators. This incredible distortion contributes to the residents of small states receiving disproportionate attention and federal grants. It is legitimate to question, as Liptak does, why residents of small towns in Alaska and Vermont should be favored over residents of small towns in New York and Texas.
But Liptak is wrong to suggest that reforming the Electoral College with the National Popular Vote plan for president has anything to do with the inequality between small and large states. He's also wrong to suggest that this small state math somehow gives Republicans a partisan advantage.
Let's start with the myth that small states receive any special clout from our current Electoral College rules. This belief is rooted in the fact that every state, regardless of its population size, is entitled to at least three Electoral College votes, two for its two U.S. Senators and one for each congressperson in the U.S. House. As a result of this electoral vote allocation, Wyoming has 192,137 residents per elector, and California has 691,662, over 3.5 times more.
Similarly to other astute analysts, however, Liptak does not account for that fact that states allocate electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Winner-take-all laws negate any simplistic mathematical equations about the relative power of states based on their number of residents per electoral vote. Small state math means absolutely nothing to presidential campaigns and to presidents once in office.
Instead, one and only one factor governs whether presidential candidates will focus on a given state's potential voters: whether that state is likely to be a swing state in the next election.
With winner-take-all, if one candidate is comfortably ahead in a state - or, as is the case with some 40 states today, one party is sure to win the state in the next close election, no matter who the candidates are - then that state's voters are good for only two things to presidential candidates: donating money and helping to influence voters in the handful of states that matter. Unless a small state is a swing state, presidential candidates will ignore it, just as they ignore the vast majority of other states of all sizes.
We do applaud Liptak for discussing the National Popular Vote plan, as it is promises to be an historic reform drive that will change the Electoral College as we know it. But the National Popular Vote plan in no way "counteracts" the excess power of small states. In fact, it does just the opposite, giving voters in small states the attention and electoral clout that they deserve in presidential elections.
In 2012, for example, 24 of the nation's 27 smallest states received neither a single public campaign event after the party conventions nor a single dollar in presidential campaign ad money after Mitt Romney became the presumptive Republican nominee on April 11. They were ignored despite their supposed numerical advantage in the Electoral College. In fact, the 8.6 million eligible voters in Ohio received more campaign ads and campaign visits from the major party campaigns than the 42 million eligible voters in those 27 smallest states combined.
In a national popular vote, in which every vote is equally valuable, presidential candidates would seek to encourage participation and court voters everywhere, not just in the swing states. You can do all of the simple elector-per-capita math you want, but the fact remains that Wyoming and California were equally ignored by the presidential candidates in 2012, just as they have been in every election for many years. Both are disadvantaged by the current Electoral College rules. The only math that really matters when gauging power in presidential elections is swing state math.
In addition, small states also do not receive any monetary advantage from their status in presidential elections once a candidate is elected. While Liptak's piece shows how smaller states receive more benefits from legislation per capita than other states because of their overrepresentation in the Senate, the same is not true of the executive branch, which focuses its attention on swing states instead. <a href="assets/NPVFederalGrants-factsheetMarch2013.pdf">Dr. John Hudak</a> analyzed the apportionment of federal grants by the executive branch and found that swing states received about 7.6% more federal grants and about 5.7% more federal grant money between 1992 and 2008 than would be expected based on patterns in other states.
Furthermore, the fact that Republicans win more states than Democrats in close presidential elections does not give them any special partisan advantage. Liptak's claim that only one of the five smallest states leans Democratic is cherry-picked data. The 13 states with three or four electoral votes (including the District of Columbia, which has electoral votes, but not U.S. Senators) have split evenly between the parties in recent elections, with Democrats winning six of them in every election since 1992 and a seventh (New Hampshire) all but once. In 2004, John Kerry won more electoral votes out of these 13 smallest states, even though George W. Bush won more popular votes in those states.
Liptak cites the fact that if you were to eliminate the Senate electors, Al Gore would have won the 2000 presidential election, but this is only one example, not a pattern. Winning one or two extra big population states completely negates any advantage in small states. If Democrats were to gain a secure handle on Florida and Texas, for example, and hold onto the big states they now dominate, they would win any close presidential election even if Republicans continued to have an edge in more states overall.
The fact is, anyone trying to make partisan calculations about whether the current Electoral College system helps one party or the other is pursuing a fool's errand. In any given election, as we demonstrated in <a href="election-simulations-from-1960-2008-show-that-electoral-college-rules-don-t-help-either-party-but-do-harm-american-democracy/">our October blog</a>, one party can have an edge in an election- but which party has the edge varies from election to election. The real problem with the system is the indefensible reality that more than 99% of campaign attention was showered on voters in just ten states in 2012- and that in today's political climate, the identity of those swing states has become <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/presidential-elections-state-by-state-hardening-partisanship">increasingly fixed</a>.
Underscoring the fact that small states are not helped by current Electoral College rules is the strong support for reform in small states. Every single state in the nation has had a <a href="http://www.every-vote-equal.com">representative in Congress</a> sponsor or vote for a constitutional amendment to switch to a national popular vote over the past 45 years. In addition, Hawaii, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, all of which have three or four electoral votes, have <a href="http://nationalpopularvote.com/map.php">adopted</a> the National Popular Vote plan, and the plan has passed legislative chambers in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Rhode Island, all states with seven or fewer Electoral College votes.
The myth about the Electoral College and small states is a persistent one, but it's time for our nation's most reputable newspapers and wisest political analysts to get it right. It is wrong to lump the mathematical bonus small states get from having two Senators with the bonus they get from having extra electoral votes; in the Senate, that bonus has a real, practical effect on government policy; in the Electoral College, it does not. The case for a National Popular Vote has nothing to do with balancing out power between big and small states. Instead, it has everything to do with another balance, one fundamental to any representative democracy: one person, one vote.

Malta Elections Have 93% Turnout Using Choice Voting

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:39:37 -0700

On March 9, 2013, the citizens of Malta cast their ballots for their national Parliament and local governments. The elections were conducted using <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.fairvote.org/choice-voting">choice voting</a> (also known as the single transferable vote), FairVote's preferred <a style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" href="http://www.fairvote.org/fair-voting-proportional-representation#.UUIYT9aG2So">fair voting</a> method of conducting multi-seat elections in the United States. There are, of course, inherent differences between elections in the small Mediterranean nation of Malta and in the U.S. But Malta's electoral experience demonstrates several of the ways in which choice voting could improve American elections - starting with the fact that Malta consistently finds itself atop the world rankings in voter turnout for countries without compulsory voting.
First, the election results: the center-left Labour Party defeated the center-right Nationalist Party, gaining control of the Parliament of Malta for the first time since 1998. Labour's candidates won a clear majority of 54.8% of votes as measured by first choice rankings. Because choice voting is a fair voting system (that is, a form of proportional representation), a change in leadership when the majority of voters decided they wanted a new government was guaranteed. That is not the case in the United States, in which the Republican Party won a large majority of House seats despite receiving fewer votes than Democrats in 2012.
Accountable governments are characteristic of all proportional systems, but choice voting has some unique benefits. Malta's national elections are most distinguished by their unusually high voter turnout - consistently well over 90%, including 93% this past Saturday. Though these high turnout rates are caused by multiple factors, political scientists <a href="http://www.karacsonygergely.hu/letoltesek/malta.pdf">have suggested</a> that Malta's use of choice voting is at the very least a major contributor.
That's because choice voting maximizes the importance of a vote, allowing voters to rank candidates of all parties in order of preference and elect candidates with a relatively low threshold. Every district in the country is extremely competitive, as not only are both major parties represented in each district (all 13 districts will have bipartisan representation in the new parliament) but also candidates have to compete against other members of their own party. Parties often run more than five candidates in a district among which even strict partisans can choose. No voter is marginalized, and all have the ability to affect the election outcome with their vote.
It is worth mentioning what choice voting has not been able to accomplish in Malta: representation in Parliament of more than two parties. The two-party structure has a long history in Malta, and third parties have never been able to make much headway in spite of the low threshold to win a seat: just 16.7% of a district's vote. Things were made much harder for third parties when Malta modified its single transferable vote system to add seats after each election that ensure that the party that receives the most first choice rankings always gets the most seats, in response to a political crisis in 1981 when that did not occur.
While accountability is now guaranteed, voters are forced to use their first choice rankings strategically if they want to help their preferred major party win control of the government, instead of being able to vote for a third party candidate who might be their favorite option. Because of that, FairVote does not advocate for such a rule when choice voting is used in the U.S.
Though voters are, in practice, limited to two credible parties in Malta, they are still able to express their more nuanced political preferences by choosing candidates within a party. Because <a href="http://www.maltadata.com/2pty.htm">the biggest challenge for candidates is intra-party competition</a>, candidates have an incentive to appeal strongly to a specific subset of voters. Incumbents most often lose because of <a href="http://www.idec.gr/iier/new/tomos%2013/PACE.pdf">shifting preference votes within parties</a>, not by being defeated by the opposing party.
This effect can help to mitigate the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/714004966">political polarization in Malta's elections</a> by ensuring that the slate of Members of Parliament (MPs) from a district represents the entire political spectrum, not just two poles. For one example of how this works in practice, take the case of Franco Debono, a former MP from District 5. Depono single-handedly brought down Lawrence Gonzi's Nationalist government by <a href="http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121210/local/budget-rejected-as-franco-debono-votes-no-with-the-opposition.449064">defecting to the opposition on a budget vote</a> in December of 2012, forcing Gonzi to call elections. In the <a href="http://www.gov.mt/en/Government/Government%20of%20Malta/Election%20Results/general%20elections%2008/Documents/PDF/GE2008-D5_16.pdf">2008 election</a>, District 5 elected three candidates from the Labour Party and two from the Nationalist Party, one of which was Debono. Clearly, Debono was the more moderate - or at least independent-minded - of the two Nationalist representatives.
In 2013, Debono decided not to run for re-election in District 5. In a year that decisively favored the Labour Party, Debono's seat went to Labour, as <a href="http://www.gov.mt/en/Government/Government%20of%20Malta/Election%20Results/Pages/Test%20-%20Elections%202013/General%20Elections/Dist%205/Count-1-10.aspx">four Labour candidates won election</a> from District 5. Most likely, the Labour candidate who will be effectively "replacing" Debono will be similarly moderate.
This phenomenon is exactly what FairVote projects would happen if choice voting were implemented in five-seat districts in the United States. A district split evenly between Democrats and Republicans would elect both moderate and more extreme candidates from each party, with a moderate candidate elected from the middle seat on the spectrum that would switch between the parties depending on which party had the advantage in each election. Though the two-party structure is just as entrenched in the U.S. as it is in Malta, choice voting would allow voters to elect candidates from across the political spectrum in each multi-member district.
Choice voting in Malta is without a doubt a success story, and the 2013 elections were no exception. Malta's elections had far higher turnout, voter choice, and government accountability than their November 2012 counterpart in the United States. Though Malta cannot be directly compared to the U.S., the effectiveness of choice voting there tells a powerful story about just how much better American elections could be.
For more information on how choice voting works in Malta, check out this <a href="http://vimeo.com/61220793">excellent explanatory video</a> by Bernard Magri and <a href="http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130309/editorial/Time-for-voters-to-make-their-choice.460752">this pre-election article</a> from the Times of Malta.

The Future of Egyptian Democracy Hinges on the Fight Over Its Electoral Law

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:20:52 -0700

Over two years since the Arab Spring ousted President Hosni Mubarak and brought the promise of democracy to Egypt, it is clear that that promise is threatened. While most of the media covers the protests and riots in the streets of Cairo and Port Said, the battle that may ultimately decide the fate of Egyptian democracy is being fought over Egypt's new electoral law.
Egypt was scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on April 22, but those elections have now been <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20130306-egypt-court-suspends-parliamentary-elections?ns_campaign=editorial&ns_source=twitter&ns_mchannel=reseaux_sociaux&ns_fee=&ns_linkname=20130306_egypt_court_suspends_parliamentary_elections&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twi">suspended</a>. The reason is an electoral law passed in January by the Shura Council, Egypt's upper house of parliament, which is now being contested in Egypt's courts.
While it might seem like it would be better for Egypt to have elections under any electoral law rather than postpone them, it is extremely important that Egypt get its electoral system right. An unfair law could create dissatisfaction with the democratic process among Egypt's electorate and harm the progress of democracy in the Middle East.
FairVote has produced a number of analyses on the democratic transitions of Egypt and other countries in the region as part of its <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/list/author/Arab%20Spring_Series">Arab Spring Series</a>. As we <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/egypt-and-the-winner-take-all-distortion#.UTZ3g6KG2So">reported</a> after the last parliamentary elections in 2011-2012, Egypt uses a parallel electoral system in which two-thirds of the legislature is elected using a proportional representation system and the remaining third is elected under winner-take-all rules. The inclusion of proportionally allocated seats had a major effect on the composition of the current Egyptian parliament.
The Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that was banned under Mubarak's regime, received about 37.5% of votes in the last election for the People's Assembly, more than any other party. In the winner-take-all districts, however, their Democracy Alliance coalition won over 65% of the seats - enough for a decisive supermajority in parliament had no other representatives been elected.
With the proportional seats added, the Muslim Brotherhood's share of parliament dropped to 46%. That is still a disproportionate percentage of seats compared to their nationwide support, but it does accurately reflect two important facts about the Egyptian election: 1) The Democracy Alliance had the most popular support of any political bloc, but 2) it did not have a majority of support. The mixed Egyptian electoral system's performance in the in 2011-2012 People's Assembly elections was far from perfect, but it at least prevented the undemocratic event of one group taking control of the body without receiving a majority of votes.
That was not the case in elections for the Shura Council in early 2012, where the Freedom and Justice Party (backed by the Muslim Brotherhood) won 58% of elected seats despite receiving only 45% of the vote under the same parallel system as the lower house.  As Egypt's new electoral law was <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/02/21/uk-egypt-vote-idUKBRE91K0OG20130221">drafted and then adopted</a> by that same Shura Council, it is understandable why Egypt's other parties find the law to be suspect. On February 26, the National Salvation Front, Egypt's primary leftist opposition group, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/02/2013226144249873236.html">vowed to boycott</a> any elections carried out under the new law.
The new electoral law would <a href="http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/deja-vu-egypt-s-electoral-laws-marred-controversy">not alter the 2:1 ratio of proportional seats to winner-take-all seats</a> while increasing the size of parliament from 508 to 546. But the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have attempted to gain an advantage through gerrymandering Egypt's district map, which is possible both in the winner-take-all districts and in the proportional representation districts. While gerrymandering is typically very difficult with multi-member districts using proportional voting systems, it can be done in Egypt's proportionally elected districts because the ratio of representatives to population is not the same in every district.
The best course for Egypt is to do away with the parallel voting system and transition to a more fully proportional system like those of Germany and New Zealand. That system should have no distortions caused by winner-take-all and a district map such that the number of People's Assembly representatives per citizen in a district is consistent throughout the country. Whatever law Egypt settles on before the next election, though, it is essential that it be fair to all major parties, communities, and interests in Egypt. Otherwise, the legitimacy of Egyptian democracy may be irreversibly damaged.