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PR Proposal For California: Interview with Michael Latner

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:05:47 -0700

As FairVote covered earlier this year, Prof. Michael S. Latner and corresponding author Kyle Roach this year published a research paper: Mapping the Consequences of Electoral Reform (The California Journal of Politics & Policy - 2011 Volume 3, Issue 1) The paper states a number of incremental electoral reforms have not measurably improved government performance in California. It simulates and maps electoral outcomes under a simple form of proportional voting, or proportional representation (PR): 16 five-seat districts for the 80-seat California Assembly. The electoral formula can be variations of party-list PR.

In addition to eliminating the institutional advantage that the largest party receives under the current system, the simulation suggests that PR would diversify the composition of both major parties, and provide limited opportunities for minor parties to effectively compete throughout the state. Addressing concerns over the polarization of the state’s legislature and its effect on lawmaking, the paper predicts PR would elect more moderate legislators who, in course, would "increase the political space for moderate legislation and deal making" (pp.13).

I’ll say, and by no means critically, the proposal is modest. They don’t add any seats to the state’s tiny legislature. With PR for the state assembly, it still leaves single-member districts for the state senate and plural executive. This is basically a variation of Mixed Member Proportional system, with single-member districts for the senate and proportional voting in the house.

I recently chatted on the phone with Prof. Latner about the paper and issues surrounding it. Here's our interview.

KN: What motivated you to propose proportional representation for California elections?

ML: Electoral reform has been getting a lot of attention in the last two years, given the establishment of the redistricting commission. We also just passed in California the Top-Two run off system. More generally, California has a long history of tinkering with our electoral system in an attempt to improve representation. There is widespread recognition that California has one of the most polarized legislature among the 50 states. We have a fairly dysfunctional legislature in terms of its performance and productivity. And this is a pretty widely shared view so I thought this would be a good time to discuss for more substantial reforms.

Scholars of comparative politics have a well-established research literature that shows party competition is strongly affected by the rules of play, if you will, and two of the most important rules of play are district magnitude and the electoral formula that is used to convert votes into seats. We thought it would be useful to examine and do simulations using existing electoral data and then extending the analysis to a prediction of what a multi-party system would look like in California.

We can do this because of recent advances in political science. Electoral systems are among the most studied institutions in political science and the body of knowledge we have gained in the last 10 to 15 years is substantial. We know a lot about how electoral systems perform so that allows us to predict consequences. I have used California as a case study to apply some of the techniques and theory that we have developed over the last few decades.

One of the nice things about California is that we have voter initiative data, so we can actually look at ideology without being constrained to party politics. I would call the paper less of a proposal and more of a prediction. That is, it's an estimate of what we would actually get because, as you know very well, proportional representation in the United States has a derogatory connotation to it -- seen as sort of an exotic European system of representation.

Michael, you’re talking about a "parliamentary system,: right? (sic) I can’t believe how many times I get that!

Right, right. PR is seen as this foreign thing even though, as you well know, some of the electoral formulas for proportional representation were invented by Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Webster -- like the D’Hondt and Sainte-Laguë system -- for allocating seats to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Although there is this history of understanding PR in the United States, we have huge institutional inertia from the system that we adopted from Great Britain and seem stuck with, even while California is this virtual laboratory of experimentation. We have a history of experimentation that is healthy in a democracy, but those experiments have mostly been incremental reforms; what I would call at a statewide level as junk reforms.

Junk reforms?

That is they are designed to put a band-aid on a problem. We have enough science over the last 50 years to know that what really matters is how many seats are up for election and what electoral formula is used. And if you really want to get competitive elections, you have to move beyond a single-seat system.

It’s so hard to promote proportional voting or even a majoritarian system like Ranked Choice Voting. You touched on this lack of awareness, misunderstandings and myths. It is great to have this paper that shows PR can be done in California. The paper is actually modest in a lot of ways. You touched on electoral systems, D’Hondt and Sainte-Laguë, these party-list systems.

They can work with either a closed party-list or an open party-list where voters choose candidates within parties. The reason I choose Sainte-Laguë is that it is empirically the most neutral formula and therefore the fairest. What I was looking for was a formula that most clearly reflects the principle of political equality that is treating each voter equally. While a formula like D’Hondt is widely used, Sainte-Laguë is more accurate in terms of the way each voter is treated. D’Hondt still gives an advantage to larger parties, so I wanted to use the simplest, neutral formula I could to show the basic difference between a plurality system and a proportional system. They’re fair and easy to understand and of course it has to be a modest proposal because you want to have the simplest simulation possible. The more complex you try to make an electoral system the more difficult it is to predict the results.

That’s the thing about party lists systems - they’re easy to explain. Kathleen Barber in her book
Proportional Representation & Election Reform in Ohio says there is no tradition of these party lists system in English-speaking countries.

Ireland uses the single transferable vote method of proportional representation. New Zealand switched to mixed member proportional representation in the 1990s (MMP, my favorite system), and there are local proportional elections in many countries.

How does that fit into your paper? You also mention in your paper the anti-party attitude amongst voters and elites.

Yes, that is why California is an interesting case. We have this progressive tradition that has systematically weakened parties in the state. In an attempt to open up the legislative process and make it more democratic, there has been a lot of unintended consequences. We can see one of the side effects of having fairly weak political parties in terms of legislative results, but what I wanted to address was the broader party de-alignment in the United States.

I don’t think it is reasonable to impose a strong party system on a population that is going exactly the opposite direction. The data is clear. There has been a consistent decline in party identification in California and the US as a whole, but particularly in California. There are about a quarter of registered voters who are now decline-to-state. Younger people in particular are less inclined to identify with either political party and so the idea that we would some how impose a strong party system on California just doesn’t seem realistic.

On the other hand, one of the things where I think proportionality might compliment the evolution of political culture in California is to provide more choice. What we are seeing is dissatisfaction with the two major parties. When you have all these voters dropping out of the major parties you don’t see major registration increases in the minor parties. But that’s also a pretty reasonable response as given the electoral system; minor parties don’t have much of a chance for victory in California. So that’s a reasonable response on the part of voters.

Yes I agree, citizens say that they’re tired of parties but they really mean; the two major parties. The two major parties are deserving of the scorn. In my opinion, they are relevant only as campaign soft money mechanisms. Recent polling tells there’s a desire for a new party / third party -- an alternative to the majors.

Partisan primaries and non-partisan elections, the anti party machine reforms, what is their effect with over 100 years on the attitudes towards political association?

I think over the long term, they do weaken party attachment. Electoral attachments in the U.S. are more personalistic, as we have a candidate-centered system. This is true and has been true for a long time. But although we now have a more polarized party system, one of the things that is happening simultaneously is that people are less inclined to identify with one of the major parties. Ideology and party identifications are becoming more congruent. This is certainly the case in California where now the average Democratic legislator is much more liberal than the average Californian and the average Republican legislator is much more conservative.

We’re seeing self-fulfilling prophesies where the results of decline in identification, less competitive elections and more partisan districts take parties further and further apart, which makes them even less attractive to Californians.

The proponents of the Top-Two “prefers party” system promote it as a reform against this polarization.

Well, sure, and in a system that is as polarized as California, it could make a difference in a few districts. But the fact is you can’t really draw very competitive districts in California because of the geographic concentration of partisanship. The data is not very convincing that you are going to produce moderate candidates in these systems.

Let us suppose, that in a few districts you do get two Republicans or two Democrats that go in to the runoff; so you have a partisan district and two members of the same party that end up going to the runoff. This is the way that it is suppose to moderate, right? The idea is that the more moderate of those two party members will be the one that is elected because they will be able to build the coalition that includes the people that lost out in the first round. But I’m not convinced that Democrats are going to be mobilized and turn out in a runoff election between two Republicans or vise versa.

You’ve got to look at the factors that motivate turnout. Presumably, the competition will move into this runoff election and away from the first round. If it is not a competitive district and you look at the primaries today, the fact that the turnout in June primaries is so much lower raises a question; what kind of voters are going to turn out in the first round? They’re going to be partisans. That suggests that the people that make it to the November runoff are also going to be more partisan than the average voter.

So I am not convinced that Top-Two is going to make the sort of systemic change that reformers are looking for. And again, it’s an incremental reform that might make a difference in only a few seats. When you have a legislature that is as polarized as that of California, and when you have a supermajority rule for passing the budget, it's true that a few seats could make a difference on occasion. But I don’t think it is going to fundamentally change the nature of the partisanship in Sacramento, which, is what most Californians want to address.

What do you think of the Independent Redistricting Commission’s new maps for the districts in California?

I’m trying to look at them but I’ve crashed a few computers at our University library trying to map the data using GIS. So far, the results are fairly predictable. There looks like there will be some more competitive districts, certainly in the congressional seats. My own district, for instance. Right now, I am in Kevin McCarthy’s district. Lois Capp’s 23rd district is on the coast and is probably one of the most gerrymandered districts in the country right now. It looks a little like Chile - sort of running up the coast. The new district will be a more competitive one. McCarthy’s district might become a little more competitive too. But again, the bottom line in California is that it is very hard to create competitive districts.

There is also a theoretical argument that you don’t really want districts that are fully competitive because if you have district that are always 51% / 49%, lets say, then half of the voters don’t have any representation. Again this tradeoff is just a product of the single-seat district, winner-take-all system.

Our independent commission in Washington is a different setup but it’s looking like it’s going to be an incumbent protection deal at the end. I wouldn’t be surprised because the legislators have to vote on the maps.

Right, and you know the idea of non-partisan commission is a bit of an oxymoron. My guess would be that if these current maps pass judicial muster and pass the challenges that are being heard right now, they look like they will be somewhat more competitive and look like they might be an improvement over the what is one of the purest forms of an incumbent protection system -- which was the districts that were drawn after 2000 by both major parties in California.

You know 9-11-01 was a terrible tragedy that commanded so much attention. Even here in Washington, redistricting at that time was under the radar.

In California, the 1990 redistricting was eventually thrown into the courts. Neither party wanted that to happen again so there was a very strong incentive to create a bi-partisan incumbent protection plan. That’s exactly what they did after 2000.

Right, so your paper opens things up. What’s interesting about it is there would be moderate Republicans coming out of the Bay area and Los Angeles and moderate Democrats coming out of inland California. Do you want to touch on that a little bit?

Sure, I think one of the results that comes out pretty clearly is, and is something that we would expect to find. The largest party in the state has the advantage in a single district system. And by virtue of just changing the system to PR, Democrats would lose 4 or 5 seats. So you would think that Republicans would be advocates for reform because they would clearly benefit from a more proportional system. I would love to see them take that to the legislature.

Again this speaks to the question of genuine reform versus more superficial reforms. If we had moderate Republicans elected from the most populous areas of the state and more moderate Democrats coming from central valley and the mountain regions, then you would see a genuine change in partisan dynamics in the legislature; because these new legislators would be representing people who right now aren’t being represented in the legislature. It would be more genuine reform in my opinion.

I see that also. The paper also states that out of these five seat assembly districts, there could be space for minor party or independent candidates.

Absolutely, this is what scares both the major parties. They might not agree on anything but the one thing they do agree on is they don’t want competition. Right, now that’s the more speculative part of the paper, certainly. Because trying to predict what sort of parties will emerge is certainly an interesting prediction but it is also more speculative than scientific.

Nevertheless, California provides this wonderful experiment. We have all this initiative data that tells us about peoples’ ideological orientations. We can study that geographically and see what sort of parties would most likely survive within those five district regions.

And we don’t really know what kind of new forms of association will emerge. I promote proportional representation, not because I like to explain vote transfers to people. My thing is association -- that when people get together they amplify their voice. We see this in the internet phenomenon. We see it with the money bomb. Obama for America, he raised a lot of money through small contributions.

Absolutely

I am a member of the Washington State Grange. My wife and I volunteer at our Grange. The Grange is a civic group. It’s a fraternal group and we raise money to give it away. We do community things and there’s an advocacy aspect too. We can promote certain issues, that can create tensions with the fraternal part of the group but perhaps, that’s another issue.

It’s part of that old school progressive tradition

You can go to the old part of town and you see the old Eagles Club or other fraternal group building boarded up or falling apart. It’s Bowling Alone…Putman…the social capital. People can ask me, “Krist how do we get people involved and back in association?” Well, association is exploding with social networking --Twitter, Facebook, those kind of things. I believe it is a matter of time before somebody comes up with the right mix of political association and social networking -- and there is your new party.

You really hit on what is a true dilemma. We have a lot of scientific research and historical data suggesting we know how to get a multi-party system, right, but the reality is that the politics of electoral reform show that you have to get a party in power before there is reform. You don’t get reform from the established parties because they are not going to weaken their own status, right, so you have got to get some electoral success in order to start driving that reform.

I think it is just a matter of time before we are going to get proportional voting because it can accommodate the phenomenon of how the information revolution is transforming democracy in the United States.

I think you’re right there, and historical evidence backs that up as well. If you look at electoral reform across the world over the last 15 to 20 years, there is a clear preference in the direction of more proportional elections. If you look at countries like Japan, New Zealand, Italy and newer democracies; the direction of what sorts of electoral systems are established or revised, they are all going in the direction of greater proportionality. So I think you have a point.

One of the things we are seeing, is the energy there is in dissatisfaction with both political parties. It’s a question of there being the right set of enabling conditions to facilitate a real reform movement. I hope the part that I can play with the scientific community is to provide the evidence we need in order to make the best decisions.

Related: See FairVote's blogpost with a proposal for proportional voting in congressional elections in California. We will soon post an analysis of a proposed plan for state legislative elections.

Fuzzy Math: Wrong Way Reforms for Allocating Electoral College Votes

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:20:29 -0700

Why Approval Voting is Unworkable in Contested Elections

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:35:24 -0700

And How the Borda Count, Score Voting, Range Voting and Bucklin Voting are Similarly Flawed Due to Vulnerability to Strategic Voting

Approval voting is a method of voting to elect single winners that has adherents among some voting theorists, but is unworkable in contested elections in which voters have a stake in the outcome. Once aware of how approval voting works, strategic voters will always earn a significant advantage over less informed voters. This problem with strategic voting far outweighs any other factor when evaluating the potential use of approval voting in governmental elections.

Other methods that should not be used in meaningfully contested elections include range voting, score voting, the Borda Count and Bucklin voting. They all share approval voting’s practical flaw of not allowing voters to support a second choice without potentially causing the defeat of their first choice. Such voting methods have their potential value, but only in elections where voters have no particular stake in the outcome.

The only voting methods that should be weighed seriously for governmental elections are methods that do not violate this “later-no-harm” criterion (plurality voting and forms of runoff elections and instant runoff voting) or only do so indirectly (such as Condorcet voting methods).

In FairVote's new analysis, we support our claims about approval voting and similar voting methods both with theoretical analysis and with a broad range of evidence, including the failure of these voting methods in every single significant use in meaningfully contested elections.

Highlights of Analysis

• Approval voting is not a viable method of voting because it is highly vulnerable to strategic voting in contested elections. It violates the “later-no-harm” criterion, meaning that indication of support for a lesser choice can help defeat a voter’s most preferred candidate. It is a system that only will work when voters don’t understand the system or have no stake in the outcome.

• All voting methods have certain theoretical flaws, but having a practical flaw that inevitably leads to tactical voting is qualitatively different. Creating incentives for strategic voting is not just another undesirable property. It makes a system unworkable in elections with active campaigns and meaningful choices. Quite simply, it is unacceptable that voters who vote tactically by casting a single vote for their favorite candidate will gain an advantage over those voters who indicate support for more than one candidate in the manner suggested by the ballot instructions.

• Some voting system theorists do not provide proper weight to vulnerability to strategic voting due to a failure to understand the nature of competitive campaigns. In competitive elections, voters will not be “honest men,” in the words of French mathematician Jean-Charles de Borda. Borda realized his similar proposal (the Borda Count) would not work unless voters and campaigners avoided tactical voting. But tactical voting is not dishonest if allowed by the rules; seeking to win is a natural part of elections in which voters care who wins, and any system that fails to accommodate that reality is insupportable.

• Other voting method analysts also conclude that approval voting is highly vulnerable to strategic voting. James Green-Armytage’s Strategic Voting and Nomination finds voting methods that violate later-no-harm, including approval voting, to be the most vulnerable to strategic voting. In Collective Decisions and Voting, Nicolaus Tideman ranked approval voting last among 25 systems in its lack of resistance to strategic voting.

• Approval voting and variations of it have rarely been used in meaningfully contested elections due to this problem. The few trials of the method confirm our critique, however. Examples include problematic early elections of president and vice-president in the United States and the rise and fall of “Bucklin voting” in a number of U.S. jurisdictions. Hypothetical uses of approval voting also underscore its unworkability in meaningfully contested elections.

• Approval voting faces other hurdles that add to its lack of viability. It will face significant political opposition due to violation of our common sense understanding of majority rule. With approval voting, for example, a candidate with the first choice support of more than 50% of voters can lose to a candidate without a single first choice supporter.

• It is no coincidence that plurality voting and forms of runoff voting and instant runoff voting are the only voting systems used to elect single-winner offices at any level of government anywhere in the world. They are the only voting methods that uphold the later-no-harm criterion. Although plurality voting and traditional runoffs are more vulnerable to strategic voting than instant runoff voting, those vulnerabilities are not nearly as problematic as violation of the later-no-harm criterion.

• The Borda count, Bucklin voting and range voting are among other voting methods that are also unworkable in meaningfully contested elections due to violation of the later-no-harm criterion.

• Voting methods that transparently violate later-no-harm are illusions for reformers of governmental elections – they represent a promise that will never be realized and are distractions from the core policy choice for jurisdictions debating how best to elect single winner offices: whether to adopt plurality voting, traditional runoffs or instant runoff voting.

• Approval voting and other methods that violate later-no-harm can have value when in surveys or certain private elections where honest, non-strategic behavior is to be expected. But such uses are quite different from using these methods in elections where candidates campaign aggressively and voters care about who wins and who loses.

Outline of Analysis

• The Significance of the Practical Flaw of Violating “Later-No-Harm”
• Lessons from Problems with the Borda Count
• How Strategic Actors Would Game Approval Voting
• Real-World Failures for Approval Voting and Variants
• Lessons from Bucklin Voting in 20th Century Elections in the United States
• Examples of Actual Single Winner Elections Where Approval Voting Would Have Failed
• A Place for Approval Voting: Where “Honest Behavior” Can Be Expected
• Conclusion: Focus on Viable Voting Methods for Governmental Elections

The full analysis is available at www.approvalvoting.blogspot.com or as a pdf document.

Voting Rights Constitutional Amendment Gathers Steam

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:35:40 -0700

Nothing is more fundamental to democracy that a fully protected right to vote. That’s why voters belong at the polls on Election Day -- and why a right to vote belongs in the U.S. Constitution. That's why we are so pleased to share good news. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. has introduced HJR 28, the right to vote amendment.

As our blog readers know, currently we have no constitutional right to vote. While many amendments eliminate discrimination in voting on account of gender, race, taxes, or age, no amendment actually grants the right to vote. The Supreme Court restated this fact during its 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore. HJR 28 would enshrine in the Constitution a right to vote for all Americans.

Our lack of a constitutionally enumerated right to vote directly disenfranchises millions of Americans and weakens opportunities to exercise voting rights for literally tens of millions more. Some Americans are clearly disenfranchised, including citizens living in our territories and the District of Columbia, and citizens living in states that ban people with felony convictions from voting. Others are more covertly silenced. For example, some 25% of all overseas military ballots went uncounted in 2008, and some six million votes were lost due to correctable administrative errors in the 2000 election.

If we had a right to vote, groups such as the elderly, the disabled, absentee and military voters would have better access to polls. In a country where voter turnout is routinely less than 50%, it is foolhardy to turn away people who actually want to participate and have a voice in government. In fact, the difficulty of navigating U.S. election laws related to turnout makes our turnout rate 139th among 172 nations worldwide.

The United States is one of only 11 democratic nations without a right to vote. The Help America Vote Act has improved voting in many respects, but we continue to do far too little to stand up for secure voting rights for all -- with barely two-thirds of eligible voters registered to vote, faulty voting equipment, poorly trained poll-workers and more.

You can help buy taking a few moments to help build support HJR 28, which in past years earned the sponsorship of more than 60 Members of Congress. Please click here to write your representative and tell them you would like them to join you in supporting a right to vote in the Constitution.

Without such a right specifically enumerated in our Constitution, politicians will continue to toy with who can vote and who cannot. That decision should belong only with each of us.

Lower Presidential Election Turnout in Safe Republican States

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 09:38:42 -0700

Thirteen states have voted for Republicans in every presidential election since 1980: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. This track record makes them the most consistently safe Republican strongholds in modern presidential politics.

To study the effects of living in a safe state on voter turnout, FairVote compared the combined turnout in these 13 states with the turnout in the remaining states over the last six elections, starting with the Bush-Dukakis election of 1988 and ending with the Obama-McCain election of 2008.

In 1988, these states' turnout barely trailed that of the rest of the country, by 2.56%. But in every election since, these 13 states have fallen further behind. In 2008, their turnout was 6.22% behind the rest of the nation.

Meanwhile, the safest Democrat states (the 12 states that went for Obama in 2008 by more than 10% and for either Kerry or Gore by more than 10%) have experienced a similar trend as turnout lessened compared to the rest of the country in each election from 1988 to 2004 (although their turnout started off higher than the safest Republican states).

Our findings should come as no surprise. Under the Electoral College system as currently constituted, people vote for president at the state-level. Once all votes are tallied in a state, the winner of the statewide popular vote receives all of the state's electoral votes. This is known as the winner-take-all rule, in place as a statute in 49 of the 51 states (including the District of Columbia, which has electors).

Due to this winner-take-all rule, presidential candidates focus solely on the few swing states that could affect the election. States with more distinct political leanings are ignored. As demonstrated by our findings, voters in the safest states are treated as less relevant - and as a result are less inclined to vote.

Rossello v. United States and the Right to Vote for Puerto Rico

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:02:11 -0700

During a week in which we celebrate the American colonies for seeking independence in large part due to denial of representation in the British parliament, it’s time for us to have a candid conversation about voting rights in our own present day “colonies”, starting with the American territory of Puerto Rico.

Brought in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by former governor of Puerto Rico Pedro Rossello, Rossello v. United States addresses the lack of a right to cast a ballot and have such ballots counted in national elections for president and Congress by residents of Puerto Rico. Petitioner Rossello has been disenfranchised, along with all other residents of Puerto Rico, despite his American citizenship, based solely on his area of residence within the United States. Currently, any American moving their residence to Puerto Rico would similarly be disenfranchised. This glaring discrimination against United States citizens living in Puerto Rico cannot be allowed to continue under international law and FairVote fully supports Rossello in his efforts.

The United States government is improperly denying the ability to vote to at least 3.7 million of its citizens in stating that the Resident Commission non-voting member of Congress is sufficient to address Puerto Rico’s needs. It is simply not reasonable to believe that one non-voting representative to Congress is equivalent to two senators, approximately six members of the House of Representatives, and a vote for the president and a vice president. The residents of Puerto Rico are being systematically disenfranchised and relegated to second class citizenship by their own government.

Puerto Rico’s current disenfranchised status is not acceptable. Unemployment in Puerto Rico is over 16% - grotesquely high even in an area where unemployment is always higher than that of the mainland. Residents of Puerto Rico pay the same social security and Medicaid taxes as mainlanders; however, they generally receive about 93% less in Medicaid coverage, something many believe is due to Puerto Rico’s inability to lobby for itself in Congress. Puerto Rico is hemorrhaging over 35,000 people a year and those who do leave are usually the highest educated, highly skilled, young, and Republican. In short, not having a voice at the national level is having a real effect on four million American lives.

Failing to provide basic suffrage rights to Puerto Rico is particularly ironic in a time of way when Puerto Rican Americans serve in our armed services at higher rates than most of our states. Petitioner claims that no other area of the United States suffered so many casualties of war prior to becoming a state as Puerto Rico has, or had more decorated and high ranking service members. Puerto Rican soldiers can be ordered into battle by a Commander in Chief for whom they have no power to vote.

And yet all evidence demonstrates that Puerto Ricans greatly value suffrage rights. Voter turnout in election for governor of Puerto Rico are higher than the gubernatorial election of any governor in the United States. In fact, 81% of the 2.4 million registered voters went to the polls in 2004, and Puerto Ricans make Election Day a holiday for their elections.

Voting rights in other American "colonies" differ. The phrase “the Constitution does not follow the flag” is often tossed around during this conversation to justify the varying levels of right in territories held by the United States. Additionally, “territory” is a broad term. For example, Americans living in American Samoa are U.S. nationals, but not U.S. citizens. The U.S. Virgin Islands require American citizens from the mainland to go through customs. Guam’s constitutional has never been approved by the Unites States Congress. People with residence in any territory, including Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa all have no right to vote for national representatives, in the form of a voting member of Congress or a elector vote for the U.S. President.

The political leaders of an American territory should not have to sue their own country in an international court in order to be heard as full citizens. But the series of cases controlling Puerto Rico’s status are racist (written by the same court as Plessy v. Ferguson) and a national embarrassment. Under the current system, without a right to vote in the national government, the discrimination against American citizens living in its colonies/territories will continue. For that reason, FairVote supports the efforts of Rossello on behalf the 3.7 million disenfranchised Puerto Ricans in his attempt to gain the voting right he is due as an American citizen.

President Obama’s recent visit to Puerto Rico was the first such state visit since one by President John Kennedy, and even that first-in-a-half-century visit was seen by many analysts as primarily a means to raise campaign funds and appeal to Puerto Ricans living in the continental United States. The president's pledge to support the will of Puerto Ricans should they vote on statehood again ("When the people of Puerto Rico make a clear decision, my administration will stand by you.") is welcome—but no substitute for immediately seeking means to address the broader problem of how we treat American citizens living in Puerto Rico.

Obama’s Field Team: Swing State Power

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:34:40 -0700

President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign is already well underway. His early hires are the latest evidence of the negative effects of current state rules governing the Electoral College.

As background, Obama is unlikely to face a challenge for the Democratic nomination, meaning that as a candidate he can start focusing on the general election. The last incumbent president in a similar position was George Bush, whose senior strategist campaign strategist Matthew Dowd has admitted that he never polled a single American living outside of 18 potential battleground states in the entire 2002—2004 campaign.

It quite simply wasn’t worth a dime for Dowd to figure out what a single voter thought in Wyoming, California, Alabama, Rhode Island or any of the remaining states where Bush was comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. When such a “spectator state” uses a winner-take-all rule to allocate its electoral votes, a candidate’s number of electoral votes won’t be affected by a gain or loss of 3% in that state’s popular vote.

This blunt reality brings us to the Obama campaign’s decision to hire Mitch Stewart as “Battleground States Director.” Stewart has been Obama’s leading field man for years. In 2008 he was director of field operations for the Iowa caucuses, the pivotal first state where Obama’s victory made him a household name. He was director in several more primary states before directing the general election campaign in Virginia, which went to Democrats in a presidential election for the first time since 1964.

Stewart’s key role was prominently featured in 2008 Obama campaign director David Plouffe’s book Audacity to Win. More recently, he has been director of Organizing for America, the 2008 Obama campaign spinoff formed to harness the energy of the volunteers that flocked to the 2008 campaign.

Given his background, you might think Mitch Stewart would be hired as National Field Director. Instead that position has gone to Jeremy Bird. Bird comes to his role with his own high credentials, including key positions in the 2008 campaign. At Organizing for America, however, he was the deputy director, where he reported to Stewart.

Making Stewart the Battleground States director is a simple recognition of the realities of how to be elected president under our current rules: swing states are more important than the nation as a whole. The nation is divided into two groups: about 15 battleground states (a number likely to decrease to about six in the campaign’s final weeks) and 35 confirmed “spectator states” stuck on the sidelines.

If presidential elections were decided instead by a national popular vote, there of course would be no “Battleground States Director” position. A vote in rural Kansas would be worth the same as a vote in downtown Miami, and the most important field position would be national field director. Other field staff presumably would be defined by region (“Southwestern Field Director”), state (“Wyoming Field Director”) and perhaps key constituencies (“Environmentalists” and “Tea Party”).

The Obama campaign’s hiring priorities are only the latest indication of what we can expect next year – a billion dollars or so from both major party campaigns targeted on a relative handful of swing voters in a small number of swing states.

It is time to change the rules that create such perverse incentives and instead have a national popular vote decide our highest national office. That’s why we should applaud the steady progress for the National Popular Vote plan for president. Introduced as a statute in all 50 states, the National Popular Vote plan is now law in eight states, a diverse group ranging from Hawaii and Vermont to Illinois and New Jersey.

Once enacted by states representing a majority of the Electoral College, the plan will govern the next election – quite likely in 2016 . Winning a national popular vote for president is worth making sure your state is the next one to stand up for the principle that every vote matters

The Constitutional Right to Vote Blog: Rock the Blog!

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:16:26 -0700

The last Constitutional amendment (aside from the 27th amendment which started its ratification process in the late 1700s) was the 26th amendment. Ratified in 1971, it states that “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.” While the language is intended to serve young people well, it still leaves open a loophole in Constitutional law- while young people cannot be discriminated against based on their age, they can be denied the chance to vote, or have their ability to vote abridged, for reasons that can also undercut voting rights for older citizens.

As demonstrated by the new Rock the Vote report, the 2011 Voting System Scorecard, we still have significant progress to make to better include 18-25 year olds in our elections. Perhaps more glaringly, the report indicates that less than 59% of young people (defined as 18-25 years old) are even registered to vote; this makes young people the segment of the US population least likely to be registered. Of those registered or eligible to be registered, many report difficulty understanding the processes.

The report works like this: it breaks down a series of areas related to voting, and gives each state a score in each of these areas. Topics include

registration (with scores for automatic registration, portable registration, online, same-day, and third party) for a possible area-total of 11 points,
voting (identification requirements, convenience, residency, absentee, overseas/military) with a possible area-total of 7 points,
and preparation (civic lessons, pre-registration) with a possible area-total of 3 points.

All together, the highest possible score is 21 points. Information on each sub-topic used to evaluate a state was collected from a variety of sources including FairVote, the Brennan Center, Demos, PEW, CIRCLE, the Fair Elections Legal Network, and several others.

Even the state with the highest score (Washington) received only a total of 14.2 or 68%. This score was based on a number of practices Rock the Vote endorses like online voter registration. States tied for the lowest score (South Carolina and Virginia) received an abysmal 3.8, or 18% of the total possible score. Some states such as California, Delaware and Maryland all received perfect scores in one area (“preparation”) but had room for improvement in other areas.

North Dakota was largely excluded from the report, since the state has no voter registration requirement. As a lack of voter registration requirements is often seen as a benefit to young people, Rock the Vote determined to discuss North Dakota as if full points had been given in the areas related to registration and pre-registration. If the state was therefore given full

points in these topics it would have a score of over 80%, more than 20% above any other state in the country, bumping North Dakota into the top-spot.
While this report shows many states making progress towards goal of more inclusive voting system, it is instructive about the case for reform that the highest score received was only 68%; a score that is barely passing.

Many states scored 0 points in the preparation section, which includes civic education and voter pre-registration. FairVote has taken a lead role in promoting good practices in this area. FairVote has been a national leader in promoting voter preregistration for young adults soon to be eligible to vote as a means to encourage voter registration in schools and at the DMV; we’ve taken a lead in securing it in recent years in Delaware, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. as detailed here. States where voter pre-registration bills are pending include New York and Massachusetts.

Rock the Vote reports that nationally less than 4% of 12th grade students were performing “above level” in civics classes; more than 60% are performing at a “basic” level. It is no wonder then that so many young people are registering to vote in the wrong way or at the wrong time. (For more information on FairVote’s civic lessons for students, please visit here). For related resources , see FairVote links on civic education ,an interactive map on registration,blogs related to the topic and pending legislation on voting reform.

Youth voting’s abysmal turn out numbers involve more than issues with pre-registration and civic learning, of course. Many problems arise when young mobile persons want to vote, but find themselves unable to obtain a ballot. As highlighted by the Rock the Vote report, this is often because some young people become most interested in a campaign close to an election, at time at which many states’ registration deadlines have long since passed. In fact, Rock the Vote found that 15% of people who tried to use their online voter registration form in 2008 did so after the deadline for the upcoming election, and 10,000 tried to register to vote on Election Day! Without same day voter registration, and easy-to-use absentee voting procedures, 18-25 year olds are often left out of the pool of eligible voters

Yet, in light of the difficulties involved with youth mobilization, Rock the Vote contends that 30 states have tried to pass or have passed legislation in the past year which would actually make it more difficult for young people to register and to vote.

Such legislation include requiring a state issued ID in order to vote, proposals to eliminate same day voter registration, and plans as radical as New Hampshire’s failed proposal to limit voting among college students to those whose parents lived in that community prior to the student attending college to avoid students “voting their feelings”.

Overall, what reports like Rock the Vote’s highlight are the needs for more comprehensive programs to educate voters and potential voters as to what options are available when registering and learning about civics in their area. However, such efforts will most effective if paired with efforts to reform current systems to become more inclusive for all citizens, easier for voters to understand, and streamlined. It’s very telling even the highest performing states received scores that no student would ever want to find on a report card.

More broadly, while the 26th amendment was a giant step forward for young people, the Rock the Vote report underscores the fact that it didn’t establish an absolute constitutional right to vote for young adults; rather, it gave them the all-too-tenuous level of voting rights provided to older citizens. Without a more affirmative right to vote in the Constitution it’s too easy for states to make decisions that undercut our voting rights – for people of any age, but often with the greatest impact on young adults.

Internet Voting 2.0 and Other Advances in Election Technology in Takoma Park

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 11:05:07 -0700

FairVote's home city of Takoma Park, Md., hosted a test on Thursday of an innovative new interface for absentee voters that would allow them to verify that their voted were counted in the final tally of this November's citywide elections, which use instant runoff voting. To be clear, the absentee voting interface tested would NOT necessarily involve casting ballots via the Internet. A potential add-in tested alongside the verification system could provide that option in the future, however. That option effectively addresses concerns about voter anonymity, but the potential for virtual shenanigans by hackers who know more about the electronic frontier than any election official endures as the fiberglass ceiling for any Internet voting system.

The base model (again, not related to online voting) would simply extend to absentee voters a tool offered and enjoyed by poll-goers in the city's 2009 election. "Scantegrity" works exactly like other paper-based optical scan systems except that voters mark the ovals denoting their choices with a special marker that reveals a unique confirmation number printed in invisible ink within the oval (a lot like those color-changing markers by Crayola). The voter can write down her codes, which are not traceable to whomever she voted for, and then enter them into her computer on Election Night to verify that her votes were part of the final tally. Anonymity is ensured to such an extent that if you marked the wrong oval and inadvertently cast your vote for say, Pat Buchanan, you would still never find out. All you would see is that your vote was counted and not thrown out, lost, or misread by the scanner as going for a candidate with a different confirmation code.

The test today primarily concerned the extension of the Scantegrity mechanism to absentee voters, who probably stand to benefit the most from such a system. Having voted almost exclusively absentee myself, I can attest to the uncertainty that this would help soothe (though it's unclear how it helps the person who spoiled their ballot and finds out on Election Night). Of course the state cannot mail magic markers along with the ballots, so each confirmation number appears directly underneath its oval within a square containing only that oval and that code.

Onto the point of controversy: absentee voting online. This feature is much further from implementation than the other improvements tested, but its design significantly assuages one of the two greatest concerns we all feel when the subject of Internet voting comes up-- preserving the privacy and anonymity of voting. The key difference between "Remotegrity" and previous attempts at Web-based voting is that the ballots are not available through the Internet at all -- each voter is mailed a paper ballot that they can fill in and mail back OR opt to use the corresponding confirmation codes, password, and Online Verification Number to cast the ballot online. That's at least three barriers, but the bottom line is that no computer ever knows how I, Melanie Kiser, voted (until I tell you here).

Here was my experience with the absentee voting simulation: I walked in and received a blank envelope containing two standard-sized envelopes and a page of instructions, just like I usually get from my mailbox. I opened the sealed envelope labeled "Unmarked Ballot.," which I could choose to send in the old-fashioned way or use to cast my vote online. On the ballot today were "Favorite musician from the Beatles" and "Favorite poet." Edgar Allen Poe is running unopposed for Favorite Poet, but there's a write-in option. I make my decisions and direct the Web browser to the Remotegrity demo site. I fill in the confirmation codes corresponding to my choices (with instant runoff voting).

The information you see in the screenshot to the left represents all a hacker has to work with in identifying who cast these votes and who the votes are for. I'll leave my Beatles votes a secret so that if anyone wants to try to figure it out they can. In race #2, Edgar Allen Poe is running unopposed. I chose to write in Stephen Sondheim (realizing that he is not a "poet" per se) as my first choice. Got to love that with IRV, even if there was another candidate running against Poe, my vote for Sondheim would not be "wasted" or "spoil" the race. In the event that neither Poe nor his main competitor got a majority of 1st choices, my vote would be transferred to Poe. Anyway, the grid on my paper ballot shows 371 as the code to vote this as my 1st choice. If I wanted to vote him as my second choice, the code would be 971 and presumably bounce back if I entered it in the blank next to 1st choice. The code corresponding to Poe, 2nd choice, is 080. If I'd voted him 1st, his code would have been 982.

After clicking "Next," I'm directed to the unsealed envelope labeled "for Marked Ballot," which I could alternatively have used to mail the paper ballot in if something went wrong with the Internet option. On the front are three different scratch-off categories. I'm prompted to scratch off and enter one "one-use password" (there are four of these). Then I scratch off my "LockIn" code and enter it to finalize my vote. And I'm done.

The test today concerned only the usability and functionality of such a system (and voters' perceptions and opinions on it). Research study chief Poorvi L. Vora, an associate professor in the Deparment of Computer Science at George Washington University, said that while the system has been designed with security in mind every step of the way, further development and testing of the hackability aspect will be done if the system is considered usable enough based on the research study results.

Presumably this will include the very effective testing method that last year revealed the vulnerability of D.C.'s pilot system (and killed the plan to use it), in which hackers are invited to breach, manipulate, and undermine the system as best they can. In the D.C. trial, a team from the University of Michigan managed to take over the system within 36 hours, changing votes and revealing demo voters' identities and choices. Their feat went unnoticed for two entire business days until demo voters began reporting that the Michigan fight song played when they clicked the button to cast their ballots.

Team leader J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering who has also reprogrammed in-person voting machines to run Pac-Man, explained in detail how they did this and what can be learned from the experience. Basically, some miniscule mistake in the upload mechanism (this program had voters downloading PDFs and re-uploading them) gave them a point of entry, and similarly tiny errors can create similarly huge problems for other Internet voting systems such as Remotegrity.

It will be interesting to see how the GWU/Remotegrity system holds up and how the developers applied the lessons of the D.C. Pilot, but a viable system that is equal or superior to accepted paper-based methods seems a very long way off. At the time (less than a year ago), Halderman said he cannot imagine any secure system of Internet voting and had this to say about its current feasibility: "Voting over the Internet is just so far from a good idea using today's technology that it's a little bit startling to me that jurisdictions are seriously considering it."

Takoma Park also tested an audio interface aimed at accessibility for visually impaired voters that promises to enhance their experience and anonymity (currently, they require assistance from a third party). The system, which uses a numeric keypad formatted like a touchtone telephone but as easy to press as a computer keyboard, enthralled at least one blind tester, who exclaimed, "I've been voting ever since I knew that I could vote, and I've never gotten it so clearly!" She liked it so much that she did it multiple times.

The Right to Vote Blog: Put more money into politics?

Tue, 31 May 2011 12:55:31 -0700

“Let’s put more money into politics!” is a rallying cry that won’t win over too many supporters. Many Americans across the spectrum already believe the hyper-rich are somehow able to finagle elections in their favor, with deals in smoke-filled back rooms and underhanded friendships, and want to see politics become more transparent; in fact, transparency is a phrase that seems like a pre-requisite to any successful campaign. But opinion pieces like this letter in the Commercial Appeal in Tennessee challenge the assertion that money and voting power should be separated.

The Commercial Appeal letter calls for a graduated system where a voter receives a number of votes based on the amount of tax they paid. Everyone would cast one vote, and everyone would get one additional vote for each $1,000 paid in income taxes. In this way, the hyper-rich might have 100+ votes to each average American’s one or two votes.

The Appeal letter almost certainly is channeling the irony of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” But in fact it’s an idea that has also been put forward quite seriously. For example, syndicated columnist Walter Williams has argued that the bottom 50% of the US population, who combined pay less than 4% of all taxes collected, should not have an equally weighted voice with the top 10% of the US population, who pay upwards of 70% of all taxes collected. Why should people who don’t pay-in get to have a say?

But such suggestions draw dangerously near to a poll tax, banned in federal elections via the 24th amendment and extended to state elections (using the 14th amendment) in a later Supreme Court decision – e.g, it's illegal to charge people to vote, which was still being done in some American elections less than a half century ago. Poll taxes are unconstitutional, but all too reflective of how some Americans see voting and challenge the governing principle of equality in our democracy. (And it took a specific amendment to stop them in the 1960s, as not having a right to vote in the Constitution allowed the practice.)

Yet, no ideal could be more un-American than to equate income and wealth with the ability to participate in government. The framers created a House and Senate of citizens, having lived under a House of Lords with hereditary seats doled out to the wealthy elite; to go back to a system based entirely on wealth would be to subvert the very goals of our own Constitution.

The ramifications of an idea like this are disastrous; what if a mega-billionaire like Bill Gates moved to a small town or state? The Gates’ could effectively buy the entire election by holding enough ‘shares’ that, even if the majority of people who voted disagreed with him, it still couldn’t swing the election against his choice. How is that in any way democratic?

Some compare voting to owning stock; why should someone vote at a shareholder meeting if they didn’t pay to own a stock share? But this is comparing apples to golf clubs; I could live my entire life without ever drinking a Coke product, and so I have little-to-no reason to care how Coke-Cola spends its money. Their fiscal habits will probably not affect my daily life, unless I actively choose to use their products.

However, as an American citizen, the decisions of my elected politicians do have a daily effect on my life; on the roads I drive on, the taxes I pay on goods I buy, the laws I obey, and the schools I attended. Americans have more daily interaction with their federal and state government than just paying income tax.

Additionally, equating income tax and wealth to voting rights ignores the fact that many Americans are paying income tax right now, yet have no vote or voice in government. Residents of the District of Columbia pay a high income tax, but have no voting representative in Congress. The rallying cry of no taxation without representation is found on license plates pressed by the DC government.

The disenfranchisement of the people of D.C. is inexcusable, but it’s less controversial to separate voting from income and property based on other issues. Other groups, like employed persons under the age of 18, also pay income taxes to the state and federal government but have no vote at all. If taxes are the basis for government participation, does that mean the 14-year-old store clerk can now vote as well? Similarly, some people who own property in more than one city or state suggest that they should have a right to vote in each jurisdiction – arguing that if the value of their property can be affected by elected officials in a locality or state, isn’t it taxation without representation to not allow them to vote there? But most Americans do not agree. Government is by “the consent of the governed,” to be sure, but we regularly accept limitations on it, particularly when grounded in our basic value that we are all created equal.

So even if our Tennessee letter-writer was writing tongue in check, the sentiment behind the letter might resonate with some Americans. But we should never have to pay to get a vote in government. The U.S. government, on state, local and federal levels shouldn’t be like an exclusive country club with membership fees that block out most of society- it should be open to all. The fact this is even a possible part of the conversation – and that the poll tax was still in place in some states when John Kennedy was elected -- only serves to further highlight how attenuated our right (or lack thereof) to vote is in today’s America.