FairVote Feed: FairVote

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

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

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 lending state Senator Barbara Buono 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 endorsed them in their primaries, dubbing these candidates Mamma Grizzlies. Though women, as a group, prefer Democrats, a point illustrated by an 18% gender gap 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 recent poll, 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 led 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.

The Voting Rights Act, Jerome Gray and Fair Voting in Alabama

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 08:32:54 -0800

Among the flurry of news coverage surrounding the upcoming landmark Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which will decide the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, one interesting man has been getting considerable attention: Jerome Gray. His story has been related in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and other publications.

A 74-year-old black Alabama local and civil rights advocate, Jerome Gray has had a remarkable career as a community organizer, including work for years at the Alabama Democratic Conference. In that role he worked regularly with FairVote, including helping FairVote for a time as a member of an advisory committee on our organizing and outreach.

Mr. Gray has voted in every election since 1974. Yet prior to the 2012 general election, a county official improperly removed his name from the voting rolls - along with some 500 other names, all in a small town with a population of only about 4,000, 63% of whom are black. A three judge panel ruled the purging of names from the rolls illegal in a decision invoking the Voting Rights Act.

Alabama has a long history of Voting Rights Act activity. Shelby County, Alabama initiated the lawsuit now before the Supreme Court, and Jerome Gray recalls seeing white men in the beds of trucks photographing black voters as they came out to vote as recently as 2008. But Alabama is also home to many of the Voting Rights Act's greatest successes, especially in those towns and counties that have chosen fair voting as a preferred way of guaranteeing an undiluted vote to their African American and Latino populations - highlighted by Dillard v. Crenshaw County, a voting rights case pursued in 1985 that resulted 32 uses of cumulative voting and the one vote system, which has often has been called "limited voting," a name that unfortunately fails to communicate its capacity for expanding representation while ensuring that everyone has the same number of votes.

We recently wrote about the use of fair voting in Calera, the town whose illegal redistricting directly led to Shelby County filing suit against Attorney General Eric Holder in his official capacity. When Calera's redistricting scheme was found to be illegal, they adopted the one vote form of fair voting, allowing the same level of representation for African Americans as under a majority-minority district plan, but without the need for any line drawing. But Calera is far from alone. In fact FairVote hosts a booklet about the use of fair voting throughout Alabama, written by none other than Jerome Gray.

Fair voting in Alabama dates back to the 1980's, when local activists fought for it as the best option for remedying racial minority vote dilution present in so many Alabama localities, and it continues to be effective today. Chilton County, Alabama continues to elect its county commission using cumulative voting, and it has elected a black representative every cycle since its adoption. Fair voting in Chilton County has helped political, as well racial minorities, as demonstrated by the election of Democrat-turned-Independent Tim Mims to the Chilton County Commission in 2008 (Mims has since become a Republican and was re-elected in 2012).

As Jerome Gray wrote in his booklet for FairVote and the now-defunct Southern Regional Council, "thirty-two different governing bodies use some form of [fair voting]." Most use the one vote system, with a few using cumulative voting. FairVote has paid particular attention to Alabama and those working for fair voting there. Back in January, FairVote Voices, the podcast for FairVote, interviewed Ed Still, a local civil rights attorney who has worked for such systems to protect voting rights.

Although much of Gray's work involved making sure local community's changes to single member districts resulted in effective opportunities for African Americans in Alabama, he saw great promise in expanding opportunities for representation in fair voting. He wrote:

The advantages of alternative voting systems as they have worked in Alabama are enumerated below:

1. They eliminate the requirement of jurisdictions having to redistrict themselves every ten years after a census is taken as is required of single-member district localities.

2. They eliminate numbered places and the majority vote requirement which is commonplace throughout the South. There are no runoff elections. ...

3. Minority candidates and women often benefit greatly from these systems because they allow minority and women voters to "plump" their limited or cumulative votes in a block in support of candidates that they prefer. Moreover, minority and women candidates are not viewed as running against each other or against specific incumbents.

4. The electability of good candidates under these systems is not skewed unduly toward incumbents, candidates with the most money, or those with the best business and professional ties.

5. Strong minority candidates are able to win under these systems, even with less resources and political connections.

6. It facilitates the establishment and/or use of voting centers for local elections, cutting down on the number of voting places required for elections in single-member district jurisdictions.

7. It saves jurisdictions a lot of money in that no runoff elections are required. Money is saved on printing costs for ballots, setting up voting machines and paying poll officials. It saves money for the candidates, too, because they don't have to spend additional money campaigning in a runoff.

8. In the long run, it saves money for the jurisdictions. They will never have to pay lawyers and demographers to assist them in drawing redistricting plans to submit to the Department of Justice for preclearance, nor will they have to pay out any money to lawyers, demographers and experts to defend the fairness of their alternative voting system in court.

9. In small, less populated jurisdictions, these systems generally improve or increase the potential pool of good minority candidates to run and win simply because they do not restrict, or limit winnable candidate selection to the majority black district(s) as is often the case in single-member districts.

10. All the minority voters throughout the jurisdiction (in the city or county) always have the opportunity to vote and help elect the minority candidate(s) of their choice. Under a single-member district system, minority voters who live outside the majority black district(s) cannot help elect the minority candidate(s) of their choice for the simple reason that they aren't residents of the majority black district(s).

11. Preparing and publishing voters' lists, as required by law in Alabama, is made simpler because the alphabetical list does not have to be subdivided for poll officials to determine who is eligible to vote in a given district.

12. The printing and distribution of maps and the training of map readers to help educate voters, poll workers and election officials as to the location of district boundaries and knowing what voting precincts are within each single-member district becomes moot when alternative voting is used.

The benefits of fair voting for achieving voting rights goals have been noted outside of Alabama as well. Cambridge, Massachusetts has used choice voting to elect its city council since 1941, with some noting that the system promoted the representation of racial minorities and promoted racial harmony not seen in other parts of the country. Indeed, Cincinnati, Ohio formerly used choice voting, and the Kerner Commission in 1968 noted that the subsequent racial unrest and ultimately violence may have stemmed from Cincinnati's repeal of the system and the subsequent decline in African American representation.

In fact, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has generally made it more difficult for jurisdictions using fair voting to repeal the system and return to suppressive winner-take-all elections that dilute the votes of racial minorities. The New York Times today has an important article about the role of Section Five in New York City, but does not mention that the last time the Department of Justice denied preclearance to voting change in New York was related to fair voting: when New York City attempted to repeal the use of choice voting for its school board elections, the Department of Justice denied the repeal preclearance under Section 5. And opponents of fair voting have noted that its repeal would be easier if Section 5 did not prevent them from changing their laws in ways that would dilute the votes of racial minorities.

It should therefore be no surprise that FairVote and advocates like Jerome Gray both support the Voting Rights Act in its entirety and support the use of fair voting at every level of government.

Not Helping America Vote: The Plight of the Un-filled Election Assistance Commission

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:29:45 -0800

We applaud President Barack Obama for shining a spotlight on election reform by using the State of the Union address to announce the creation of a bipartisan election commission. Although many people did not have to wait hours to vote, far too many did. The right to vote is too precious to leave to the administrative whims and resources of state and local election officials. Instead, we should promulgate national standards, developing and sharing best practices from each state to uphold the right to vote.

Captained by the top campaign lawyers for the presidential campaigns of Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the commission has real promise to propose steps to improve the Election Day experience. But make no mistake, it should not be a substitute for upholding existing federal law. In response, we're calling on the President and Congress to allow the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to do its job.

In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to advance electoral reform in a number of ways, including creation of the EAC to oversee distribution of the first federal funds in history designed to help states and cities administer elections. The Commission was grounded in the notion that if best practices were shared throughout the nation, and standards were set and measured before and after elections, election officials nationwide would adopt similar procedures and practices, and elections would become more equal, fair and efficient over time. One issue on that list? Long lines.

HAVA mandates that Congress and the White House work together to recommend and nominate individuals, two from each party, to serve on the EAC. That partisan balance of course reflects the distrust both parties have about changes involving elections, but until we have united support for our Pledge to Stand with Voters, we unfortunately have to live with such calculation.

Establishing the EAC is one step in the essential process of allowing local and state government to make key decisions about voting, simultaneously seeding government accountability in the protection of our right to vote. Together with a staff and executive director, the EAC is tasked with studying elections, culling information from local and state levels, and analyzing reports in order to produce minimum standards for elections nationwide. It also creates national standards for voting equipment and software, and oversees testing of equipment to assist the majority of states that choose to abide by those standards.

But the EAC hasn't had even a single commissioner since December 2011. Since 2010, the commission hasn’t had a quorum, and since 2009, the commission has not been fully staffed. Its Executive Director stepped down in 2011. Without a full quorum of commissioners, EAC employees continue to work according to the policies and procedures adopted by the commission in previous years, but cannot make headway in setting new standards for our elections.

The EAC can continue to test, certify and decertify voting equipment, but only according to 2005 standards rather than newer ones reflecting new insights and upgrades in technologies. The EAC cannot determine new policies or guidelines including the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines, National Voter Registration Act regulations, the National Voter Registration form and issuance of EAC advisories among others. Furthermore, if its decisions on certification are contested, the Commission is at a standstill without the full set of commissioners to rule on an appeal.

For nearly three years, Congress has been unable and, in several cases, unwilling to put forward nominees, let alone confirm candidates. In November of 2012, Senator Barbara Boxer sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) urging the cooperation of House and Senate Republicans in appointing and confirming nominees to the EAC. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who played a lead role in passing HAVA, might be willing to comply and get the EAC up and running, but the primary culprits seem to be leaders in the House. Representatives seem intent on keeping the EAC off track and national support for election reform off the table. Neither of the leaders targeted by Sen. Boxer, nor the Republican Party, responded publicly to the letter, and at the close of the 112th session, the two pending nominations, both from the Democratic Party, were not confirmed by the Senate Committee on Rules. Political gaming seemed to outweigh meeting voters’ needs and upholding the law.

Just after President Obama's State of the Union address, for example, Congresswoman Candace Miller, chair of the House Administration Committee tasked with election law, said, "[I am] completely opposed to such a commission putting forward mandates to be imposed on states like Michigan that would disrupt our already well-run system of elections." In fact, despite Congresswoman Miller’s confidence, many Michigan voters reported reported frustration this past November.

National standards don’t offer a one-size fits all solution, but they do provide a base of uniform best practices for each state. And Michigan, like every other state, has unique voting policies and guidelines, the end result being inequity in access for voters nationwide. Local innovation and responsibility is great for the development of our electoral system, but we also need accountability and a national commitment to upholding voters’ rights .

The Election Assistance Commission of course is not the only step between a dysfunctional system and a strong electoral structure built with elements that improve access and participation while resulting in more accurate representation. For fair access, Congress should adopt legislation like the Voter Empowerment Act and back a constitutional right to vote. More broadly, we should establish independent redistricting commissions to create fair voting plans, and promote ranked choice voting and a national popular vote for president.

But creating an active EAC is a simple positive step – and one that happens to be the law. Reform should be about systemic, enduring solutions, not just shorter lines. #wehavetofixthat

Call on Congress and the White House now to make the Election Assistance Commission work.

Dubious Democracy: Updated FairVote Report Shows Dysfunctional House Elections

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:54:24 -0800

Since 1994, FairVote has released a biennial report on American congressional elections called "Dubious Democracy." As official data for the 2012 congressional elections is now available, FairVote now presents its metrics for assessing the current state of American democracy, with comprehensive data for every congressional election dating back to 1982.

Dubious Democracy evaluates the level of competition and accuracy of representation in congressional elections for every state and every congressional district. You can see the release of our report up to the 2010 elections online here. To get the 2012 data, you can download the Microsoft Excel data sheet here.

The full Dubious Democracy 2012 report is still forthcoming, but a comprehensive investigation is not necessary to see the story that the 2012 election data tells. The trend in recent U.S. congressional elections toward uncompetitive elections and inaccurate representation continued in 2012, and by some metrics was worse than ever.

In 2012, the average two-party margin of victory was 36.5%, up 3.5% from 2010. In the aftermath of the 2011-2012 redistricting process, there were only 28 "tight races" and 33 "opportunity races," down from 36 and 45, respectively, in 2010. Over a third of all votes - 35.2% - were wasted (cast for non-winning candidates) in 2012.

The 2012 elections saw the largest overall seats-to-votes distortion since 1992: an average of 4.4% between the two major parties. Distortion was especially noticeable in 2012 because the party that won the most votes did not win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives. If seats were apportioned in proportion to the percentage of the raw popular vote in 2012, Democrats would have won 214 seats, Republicans 209 seats, and independent candidates 12 seats.

There were also five examples of states where one party received a majority of votes but the other party received a majority of seats, ranging from Arizona (where Democrats won more seats with fewer votes under a plan drawn by an independent redistricting commission) to North Carolina (where Republicans won more than two-thirds of seats with a minority of the vote).

No state broke 50% in the Representation Index - that is, in no state do more than half the eligible voters have a House representative for whom they voted. In contrast, many nations using fair voting alternatives to winner-take-all voting have a Representation Index well above 70%.

The state that ranked highest in 2012 in the "Democracy Index" (taking into account average margin of victory, voter turnout, percentage of landslide races, seats-to-votes distortion, and percentage of people voting for a winning candidate) was Minnesota. The state that ranked lowest was Oklahoma.

Be sure to check back in the coming weeks for the complete version of Dubious Democracy 2012, as well as the forthcoming Monopoly Politics 2014 report that will anticipate the likely undemocratic nature of the 2014 congressional midterm elections.

Who Needs to Fix That? We Do.

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 06:49:26 -0800

When President Barack Obama paused in his victory speech, thanking voters for waiting in long lines to vote but noting 'we have to fix that', one might have assumed that reform would come from the top. Within a few weeks, Representative George Miller (D-CA7) introduced the SIMPLE Voting Act to ease ballot access and increase turnout. Mirroring his proposal was Senator Christopher Coons (D-DE) with the FAST Voting Act (S. 3635) intended to provide incentives for States to invest in practices and technology to expedite voting at the polls and simplify registration. Both bills were immediately referred to their respective House and Senate committees where they stayed until they became null and void with this week’s swearing in of the 113th Congress.

While I’m happy to see Federal law makers introducing electoral reform legislation clearly written to help voters, policies expanding registration and easing ballot access, unfortunately do not rank high on Congress’ agenda. In fact, as this presidential election has shown, interested parties seem inclined to take advantage of the decentralized and disorganized system for partisan gain. Little is done at the national level to curb such behavior, and affected voters have weak legal foundation to right these wrongs. We can’t even get Congress to confirm nominees to the Election Assistance Commission, which hasn’t had a full commission in years.

Voting rights and rules are in fact largely determined at the state and local level, and national legislation tends only to suggest change and provide appropriate incentives. A national affirmative commitment to the right to vote would lay the foundation for consistent voting rules nationwide. While this change is necessary and important for ensuring the protection of the right to vote, it will take time.

What's a frustrated voter to do?

In fact, the inertia at the federal level as well as the absence of overarching electoral rules is actually an opportunity for electoral reform now, in the places where it is most needed. Since electoral rules are set by states, counties and cities – and with the latter on the front lines of engagement with voters -- we have the ability to propose changes to their city councils or state legislators in ways that truly benefit voters. Resolutions at the local level can extend early voting, increase polling places, call for pre-registration for 17-year-olds, and push the boundaries of current legislation. Between November 2012 and the next national election in November 2014, hundreds of local elections will take place, giving localities plenty of opportunities to experiment with new, progressive and positive electoral rules, all the while working to increase turnout in all elections.

With PromoteOurVote.com, FairVote has developed three proactive campaigns designed to fulfill the President's mandate of 'we need to fix that', starting with local grassroots action.

1) Local City and County Resolutions

Passing a local right to vote resolution, complete with steps to improve voter turnout, protect voters, and expand knowledge about voting procedure and policies, corrects the ineptitudes of current electoral rules while bringing attention to the importance of passing an affirmative right to vote amendment at the national level. Our local right to vote resolutions are designed for local government bodies: city councils, county commissions or school boards. The resolutions pledge to examine local electoral rules, as well as revise and expand the language to better reflect voter needs.

2) Local Campus Resolutions

Political actors often stress the importance of the youth voter, yet little is done to redress the difficulties facing college voters. Local resolutions committing to concrete actions to ease registration, clarify absentee ballot use and increase polling locations would certainly result in increased voter turnout on campuses.

3) Organization Resolutions

Community organizations are often the force behind societal and political change. Currently in development, this resolution commits local organizations and chapters such as church groups or rotary clubs to participate in similar activities as the city and campus resolutions.

With these resolutions beginning at the local level and designed for voters to experience free, fair and accessible elections, voters can respond to voter disenfranchisement and election-day obstacles with, "Yes Mr. President, we certainly can fix that." At the very least, attention will be brought to the highly decentralized nature of our electoral system, and voters can make changes that positively affect their voting experiences. Through the efforts of Americans nation-wide, we can also highlight the need for a stronger foundation for America's most basic and important form of civic engagement: voting.

We are sure that FairVote supporters and volunteers will recognize the importance of this movement and realize the idea by generating action nationwide to fix our electoral system for all eligible voters.

Find out more and download a free toolkit at PromoteOurVote.com and FairVoteAction.org

When Barack Obama Was a Leader in Seeking Fair Voting Systems

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:30:24 -0800

President Barack Obama has a lot on his mind these days - fiscal cliff negotiations, gun control, cabinet appointments and spurring job creation, to name a few. But the state of our democracy also matters, as he briefly addressed in his election night speech when saying about long lines "We need to fix that." Our problems go deeper than long lines, of course - with the core of the problem being winner-take-all voting rules that divide America, marginalize voters, distort representation and make governance more difficult.

We haven't had a president as informed about good ideas for taking on electoral reform since James Madison and the founding generation. Take, for example, the fact that on October 15, 2001, Obama - then a junior state senator in Illinois - reached across the aisle to introduce a bill with Republican Tom Walsh that would, if passed, put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot to elect the Illinois House of Representatives by fair voting: three-seat districts, elected by voters given cumulative voting rights.

A year later, Obama introduced a bill that would have required that partisan primaries for congressional office be conducted by instant runoff voting (IRV, also called ranked choice voting) and allows local jurisdictions to use IRV elect their officers. As a law professor at the University of Chicago, Obama had taught Election Law using a textbook co-authored by Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, and Richard Pildes, that includes a chapter dedicated to different electoral systems. One of FairVote's former staffers, Dan Johnson, was a student of Obama and has attested to his understanding of a full range of reform ideas.

Fair voting may have been unfamiliar to most Americans in 2001, but not to those in Illinois. In fact, Illinois elected its House of Representatives by fair voting for more than a hundred years. Illinois adopted fair voting in 1870 to alleviate polarization between northern and southern Illinois grounded in those regions' divided loyalties during the Civil War. Republicans dominated northern Illinois and Democrats southern Illinois, but fair voting allowed moderate Democrats and Republicans to be elected from all parts of the state, opening the door to cross-party coalition-building, independence from party leaders and effective governance even in the face of polarization.

Over the years, fair voting achieved its goals. Consistently, voters in all regions of the state - from Democratic strongholds in Chicago to rock-solid Republicans counties - elected representatives of both parties. Sharing constituents meant more legislation in common and meant that caucuses meeting separately represented the entire state, not just their strongholds. African Americans in the 1950s were elected from numerous white-majority districts, and women did better than they had under other systems.

After being repealed in 1980 in a populist drive to reduce the size of the Illinois house by a third, the legislature became far more polarized, with few competitive districts and one-party dominance. That change contributed to a commission led by former Republican governor Jim Edgar and former Democratic Congressman and White House Counsel Abner Mikva calling for the return of cumulative voting.

Instant runoff voting was a newer idea in Illinois when Obama proposed it for Illinois congressional primaries in 2002, although that year it also earned the backing of future presidential opponent, John McCain. Since that time, IRV has been adopted in a number of jurisdictions nationwide, including California cities like San Francisco and Oakland and the largest cities in Maine, Minnesota and Tennessee.

IRV allows such jurisdictions to uphold majority rule without having to hold a second election, and the system seems to have done particularly well at promoting racial minority candidacies who benefit from holding decisive elections with greater turnout and less polarizing rhetoric. IRV allows broad choices on the ballot, as the ranking of candidates and rounds of counting ensure that vote-splitting will not result in a less popular plurality candidate winning because that candidate's votes were siphoned off by a similar candidate. This has special importance in partisan primaries, where often a number of similar candidates run against each other. In that context, IRV can ensure that the general election involves a contest between candidates who really represent a majority of voters in their parties.

The issues that led Obama to introduce fair voting and instant runoff voting in Illinois have never had greater relevance at the national scale than they do today. Congress is sharply divided and horribly unrepresentative of its constituencies. And the case for reform includes elections at all levels of government where voters have inadequate choices on the ballot as alternative voices are kept out for fear of splitting the vote.

In the Democratic convention speech in 2004 that introduced him to many Americans, President Obama said:

"Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states."

We at FairVote, like most Americans, embrace that vision. But that is not the politics and representation that comes from winner-take-all voting rules. It is because of winner-take-all rules that the president did not bother campaigning in over 40 states during the fall campaign and why he has taken part in 19 events as president in North Carolina, but not one in South Carolina.

It's also why the U.S. House can be so rigid in its opposition to his policies, as a majority of voters in 2012 could vote for Democrats for the House, but only elect 46% of seats in districts so distorted by where voters live that Mitt Romney carried 228 of them compared to only 207 for Obama, despite losing the popular vote by over four-million votes. It's why New England doesn't have a single Republican House Member and why Democrats couldn't win a single House seat this year in a string of states running from Arkansas to eastern Washington.

As a president who has said he will never run for political office again, President Obama has a unique opportunity to address the dangers of our winner-take-all, all-or-nothing voting rules. Grounded in his knowledge of reform options, in his state's history with fair voting and in the commitment of his 2004 speech, the president has a remarkable opportunity to trigger a real dialogue about ways of reshaping American politics in his second term.

FairVote Chair Krist Novoselic on Democracy and Proportional Representation

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:30:30 -0800

Those in New York City were recently excited to learn that Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl of Nirvana will be reuniting to play at the 12/12/12 benefit concert for those affected by Hurricane Sandy, with Paul McCartney joining them in the role formerly filled by Kurt Cobain. A smaller number may be aware of the critical role Krist Novoselic has played in fighting for reforms to improve American democracy.

Krist has been on FairVote's board of directors since 2005 and has been chair of the board since 2008. In 2004 he wrote Of Grunge and Government, in which he makes the connection between his experience in Nirvana and the American experience with voting and elections. He has been a featured guest on a number of media outlets talking about the need for proportional representation and FairVote's other signature reforms, including a recent appearance on the Rachel Maddow show.

If you would like to hear the ideas of the man who will be playing bass guitar with Dave Grohl and Paul McCartney tonight, read some of these highlighted articles written by Krist Novoselic:

Thank you Krist for all your great contributions to FairVote!

Pennsylvania Senate Leader Pileggi Wrong on Prescription for Electoral College Reform

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:28:02 -0800

Hot off the presses from Bloomberg News is a major Electoral College development. Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi has circulated a letter to his legislative colleagues seeking support for a bill to replace the winner-take-all allocation of his state's Electoral College votes with one based on proportional representation - with two electoral votes going to the winner of the state and 18 votes allocated proportionally.

The proposal is sure to trigger an intense partisan reaction. Pennsylvania Republicans often come close in presidential elections, but last won an electoral vote in 1988 when George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis. Yet if Sen. Pileggi's plan had been in place this year, President Barack Obama's 5.4% win in the statewide popular vote would have translated into his earning 12 electoral votes rather than 20, while Gov. Mitt Romney would have won eight electoral votes rather than zero. Shifting eight electoral votes in Pennsylvania would have provided a bigger boost to Romney than switching the outcome in Iowa.

FairVote took a position against this change in October 2011, when we were invited to submit testimony to a Pennsylvania state legislative committee that was examing Sen. Pileggi's then-proposal to divide electoral votes by congressional district. In my testimony, I compared the state's winner-take-all Electoral College allocation rules to congressional district allocation, proportional allocation and the national popular vote plan. I drew on our important report looking at how district allocation and proportional allocation might work nationwide, Fuzzy Math: Wrongway Reforms for Allocating Electoral Votes.

Sen. Pileggi's shift to advocating proportional allocation may be designed to maintain calm among the state's Republican House Members. When the district plan was proposed in 2011, several publicly opposed the plan, apparently worried that intense activity in some districts to swing an electoral vote might put them at risk. Whether that fear was justified, it's certainly true that going to proportional allocation would almost certainly eliminate any concentrated political activity in the state. It's an expensive, big state in which to campaign when at most three electoral votes might be in play.

Count me as a major skeptic of the wisdom of states taking unilateral action to divide electoral votes, particularly when the motivation for the action can so easily be ascribed to partisanship. But I wanted to indicate support for the sentiment behind Sen. Pileggi's statement to Bloomberg News, if not the associated policy proposal: “Anyone who voted for Governor Romney -and many Pennsylvanians did -does not have any reflection of that vote in the electoral college vote. This is a proposal that is not party specific or partisan in any way, but just an attempt to have the popular vote reflected in the electoral college vote.”

Students of FairVote's reform proposals would know that we strongly support replacing winner-take-all voting rules for Congress and state legislative elections for exactly this same vision of fair representation. Congress and state legislatures are representative bodies where we believe having more people earn a seat at the table is a pre-condition of having a fully representative democracy. Indeed, the fact that Pennsylvania's U.S. House delegation next year will be 13 Republicans to five Democrats is an example of unfair disproportionality -- as is the more general silencing of less partisan, centrist voices and the near total marginalization of third party perspectives.

For president, however, I strongly support a national popular vote and call on Sen. Pileggi to amend his proposal in two ways:

First, to support Pennsylvania's entry into the National Popular Vote interstate agreement to ensure Pennsylvania voters can participate meaningfully in every presidential election and to uphold the sensible goal of election of the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC;
Second, to apply his interest in representing voters fairly to replacing winner-take-all rules for state legislative elections and calling on Congress to give Pennsylvania back the right it had before 1967 to use proportional voting for Congress, as explained in our Fair Voting 2012 report.

Proportional allocation of electoral votes: My former colleague Neal Suidan wrote a 2011 blogpost about proportional allocation of electoral college votes. States would award their electoral votes to candidates based on their statewide vote share to the nearest whole electoral vote. For example, suppose a state has ten electoral votes and one candidate earned 60% of the popular vote to another candidate's 40%. The candidate with 60% would receive six electoral votes and the other four. That same 6-4 division of electoral votes would also be earned with statewide outcomes that ranged from 56% to 44% up to 64% to 36% - meaning that candidates would earn the same 6-4 split in electoral votes if the margin were as large as 28% or as small as 12%.

While we back forms of proportional representation for legislative elections (see our proposal for modest forms of proportional voting for all states at our FairVoting.US report) and for allocation of convention delegates in presidential primaries, it's highly problematic when states try to use it to allocate electoral votes.

One problem is that, as in the example of the state with ten electoral votes, rounding off electoral votes to the closest whole number would marginalize a significant number of voters. Many states in fact would not have any electoral votes realistically in play, while nearly all states would never have more than one electoral vote in play. As a result, many voters would be absolutely ignored.

A second problem is that states do not have the same number of voters per electoral vote. Wyoming residents, for example, have one electoral vote for about every 190,000 residents, which is about a quarter of the number of residents per electoral vote in Texas. As a result, even if every state were to divide electoral votes proportionally, the national popular vote winner could still lose.

A third problem is how to handle third party and independent votes. We ultimately hope to see majority voting systems like instant runoff voting for our single winner elections and believe third parties should have a fair chance to win seats in legislatures. But the presidency is a single winner office. Having a "representative" Electoral College assumes that it is a deliberative body that should be, well, representative. But under our Constitution, if no candidate wins an absolute majority of electoral votes, Congress picks the winner with incredibly bizarre rules - hardly a fair outcome.

A fourth problem relates to the specific case of just one state dividing electoral votes. For Pennsylvania specifically, it would mean that the state would go from being a likely battleground in the 2016 elections to being marginalized and ignored by campaigns. Even though Pennsylvania has gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1988 and even though it was relatively overlooked this year (without a single post-convention visit from either Barack Obama or his running mate Joe Biden), its statewide popular vote share was one of the closest to the national popular vote share -- an outcome that indicates that if there had been a 50%-50% tie in the national popular vote , the Pennsylvana result would have been nearly dead even as well. Under Pileggi's plan, that 50-50 partisanship would become almost irrelevant, as no more than three electoral votes would likely be at stake in the state.

In the national context, trying to unilaterally divide electoral votes in a large state that tends to break toward one party has a transparent political impact. No matter what Sen. Pileggi's motivations may be - and I have no doubt that many Pennsylvania Republicans have been frustrated to come up empty-handed year after year in the state's presidential elections - his proposal inescapably will be debated as a partisan powergrab.

Presidential elections need fixing and, under our Constitution, states indeed are the ones that are supposed to do it. But their roadmap should be the National Popular Vote plan, not misguided efforts such as this one. The National Popular Vote plan makes every vote equal, guarantees election of the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and requires candidates to reflect the needs of all Americans and to campaign in all corners of the country. It represents the way forward for a fair election in 2016.

A Representative Congress: Enhancing African American Voting Rights in the South with Choice Voting

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:46:30 -0800

In southern states, racially polarized elections remain an active part of political life. Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act has guaranteed that African Americans in the South cannot be shut out of elections either through direct barriers to voting or through discriminatory districts that prevent the achievement of representation. It transformed suffrage rights and representation in legislatures across the South, with a leading instrument being creation of "majority-minority" districts - ones in which racial minorities gain representation by virtue of making up the majority of the population within some district.

However, relying on winner-take-all elections has inherent limitations. In the belt of southern states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas, the use of districting to achieve a fairer level of representation for African Americans has hit a ceiling. While redistricting in 1991 contributed directly to election of seven new African American Members, the total number of African American Members did not change this year.

To push through that ceiling and achieve truly fair representation, FairVote recommends abandoning the single-member district in favor of super districts elected by choice voting. Under choice voting, voters rank candidates in order of preference by whatever criteria they think important, and those preferences then are used to elect candidates in proportion to their popular support without wasting excess votes for standout candidates guaranteed to win or protest votes for candidates sure to lose. With a long history of use in local elections in the United States, choice voting has resulted in fair representation for political and racial minorities.

Louisiana currently has six House districts and exactly one majority-minority district, with every other district having more than 60% white voters and a Republican Members. However, African Americans make up nearly one third of the voting age population of Louisiana. Under our fair voting plan using choice voting in two districts with three Members each, African Americans in Louisiana would have the opportunity to elect two candidates of choice by being above the quarter of the vote needed to win one of three seats.

Similarly, African Americans in Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina would have enhanced opportunities to elect candidates of choice. Here is a chart contrasting current African American representation in Congress and shares of the voting age population living in district with a clear opportunity to elect preferred candidates with what it would be with adopting of choice voting in super districts of three, four or five districts:

State	Louisiana	Mississippi	Alabama	Georgia	South Carolina	North Carolina
Seats / Superdistricts	6 / 2	4 / 1	7 / 2	14 / 4	7 / 2	13 / 3
Majority-minority Districts (Currently)	1	1	1	4	1	2
Candidates of Choice Under Choice Voting	2	1	2	4	2	3
*African American Voting Strength (Currently)**	32%	43%	35%	40%	30%	19%
*African American Voting Strength Under Choice Voting**	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%

* Measures percentage of African Americans living in district where power to elect a preferred candidate under conditions of racially polarized voting

Note that the number of seats held by African-American preferred candidates would likely increase by four total. More dramatically, the number of African Americans in a direct position to elect preferred candidates would soar from well under half of African American adults to 100% of them - including those African Americans who prefer to vote for Republicans.

This enhanced power can also be true in parts of other states with the same character; for example the eastern edge of Texas is composed of five white-majority districts which, if combined into a single super district using choice voting, would permit the election of a racial minority candidate of choice. In much of this region, African Americans make up a sufficient proportion of the population to earn greater legislative representation, but they are not geographically segregated enough to be drawn into majority-minority districts, making a proportional system the only option for breaking past their current ceiling.

Even in racially polarized states with an insufficient population of racial minorities to gain actual representation, choice voting would guarantee that racial minorities could influence the outcome in a meaningful way. For example, in Arkansas, every congressional district has over 70% white voting population. Given that each representative is elected on a winner-take-all basis, it is therefore not surprising that in 2012 every one of its four districts elected a white Republican. With choice voting, racial minorities still would not compose enough of Arkansas' population to elect a candidate of choice with their votes alone, but choice voting gives you the power to indicate backup choices whom you might help win if your first choice is defeated. African Americans Democrats would have sufficient numbers to influence elections by joining in cross-racial coalitions of voters able to elect at least one candidate more reflective of their policy preferences.

And significantly, choice voting would guarantee that every African American voter - in fact every voter, period - could point to an elected legislator that he or she helped elect. As our table shows, even in states like Georgia, which are currently able to have enough majority-minority districts to elect a fair number of racial minority candidates of choice, most African American voters do not live in those majority-minority districts. Most racial minority voters in the South must currently be satisfied with so-called "virtual representation," in which candidates they favor are only elected in districts they do not themselves reside in. For example, in North Carolina, only 19% of African American adults live in one of the two districts where African Americans have sufficient voting power to elect a candidate of choice. Under choice voting, 100% of African Americans would live in a district with an African American candidate of choice in every state within this southern belt.

In an ideal world, racially polarized voting would not occur and candidates could be defined by their responsiveness to people based on their ideas rather than their identities. But we're not in that world yet, as made plain by such facts as the U.S. Senate not having any African American Members. The first step in that direction requires ensuring that racial minorities cannot be denied a voice. A second step is to encourage voters to think beyond their first choice when indicating backup preferences second and third. The use of majority-minority districts led to much more racial minority representation in legislative bodies, but it has hit an impasse - and has thus far been limited in its reliance on "virtual representation" and acceptance of winner-take-all rules that always deny representation to many people. To continue moving forward requires something new. Choice voting represents a race-neutral and constitutional means of electing a body that fairly represents the population however they may choose to vote.

Clashing Mandates and the Role of Voting Structures

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:00:11 -0800

Although this year’s elections were highly competitive, Democrats nationally had a clear edge among voters. Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney by 126 electoral votes and more than four million popular votes, while Republicans won only eight of 33 U.S. Senate races.

But it was a different story in U.S. House elections. Democrats won only 46% of seats, with Republicans ending up with a comfortable 33-seat margin. Despite Republicans having the advantage of running far more incumbents, Democratic House candidates have won more than a half million more votes and an even larger margin in races contested by both parties. Our recent analysis suggests that for Democrats to win a majority, they likely needed 53% of actual House votes and a 55% general voter preference for Democrats (to make up for the Republicans' incumbent advantage). In other words, House Democratic candidates likely needed to win some six million more popular votes than they actually did in order to win a majority.

New data from Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report helps explain why. If this presidential election had been decided by allocating electoral votes by congressional district, Mitt Romney would have handily defeated Barack Obama.
The core reason for this seemingly surprising outcome is that, as we have pointed out since the 1990s, the Republican vote is more efficiently distributed across the country. Democratic votes in turn are more concentrated in urban areas, resulting in more “wasted” votes. Add in the additional edge secured by Republicans with gerrymandered maps in several big states, and you have a recipe for a clash of mandates. On the one hand, you have President Obama winning a definitive re-election. On the other, you have an absolute majority of U.S. House seats held by Republicans representing districts that were carried by Mitt Romney.

Wasserman’s data is regularly being updated, but as of today shows Romney taking 213 districts (in which Republican House candidates won 207 races) and Obama 192 seats (in which Democratic candidates won 187). Presidential outcomes in the remaining 30 districts have yet to be determined, but Republican congressional candidates won 22 of them. Romney ultimately will likely carry about 230 districts and Obama only 205 – closely tracking what our Monopoly Politics 2012 report would have forecast.

I draw three conclusions from these numbers:

1) Compromise may remain difficult for structural reasons: Congressional rules and separation of powers are designed to promote compromises among our elected leaders. But in this highly partisan climate, we’re seeing less and less of it – and this year’s winner-take-all electoral rules have divided us even more, as indicated by the fact that only 11 of the 405 districts where we know the presidential winner will be represented by a candidate of the other party.

Obama won the presidency relatively decisively, yet a majority of House Members are Republicans who represent a district where Obama in fact lost to Romney. The two sides obviously have to work out a compromise -- with the U.S. Senate in the mix as well, of course -- but have clashing electoral mandates. Obama’s mandate is grounded more in voters and the Republicans’ mandate grounded more in geography, but both sides can claim legitimacy based on the current rules.

2) Don’t be surprised if more Republicans back allocating electoral votes by congressional district: Our current state-based winner-take-all district system is a disaster when it comes to equity and common sense, with four out of five states ignored in presidential elections and absolutely no indication of likely changes in the presidential swing states in the 2016 elections, as we have argued repeatedly. Add to it that for the third straight election, the results suggest that Democrats would have won the presidential election even if they lost the popular vote by a small margin-- another tilt in outcomes that threatens to undercut representative democracy.

It’s time to reform this system, with the best approach for 2016 being to give everyone an equal vote through more states passing the National Popular Vote plan. But don’t be surprised if you see more Republicans calling for allocating electoral votes by congressional district. Under such a system, electoral votes would be allocated based on which candidate won each of the 435 congressional districts, with two electoral votes going to the statewide vote winner. Obama this year carried three more states, meaning he would have won six more electoral votes from that pool of votes – but would have lost overall due to Romney’s much bigger edge in House districts.

Allocating electoral votes by district is rife with flaws, including the fact that it would still leave most voters ignored and would make it even more likely to elect a popular vote loser – as would have been the case this year. It's a non-starter because it creates a major skew for one party, violating the democratic principle of having a level playing field.

3) It’s time to change U.S. House elections to fair voting: These latest numbers underscore the partisan bias in U.S. House elections that I described in my recent Washington Post op-ed. While there’s great value in independent redistricting, gerrymandering is simply not the core explanation for either the rising partisanship of voters or the partisan U.S. House tilt. That core problem is that winner-take-all, single-member district elections inevitably leave most voters in one-sided districts, and the combination of Democrats living in urban areas and strongly Democratic majority-minority districts being created for fair representation inevitably results in most of the safest districts being heavily Democratic. The Republican vote as a result is more efficiently dispersed, producing an overall edge in seats that likely will continue as long as the national party division is close and as long as voters don't return to the "ticket-splitting" patterns of past years when many conservative Democrats could win in Republican-leaning districts.

Fair voting forms of proportional representation are modest, American solutions to this problem. Fully constitutional, our plans at FairVoting.US eliminate national bias while opening up all states to voter choice and fair representation.

To better understand fair voting, see the individual state plans we have drawn for congressional elections for every state at FairVoting.US. No state with at least three districts would be likely to end up with any of its voters represented by only one party. We would have shared representation of each district’s left, right and center.

In our Louisiana plan, for example, we take the state’s six seats and divide them into two districts, each with three seats. Winning a seat using a fair voting system like choice voting would take a little over a quarter over the vote. Suddenly, six ultra-safe districts for one party would be replaced with a system where every voter in every election would cast a meaningful vote – and receive a far more representative delegation than five conservative Republicans and one liberal Democrat. Similarly, our Massachusetts plan would create three districts, each with three seats, and would likely result in three Republican seats in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to the House since 1994 – yet still give a clear majority to Democratic candidates who likely would reflect more diversity of opinion within the Democratic party.

We could implement fair voting by simple statute. It’s time for serious discussion of real reform to balance representation of geography with voter intent.