FairVote Feed: Richie's Democracy Minute

Richie's May 5th Democracy Minute: Pluralities, Majorities and Fair Representation

Mon, 02 May 2011 13:00:21 -0700

Video of the day: Fair voting according to cats. Clever video compares the alternative vote (instant runoff voting) and first past the post (plurality voting).

Voting thumbnails of the day: California Top Two race on Tuesday reverses first-round outcome – a more democratic result that won’t be possible in Sept. 13th special election for U.S. House in Nevada. ..UK to vote for regional and local government with non winner-take-all voting methods, and could change method of election for House of Commons. ..Canadian elections remain under microscope. .. Redistricting and recount wars continue.

The (long) minute: What is the goal of an election? To elect representatives to fairly reflect views? To provide a means for people to come together and debate how best to achieve the common good? To establish a government that can make decisions and be held accountable in the next election? To have losers accept that they’ve lost?

It’s a combination of all of these, but voting rules can provide very different weighting to these values. Classically, the debate has been between backers of winner-take-all elections in which 51% of voters can represent 100% of power and of proportional representation in which 51% elects a majority, but like-minded voters in the minority can earn a seat at the table.

Within winner-take-all elections and one winner, there are three basic options that are workable in contested elections: plurality voting (the most commonly used system in the United States and one that oddly is also called “first past the post” --odd in that there is no post, and the winner can have a very small percentage of the vote); variations of two-round runoff elections, where typically the top two face off and the final round winner is sure to win a majority of those who show up; and variations of instant runoff voting that seek to simulate a traditional runoff in one trip to the polls. Today’s minute reviews news that shows how these differences can play out.

In California, a special election to fill the Assembly District 4 vacancy was won this week by Republican Beth Gaines over Democrat Dennis Campanale, 55% to 45%. The race was a top two runoff. In the first round, Campanale had been the only Democrat running and had led the field with 31.3%, nearly 9% ahead of Gaines with 22.7%. In that first round, seven Republicans ran and together won 69% in this Republican-leaning district, but if the election had been by plurality, Campanale would have won.

With a runoff, however, Campanale lost, as expected. The fact that he made it relatively close speaks to the fact that Gaines is seen as very conservative. She had earned a spot in the runoff with less than 23%, just 1% ahead of another Republican, with five other Republicans trailing them. Was she really the most representative Republican? We don’t know because the system didn’t provide a clear answer – one that instant runoff voting would have answered better. But she was more representative of the district than Campanale, as proven in the runoff.

Contrast California's majority runoff with Nevada, where special election rules for the upcoming U.S. House vacancy election on September 13th are drawing controversy because the election will be a one-round plurality vote. The outcome easily could be like the first round in California's District 4 race– a low-plurality winner who would lose if matched against his or her top opponent. Some theorize the plurality voting rules may help conservative Republican Sharron Angle, but it also might help a liberal Democrat in this Republican-leaning district – just as the same rules helped boost a Republican candidate win in Hawaii's U.S. House vacancy election a year ago (who then lost under more democratic rules in November with the Democratic Party vote no longer split). The roll of the plurality voting dice in September will decide.

This week's elections in Denver also showcase limitations with top two runoffs: runoff elections protect majority rule between the top two and give voters more freedom from "spoilers" in an admirable way, but the abrupt elimination of all but the top two is not as fair as a more gradual elimination that can be done with instant runoff voting. In Denver's city elections this week, the top two candidates in the races for mayor and for clerk and recorder together earned about 60%, with in each race a third candidate narrowly behind the top two. That third-place finisher was potentially “spoiled” by candidates who trailed behind the top three candidates.

California has tried to deal with vote-splitting problems with “top two” rules in new system adopted by voters last year. But as demonstrated by Beth Gaines' election in the District 4 race -- with her victory tied to her narrow plurality “win” finishing second in the first round ahead of six Repubilcans --underscores that it will rather erratically do the job. Both major parties in California are understandably developing rules to try to boost their favorites before the first round to avoid vote-splitting, as discussed in this article by the California Independent Voter Network. FairVote last year did a policy analysis suggesting advancing more than two candidates from the first round and using instant runoff voting in the final round.

Notable news and links:

Washington Post’s “The Fix” on how Colorado congressional redistricting looks headed toward courts.
London’s richest man and big Tory donor gives big money to oppose alternative vote electoral reform referendum in the United Kingdom, while The Independent makes its editorial case for a yes, prime minister David Cameron brazenly deceives voters to the end and I have a pro-AV letter in the Financial Times
UK voters also will be voting with non-winner-take-all rules in several regions – single transferable vote (or "choice voting") for local elections in Northern Ireland and "mixed member proportional” voting in assembly elections in Wales and Scotland.
Canada ‘s distorted winner-take-all elections – Renard Sexton at New York Times' fivethirtyeight.com ,and Kari Chisolm in Blue Oregon
Wisconsin supreme court election recount has little impact on margin, but does not inspire the kind of confidence in election administration our voters deserve
Aspen on Tuesday held its city elections with traditional runoff rules after using instant runoff voting in 2009. Voter turnout was way down from the record high in 2009, and all races were won in first round. There was much talk of how to vote strategically in the city council races, as voting for two candidates meant that your second vote counted against your first choice – about a fifth of voters voted for only one candidate.

And that's our two-cups-of-coffee minute!

Richie's May 3rd Democracy Minute

Mon, 02 May 2011 13:00:32 -0700

There is a lot of valuable news and analysis that flows into my inbox in the course of a day. I'm starting a new feature where regularly I will share a few thoughts and links that caught my eye - with the expectation that this on average will take about a minute of your time.

International elections provide today's lead. In Canada, where parliamentary elections are held with U.S.-style winner-take-all rules, the Conservative Party earned a majority of seats - the first majority government in seven years. It national vote share was only 39.6%, and no party in Canada has won more than 41.3% of the national vote since the 1980's. That reality of modern Canadian politics helps explain why the New Democratic Party -- which in this election leaped ahead of the Liberal Party to become the official opposition for the first time -- supports proportional voting.

Our Canadian counterpart, FairVote Canada, analyzes yesterday's elections, and recently released two can't-miss short videos (one on how many votes matter and another on the effect on smaller parties that cleverly make the case for proportional voting. Overseas, proportional voting continues to advance as part of the Arab Spring movement, with the National Dialogue in Jordan agreeing on the value of adopting proportional voting, as also being advanced in Tunisia and, we hope, Egypt.

The referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) in the United Kingdom is down to its final days. As a fitting coda to its abysmal coverage of the referendum campaign (as I spotlighted last week), the BBC today ran the quintessential "he said, she said" account of what the two campaigns are saying -- with at least four of the five lead points of the no campaign being absolutely false or highly deceptive, yet passively passed on by the BBC. The BBC and much of the British press sees "fair reporting" as parroting what each side says without independent evaluation, which has allowed Prime Minister David Cameron to lead an opposition campaign grounded in distortion and falsehood.

The case for voting for AV in Britain is simple. The country no long has a two-party system, yet has a voting system that only works with two choices. In the 2010 elections, more than half of its constituencies elected winners who did not win a majority of the vote and may well have lost if paired only against their top opponent. A third of voters did not vote for the Labor Party or Conservative Party, continuing a clear trend summarized well in this chart original published in the Economist.

Like Canada, the UK deserves proportional voting. Short of that, it at least should replace plurality voting with a majority system where voters won't have to vote tactically and winners are more likely to be representative of their constituency. The alternative vote is a sensible means to accommodate increased voter choice and I hope UK voters surprise pollsters and vote for change on Thursday -- you can follow the latest from advocates at Yes to Fairer Votes.

California Watch reported reported on our recent study on statewide recounts. As explained in our report's policy recommendations, we agree with Verified Voting on the value of risk-limiting post-election audits -even as we point out how few votes are likely to change in a typical statewide recount. The ongoing recount in Wisconsin's recent state supreme court race underscores our findings. The recount is exposing ways we should improve how we handle and record ballots, but the margin between the leading candidates has barely changed. With more than half of votes recounted, the frontrunner's margin has been reduced by only 148 votes from his pre-recount lead of 7,316 votes Absent uncovering of major fraud or error, a similar small percentage margin change is likely in the final count -- quite in keeping with our report's findings, which found that victory margins changed by fewer than 500 votes in 15 of 18 statewide recounts in the 2000-2009 decade.

Keep an eye on our latest tweets on FairVote news and on redistricting around the country and look this week for the release of new FairVote reports on congressional elections and women's representation in legislatures in addition to new FairVote's "super district" maps showing how proportional voting in multi-seat legislative districts would provide every voter in every election with a meaningful vote - as recently highlighted in introducing super district maps for Virginia, Louisiana and New Jersey.

And that's today's minute.