The biggest city in the US is joining a voting reform movement.

"New York City has become the latest -- and most populous  -- city to adopt ranked-choice voting, a major milestone for voting reform efforts.

"Voters in the city overwhelmingly approved Ballot Question 1 on Tuesday, enabling voters to begin using ranked-choice voting in local primary and special elections beginning in 2021.

"New York City joins 20 other cities around the country, as well as multiple states, that have already started using this method in various elections. Maine, notably, implemented ranked-choice voting for the first time in a federal election in 2018.

"Ranked-choice voting works much like its name suggests. Instead of picking just one candidate on the ballot, voters rank their top five in order of preference.

"Once those votes are cast, they are counted in the following way, Lee Drutman explains:

"Ranked-choice voting lets voters mark their first-choice candidate first, their second-choice candidate second, their third-choice candidate third, and so on. Each voter has only one vote but can indicate their backup choices: If one candidate has an outright majority of first-place rankings, that candidate wins, just like a traditional election.

"But if no candidate has a majority in the first round, the candidate in last place is eliminated. Voters who had ranked that candidate first have their votes transferred to the candidate they ranked second. This process continues until a single candidate gathers a majority.

"Advocates of ranked-choice voting argue that it has many benefits. Because candidates need broad-based support to win, they are forced to engage with a wide range of voters, including groups that do not always see outreach from political campaigns. Additionally, studies have found that ranked-choice voting increases the number of minority and women candidates who vie for elected office, partly because ranked-choice campaigning is less negative.

"In addition to shifting the nature of campaigns, ranked-choice voting also gives voters more freedom to consider the full slate of candidates. Because of the way that votes are tallied, an individual could feel free to pick their favorite option without worrying that in doing so they are acting as a 'spoiler' who contributes to the victory of an unfavorable or unpopular candidate.

"Opponents of ranked-choice voting argue that it complicates the process too much, both when it comes to voting and tabulating results.

"Overall, New York City’s decision to adopt the ballot measure — though it will only affect a specific set of races — will serve as a good test case for ranked-choice voting, and it signals growing momentum for this voting reform."

The rest of the story:
✓ New York City adopts ranked-choice voting, a major milestone for the reform by Li Zhou (Vox)
✓ How does ranked choice voting work? (The Committee for Ranked Choice Voting)
✓Voter Choice for Massachusetts is a campaign to place a question on the 2020 ballot that would bring Ranked Choice Voting to Massachusetts elections starting in 2022.

Where's the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act when you need it?

Here's an account, from a judicial ruling, of the experience of a citizen trying to vote in Georgia:

"Prior to voting early in the November 6, 2018 election, Mr. Oren checked Defendant Kemp’s Secretary of State website, which informed Mr. Oren that he could vote if he brought proof of citizenship to the polling station. On October 16, 2018, Mr. Oren went to his designated early-voting polling location in Fulton County. He checked in with a poll worker and showed her his valid United States passport as proof of citizenship. The poll worker directed Mr. Oren to another election official, who informed Mr. Oren that she would need to call yet another person to change his status from 'pending' to 'active' so that he could vote. While Mr. Oren waited, the official was unable to reach the intended person on the phone and informed Mr. Oren that he could continue to wait or come back another time to vote. No one offered Mr. Oren an option to cast a provisional ballot. Mr. Oren did not want to wait any longer and left."

It seems to me clear that Brian Kemp and his associates are engaged in a criminal conspiracy. RICO laws should be applied.

College dropouts

The next time someone starts talking about the constitutional sanctity of the Electoral College, think about the image below. The EC, as we all know, is a work of political genius. Because, you know, the Founders.

Getting rid of the Electoral College is another one of the many things that's "too hard" or "too complicated" in present-day America. But surely a nation that succeeded in ridding itself of slavery,

achieved universal suffrage and killed off Jim Crow (at least for a while) can send this anti-democratic relic of an eighteenth century political compromise to the political dumpster.

Of course, even after the Electoral College is gone, there will be a lot of work left to do if we are to live up to our ideal of one person, one vote: gerrymandering will need to be tackled; other barriers to voting, such as onerous identification requirements, will have to be eliminated; nor will suffrage ever be universal until felons and ex-felons are guaranteed the right to vote. Much more difficult, admittedly perhaps "too hard" and "too complicated," will be democratizing the Senate (possibly by abolishing the upper chamber and replacing the Congress with a unicameral legislative body -- there is no reason, beyond historical accident, why the residents of a state with, say, 360,000 citizens should have the same representation as a state with, say, 36,000,000 -- and the runaway imperial presidency must be reduced to its original role as executor of the legislature's intentions -- the Founders, royalists though most of them were, never intended to create a serial king.

But first things first. If the constitutional requirement can't be met to amend it out of existence, there are other ways to upend it, such as the National Popular Vote interstate compact already adopted by 11 states and the District of Columbia and close to passage in 11 more, a solution as jerry-rigged as the problem it is attempting to fix but at least a step in the right direction until we're able to solve our political issues like grown-ups.

Extra credit:
✓ Former secretary of labor Robert Reich warns that hundreds of thousands are being disenfranchised: Jim Crow Is Making a Furious Comeback by Robert Reich (AlterNet).
✓ After the 2010 election, state lawmakers nationwide started introducing hundreds of harsh measures making it harder to vote. The new laws range from strict photo ID requirements to early voting cutbacks to registration restrictions: New Voting Restrictions in America by The Brennan Center for Justice.
✓ 6.1 million citizens will be barred from voting on election day: Why Prisoners and Ex-Felons Should Retain the Right to Vote by Gregg D. Caruso PhD (Psychology Today).
✓ The upper house is a malapportioned, anti-democratic embarrassment: The United States Senate is a failed institution by Ian Millhiser (Think Progress).
✓ Congress is too dysfunctional to act as a check on executive power: Abolish the Senate. It's the only way to rein in modern presidents. by John Bicknell (Washington Post).
✓ The President's threats against North Korea expose the many dangers of the White House's post-9/11 powers. Here's what Congress must do: Don’t Just Impeach Trump. End the Imperial Presidency by Jeet Heer (New Republic).

Addendum:
Neil Freeman redrew the state borders in another attempt to help us think about the undemocratic nature of our federal system as currently organized. Currently, "[t]he largest state is 66 times as populous as the smallest," Freeman explains on his site, "and has 18 times as many electoral votes." His map is based on 2010 Census data, which records a population of 308,745,538 for the United States. Divided up among 50 equal states, that's a little over six million people per state. Made equal by population, they might look like this:

Electoral college reform (fifty states with equal population) by Neil Freeman (Fake Is The New Real)

And:

Body slamming the electorate

Absentee balloting, as it was originally conceived, is a good and necessary thing. There is no reason that people away from home, disabled or living in nursing facilities should be denied their franchise. But the abuse of absentee voting by both parties has reached a point where in many districts the outcome of elections are determined by party loyalists who have not bothered to consider and compare the actual candidates.

A dramatic example of this is happening this week in Montana's special congressional election, where the local sheriff’s office cited GOP candidate Greg Gianforte on a charge of misdemeanor assault for “body slamming” journalist Ben Jacobs after he asked the Republican about the GOP's recently passed health-care bill. It is more than likely that at least some voters undecided or leaning toward Gianforte will reconsider their vote in light of his seeming inability to control himself under pressure. How likely do you think it is that the outcome of the race will be changed, however, when you consider that election analysts estimate that roughly two-thirds of early votes had already been cast before one of the candidates faced an assault charge?

One possible way of fixing early voting abuse would be to permit absentee ballots to be mailed no sooner than three days before election day; ballots with earlier postmarks would be disqualified. To keep party operatives from rounding up ballots weeks in advance and bulk mailing them within the deadline, absentee ballots would also be required under penalty of law to be signed on the day they were mailed. Such a deadline would not seriously inconvenience any of the intended users of absentee voting, those actually absent from their precincts, while allowing campaigns to play out to the fullest extent possible.

Background: How the 2012 Presidential Election Demonstrated Why the Electoral College Must Be Reformed...

...and One Way It Can Be Done

"The United States has reached an unprecedented level of inequality in presidential elections. In 2012, only 10 states drew the major party presidential candidates for post-convention campaign events, and those same 10 states attracted 99.6% of all general election television advertising spending by the campaigns and their allies. The remaining 41 spectator states (counting the District of Columbia) included all 38 states that had been similarly overlooked in 2008. This article details these inequalities and their roots in state statutes allocating electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. It argues that states should end this inequality by enacting the National Popular Vote interstate compact, which would ensure that it is the popular vote in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that determines who becomes the president." -- Robert Richie and Andrea Levien of FairVote.

The rest of the story: The Contemporary Presidency - How the 2012 Presidential Election Has Strengthened the Movement for the National Popular Vote Plan by Robert Richie and Andrea Levien (FairVote).

"Takin' Care Of Business":

What it means depends a whole lot on who says it.

A new organization is needed that will do two things:

1. provide training to ordinary citizens on the ins-and-outs of running for and serving in public office (this would not only identify potential candidates but help to train staff members for campaigns and officeholders); * and,
2. more crucially, grant subsidies to working people so that they can afford to seek office (an income cutoff of $250K would make 98% of the population eligible for some degree of help, depending on circumstances).

It is nearly impossible for a salaried person -- or a person bearing the burden of responsibilities (for children or elderly parents, for example) -- to expend without assistance the time and resources demanded by public service. The result is that we have a system of governance in which most elected officials are remote by reason of economic advantage from the people they purport to represent.

Take Congress. (Please.)

According to Capital Hill's Roll Call, Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, quite a different sum than you could put together from 535 Americans chosen at random.

Not to pick on Democrats, but with a median net value of $878,500 in 2010 the self-described defenders of the middle class were worth more than nine times the typical American household (most of these figures are drawn from reporting on CNN). Twenty-one congressional Democrats have average assets of more than $10 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (Barack Obama's average net worth of $7.3 million is nothing to sneeze at either, especially when compared to the median household net worth in America, which in 2009 was $96,000).

Republicans are a little richer, but not by much. Their median net is $957,500 on average and 35 of them have assets totaling more than $10 million. **

That's net worth: congresspersons' $174,000 salary also blows away the median household income of $49,445 for 2010 -- for most people, being elected to Congress would result in a healthy jump in income. And members' net worth has been on the rise since 2004, unlike ordinary Americans, who have seen their wealth decline (the center's figures don't even include a primary home when calculating net worth for politicians, but the Census, in calculating net worth for average Americans, includes all real estate assets, meaning the divide between the people and their representatives is even more pronounced than it appears).

Dishearteningly though not surprisingly, less than 2% of the Congress comes from the working class, a figure that's stayed constant for the last century.

There's no reason not to think that similar disparities exist at every level of government.

This is not to say that it might not be easier for a wealthy person to be an effective advocate for the interests of poor, working and middle class Americans than for a camel, say, to pass through the eye of a needle. But it's pretty clear that in the aggregate, elected officials inhabit a rarified economic environment that at the least makes it more difficult to keep the struggles of ordinary folks in perspective. It seems obvious that politicians from the working and middle classes will be more likely to concentrate on bread-and-butter domestic economic issues than will people whose principal domestic issue is whether the help all have their green cards.

It will take more than training and funding average Americans to make representative government more democratic. We need publicly financed elections, controls on media access, weekend voting, and so on. In the meantime, the suggestion I made many years ago that that the only political reform we really need is to limit the income of every elected official to the level of the average person he or she represents is still a pretty good one.

* Organizations Right and Left already exist that offer assistance and training to people who have decided to run for office. But what's needed is a national network of training centers, possibly operated through existing organizations like churches and labor unions, that broadens its appeal to include people who are just beginning to entertain the idea of service in government.

** You are permitted a moment to savor the irony that the $448 million fortune of the richest rep, Darrell Issa, is built on vehicle anti-theft devices.

What's to be done?

One idea: How about agreeing to a list of immediately achievable demands -- say, unfettered voter registration, weekend balloting, instant runoffs, election of the President and Vice President by majority vote not the electoral college, public financing of campaigns, free media for candidates, perhaps proportional representation -- driving a national march beginning in, say, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland OR, Seattle, Houston, Miami and Portland ME -- merging in various centers along the way -- say, Denver, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland, St Louis, New Orleans, Atlanta, New York City and lesser venues in between -- and culminating on Pennsylvania Avenue with the firm commitment not to leave until all demands are met? The logistical problems would be formidable but not insurmountable, and the Occupy Movement already has organizers and infrastructure in place all over the country.

Obviously, there are many problems -- the crumbling infrastructure, the slashing of budgets for public services, the unjust tax structure, the misallocation of public resources to military spending and corporate giveaways, the destruction of free public education, the absence of affordable universal health care -- that impact much more directly on people's lives. But the adoption of measures to make the country more democratic and thus more responsive to the demands of its citizens would be a solid beginning down the path to solving deeper and more intractable problems.

There is an army of outraged people in this nation, many of them unemployed and facing bleak futures. Are they ready to enlist?

Elections: The Oscar for Best Voting System Goes To...

There's a new method for choosing Best Picture: instant runoff voting, a system that would also make political elections more fair.

by Rob Richie (Yes! 2010-03-05)

In 1939, the Academy of Motion Pictures used
instant runoff voting to select from ten strong Best Picture contenders, including The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Of Mice and Men. Gone with the Wind was the consensus choice.

A growing number of Americans resent the constraints of our dominant two-choice, two-party electoral system. It contributes to political gamesmanship in Washington, reinforces the power of established parties, and restricts the impact of independent candidates and voters, since voters are encouraged to choose “the lesser of two evils” rather than their preferred candidate.

So where can we turn? Surprisingly, part of the answer lies in Hollywood. The Academy of Motion Pictures and the Producers Guild of America are using a new method for selecting 2009’s Best Picture: instant runoff voting.

Last year, the Academy decided to nominate ten movies for best picture rather than five, as it did until 1943. But it wanted to make sure the final winner was representative of majority opinion among Academy voters—theoretically, an unpopular movie could still win a simple plurality vote if only eleven percent of voters picked it.

Enter instant runoff voting (IRV, also known as ranked choice voting). Academy voters this year ranked the ten nominated movies from their favorite to least favorite in order of preference, one to ten. Those rankings are being tallied according to an “American Idol” kind of algorithm. Every voter has one and only one vote, but they indicate their backup choices in case their first choice can’t win. In each round, the movie with the fewest votes is eliminated, and that movie’s backers have their vote added to the totals of their next ranked choice. This continues in a series of “instant runoffs” until the winner gains a majority of votes.

For the Oscars, that means the best picture won’t go to a movie that might lead in first choices, but which most Oscar voters see as undeserving. Instead, a movie will need to do well enough in first choices to stay in the running, but also keep building support as weaker movies are eliminated. At the end of the day, the winning movie will be more likely to be the consensus choice.

Oscar elections are headline-grabbing—the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today (with an interactive animation) all ran profiles of the Oscars’ use of IRV—but what’s even more exciting is the prospect of similar changes in the way we choose our elected leaders. There, IRV can have a truly transformational impact, ensuring that a majority of voters actually support winning candidates and encouraging the growth of third parties by solving the spoiler problem (most famously illustrated by Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign, which tipped the race away from Al Gore).

IRV is still a winner-take-all voting system that doesn’t represent political minorities; it won’t fully provide the fair representation we should keep fighting for. But IRV does allow darkhorse candidates a chance to make their case—and to demonstrate their real levels of support, without results being skewed by fears of spoiling elections.

It’s a proven system: major cities such as Oakland, Minneapolis, and Memphis use it, pro-IRV laws have passed in North Carolina and Colorado, and many major private associations use it, including student governments at nearly 60 college and universities.

City councils in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro, California recently voted to implement IRV in their November elections, including a highly competitive mayoral vote in Oakland. San Francisco will also hold its seventh IRV election, and with other California cities—including Los Angeles, Long Beach, and San Jose—seriously talking about IRV, a change in statewide elections may soon be within reach. IRV has also made headway in Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, and Minnesota at both the city and state level.

IRV is gaining proponents around the world. It has been used for decades to elect leaders in Ireland and Australia. In February, the British House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to hold a national referendum in 2011 on adopting IRV (there called "the alternative vote") for its elections. The bill has to pass the House of Lords, but if it does, the United Kingdom will join New Zealand in allowing voters to decide how to elect their most powerful leaders (in the 1990s, New Zealanders voted to use proportional representation; in a referendum to take place next year they will choose between that system and IRV).

IRV has had to play defense as well. Frustrated losers in mayoral and county executive races in Pierce County, Washington, Burlington, Vermont, and Aspen, Colorado all led efforts in the past year to repeal IRV. With a state law change solving the “spoiler” issue in a different way in Pierce County, voters there repealed IRV in 2009. In Burlington, IRV was repealed by a narrow margin in a low turnout race that many saw as a referendum on an unpopular mayor who had been the only candidate ever to win an IRV election there.

Of course, IRV is not the only election reform that’s necessary; other ideas for fairer elections are also generating energy and excitement. Following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which opened the door for huge increases in corporate spending in politics, broad and influential coalitions working toward constitutional change. Meanwhile, the filibuster rule in the Senate looks increasingly vulnerable, universal voter registration is gaining growing support, and the National Popular Vote plan for president continues its state-by-state progress toward effectively sidelining the Electoral College.

Change breeds change, and the 2010s are promising to be a decade of reform. Stay tuned on Oscar night!

---

Rob Richie wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Rob is the executive director of FairVote, a non-profit organization that researches and advocates election reforms that increase voter turnout, accountable governance, and fair representation.

See, also: Electoral Reform: Instant Runoffs by John Gabree (Impractical Proposals 2004-12-29)

Change Watch: In 2008, the Left sized up Barack Obama with all the critical acumen of prepubescent girls at a Justin Bieber concert

Is this the end of the affair?

During the late presidential campaign, if you asked progressive promoters of Barack Obama's ambitions did they favor maintaining the occupation of Iraq or expanding the war in Afghanistan or tossing missiles at Iran, the invariable answer was no. When it was pointed out that these positions were those of their candidate, the reply was always the same: some variation of, he's just saying that to get elected.

Do you support the death penalty? No. Your candidate does. He's just saying that to get elected. Do you think the wording of the second amendment invites everyone to pack a gun? No. Your candidate does. He's just saying that to get elected. Do you believe that affordable, universal health care -- single payer, Medicare For All, whatever you want to call it -- should be "off the table?" No. Your candidate does. Nah. He's just saying that to get elected.

The Obama campaign was remarkably light on specifics; instead empty slogans about "hope" and "change" offered thin soup to a populace that was starving for real change after enduring four decades of national decline. But Obama needed to keep things vague if he had a prayer of getting elected. Or so said progressive converts to the Church of Hope.

Having made an act of faith in Obama, the Left demanded nothing of Him in return, no firm plans to demilitarize, no programs advancing social and economic justice, no specifics about affordable universal health care, no loaves, no fishes. Missing was even a shred of the agnosticism that in 1964 prevented the New Left from going more than "Part of the Way with LBJ." In 2008, disorganized, demoralized, powerless, progressives fell on their knees before what they hoped was the messiah, really only a political televangelist with a promise we would all ride to Washington in a gold Cadillac if we'd just send him our money and take communion on election day.

Though some on the left are still ready to drink the KoolAid, a growing number of liberals have come to understand that the Obama administration is not the Second Coming of the New Deal. Shock and disappointment over Obama's performance as president has begun to give way to a realization that Obama is no more nor less than a professional politician, a breed that will dance to the playlist of whoever hires the dj. It's our job to turn the hoses on Obama just as we would on any errant politician (imagine the hoo-ha if it were President McCain destroying Afghanistan or giving away the store to Wall Street). "People," Ian Welsh wrote heatedly the other day (so heatedly, I felt obliged to clean up a few typos),

Obama is not and never has been a left winger. Nor is he a Nixonian or Eisenhower Republican; that would put him massively to the left of where he is and to the left of the majority of the Democratic party. Instead he is a Reaganite, something he told people repeatedly.

Until folks get it through their skulls that Obama is not and never was a liberal, a progressive or left wing in any way, shape or form they are going to continue misdiagnosing the problem. That isn’t to say Obama may or may not be a wimp, but he always compromises right, never left, and his compromises are minor. He always wanted tax cuts. He gave away the public option in private negotiations near the beginning of the HCR fight, not the end. He never even proposed an adequate stimulus bill. He bent arms, hard, to get TARP through.

He’s a Reaganite. It’s what he believes in, genuinely. Moreover, he despises left wingers, likes kicking gays and women whenever he gets a chance, and believes deeply and truly in the security state (you did notice that Obama administration told everyone to take their objections to backscatter scanners and groping and shove them where the sun don’t shine, then told you they’re thinking of extending TSA police state activities to other public transit?).

Let me put it even more baldly. Obama is, actually, a bad man. He didn’t do the right thing when he had a majority, and now that he has the excuse of a Republican House, he’s going to let them do bad thing after bad thing. This isn’t about “compromise," this is about doing what he wants to do anyway, like slashing social security. The Senate, you remember, voted down the catfood commission. Obama reinstituted it by executive fiat.

If the left doesn’t stand against Obama and doesn’t primary him, it stands for nothing and for nobody (Obama isn’t about compromise by Ian Welsh 2010-12-03).

It hardly matters, though, whether Obama is a good man or not. In politics, results are the bottom line; actions matter more than professed intentions. The president can get away with pursuing policies that are good for the oligarchs and bad for the majority, that hurt average Americans, that jeopardize the future of the country, because there are no effective counterweights to the power of the militarists and the corporations. The end of Don't Ask Don't Tell showed that organized action still can be effective, especially if the monetary stakes aren't high, but taking on the security state and the corporations is going to require a revolutionary change in our politics. Where possible, this will involve taking control of state and local Democratic Party structures. It will require adding muscle to existing organizations, like unions and progressive research and action groups, and building new ones, including a progressive political party unbeholden to corporate power. Coalition-building on a grand scale will be needed to maximize the strength of a very fragmented opposition. Small-scale, local political reforms -- publicly financed campaigns, instant runoffs, weekend voting, proportional representation -- will be essential to making political institutions more responsive.

Yes, the left must stand against Obama and "primary him" (there's a coinage for you). Someone with stature and credibility will have to make a career sacrifice in the primaries if the president is to be forced into issuing firm promises in exchange for votes (Howard Dean probably won't do it, though he has to be outraged by the administration's conservatism; Russ Feingold's idealism seems highly selective; but Dennis Kucinich might be willing to take on the apostate's role, especially if he is redistricted out of his seat in Congress -- it's not as though there'll be a job waiting for him in this administration's apolitical and corporatist cabinet).

But a primary challenge, though politically vital, is a loser (think Ted Kennedy vs  Jimmy Carter). The really difficult and really crucial challenge will come in the general election. The progressive majority in this country has to stop looking to the Democratic Party to get the country back on the track -- stretching from the Bill of Rights to the Great Society -- to expanding freedom, equality and economic justice. This is not your grandfather's Democratic Party, or your father's; it is fatally compromised, in the thrall of  a moneyed class that cares only to increase its dominion. To succeed, a progressive party would require sacrifice, dedication and long-term thinking. It might not win tomorrow (think John Fremont, although he did come in second*), but it is not hard to imagine that in crisis, and we are in crisis, it could transform our political landscape (think Abraham Lincoln). Even in the short run, as is demonstrated by the history of political organizations as diverse as the Socialist Party and New York's Liberals, the existence of a progressive alternative to business-as-usual would have a positive effect on our politics.  Barring a third party run by moneybags Michael Bloomberg, a candidate fronting a new progressive party would be a loser, too; but in the longer term, if our politics don't get more ideological (as distinct from partisan), our slow decline as a nation will not be reversed.

* And picture this: During the 1856 presidential campaign, Republican Fremont refused to answer charges that he was a Roman Catholic -- he wasn't -- because he did not wish to advance the cause of prejudice.

See, also:
Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report by Mike Lux (Open Left 2010-12-22)
Barack Obama is NOT your boyfriend. Ergo, he didn't dump you. by Paul Rosenberg (Open Left 2010-12-06)
The Great Success of Partisan “Overreach” by Jon Walker (Fire Dog Lake 2010-12-24)
Real Family Values: Nine Progressive Policies to Support Our Families by Sarah van Gelder (YES! Magazine 2010-11-25)
Action, Hope, 2011 by Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nation 2010-12-23)

Democracy: More instant runoffs this November

On November 2, three cities in Alameda County -- Oakland, Berkeley and San Leandro -- will join San Francisco in choosing candidates by a method known as ranked-choice voting or, more widely, instant runoff.

San Francisco has used instant runoffs since 2004 (see, Election Reform: Instant Runoffs, Impractical Proposals 2004-12-29). Under the system, voters may, if they wish, rank their top three choices from among the candidates. If no one achieves a majority in the first tally, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, that candidate's voters' next-ranked choices are distributed among the remaining contestants, and the ballots are counted again. Eliminations and recounting continue until a candidate reaches 50 percent, plus one.

Proponents of the instant runoff say that it saves money and resources by eliminating the need for conventional runoffs on another day. With an instant runoff, the eventual winner is guaranteed to have the support of a majority of people casting ballots. It also helps to advance democracy because, as a special election, a traditional runoff ordinarily will have a lower turnout than a general election.

Last December, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen approved a computer system developed by Sequoia Voting Systems for ranked-choice voting. In April, a challenge to San Francisco's instant runoffs was rejected by a Federal judge.

Alameda County has set up a website, Ranked-Choice Voting, to explain the new system to voters in English, Spanish and Chinese, with faqs, a newsletter and soon, inevitably, an iPhone app. Other county efforts to familiarize voters with the new system will go on throughout the summer and fall.

If instant runoffs work as well as predicted this November, other cities, possibly including Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pasadena, San Jose and Sacramento, can be expected to follow suit. And a successful reform of one kind makes it easier to contemplate others, such as proportional representation, weekend voting, consolidating elections to lower costs and increase turnout, and publicly-funded campaigns, that would also tend to make the system fairer and, in many cases, cheaper both for taxpayers and candidates.

Electoral Politics: New Labor Party Emerging In North Carolina

by Julie Rose

The passage of the new health care bill is expected to have a wide-ranging effect on members of Congress during the next cycle of elections. In North Carolina, one of the nation's most powerful labor unions has decided to play a bigger role in the campaigning. The SEIU is helping to create a new political party to challenge several Democrats they helped elect just two years ago.
Listen to the Story. Transcript.

Reform: Can the Senate II

Two-hundred and ninety bills passed by the House of Representatives this year, some major, some minor, have seen no action by the Senate.

According to a report by The Hill, "The list of stalled bills includes both major and minor legislation: health care reform; climate change; food safety; financial aid for the US Postal Service; a job security act for wounded veterans; a Civil War battlefield preservation act; vision care for children; the naming of a federal courthouse in Iowa after former Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa); a National Historic Park named for President Jimmy Carter; a bill to improve absentee ballot voting; a bill to improve cybersecurity; and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act." Nor does that take into account the dozens of presidential appointees still awaiting Senate confirmation.

Government is not broken. The Democratic Party is not broken. The Senate is broken. It will stay broken as long as it misapportioned -- as long one citizen ≠ one vote, as long as .5 million people in Wyoming have the same ballot power as 37 million Californians. It will stay broken until senators are chosen by the people instead of the corporate oligarchy, until it is no longer America's most exclusive country club, until campaign finance reform levels the playing field. Fixing it won't be easy. But until it's fixed, it will be all but impossible to fix anything else.

See, also How to fix the Senate? by Mack McClarty, Norman J. Ornstein, Mark J. Penn, Warren Rudman, Sarah Binder and Forrest Maltzman, Dana Perino, and Rob Richie (The Washington Post, 2010-02-21)

Democracy: Can the Senate

If we don't keep in mind what a working democracy would look like we won't achieve even the minimum changes we need to address our most pressing problems. It might be widely understood that the Senate is a failure as an instrument of governance, but, okay, we can't can it yet.

In the meantime, reform is the word of the day. Campaign finance reform. Electoral college reform. And, this week, filibuster reform. A point of order, supported by 51 votes, could get rid of the filibuster today. More likely, we'll have to wait til the Senate reorganizes next January. Will the Democrats, shellshocked from the shellacking they're going to suffer in November, still be in the mood for change by the new year? Will they even have 51 votes when they convene in January? While we wait to find out, we have Sen. Tom Harkin's chuckle-headed mini-reform to keep us busy.

Question: why doesn't the majority just call the minority's bluff and let them get out the bottled water and sleeping bags and filibuster if they dare? That would be fun.
Reforms should target two-party stranglehold, power of incumbency

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley doesn't think the most widely supported reforms go nearly far enough. "For decades," he wrote in an op-ed the other day,

political reform in the United States has largely meant campaign finance reform. It is a focus the political mainstream prefers, despite the fact that it is akin to addressing an engine with a design defect by regulating the fuel.

Many of our current problems are either caused or magnified by the stranglehold the two parties have on our political system. Democrats and Republicans, despite their uniformly low popularity with voters, continue to exercise a virtual monopoly, and they have no intention of relinquishing control. The result is that "change" is often limited to one party handing power over to the other party. Like Henry Ford's customers, who were promised any color car so long as it was black, voters are effectively allowed to pick any candidate they want, so long as he or she is a Democrat or Republican.

Both parties (and the media) reinforce this pathetic notion by continually emphasizing the blue state/red state divide. The fact is that the placement of members on the blue or red team is often arbitrary, with neither side showing consistent principles or values.

The Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down restrictions on corporate campaign giving has prompted some members of Congress to call for a constitutional amendment to reinstate the restrictions. But that would merely return us to the same status (and corrupted process) of a month ago.

We can reform our flawed system, but we have to think more broadly about the current political failure.

On this page, we have made the point that without third parties viable representative democracy is impossible. Turley argues forcefully that barriers to third parties need to be removed or modified, including complicated registration regulations and impossible petition requirements. "Moreover," he writes,

we should require a federally funded electronic forum for qualified federal candidates to post their positions and material for voters. And in races for national office, all candidates on the ballot in the general election should submit to a minimum of three (for Congress) or five (for the presidency) debates that would be funded and made publicly available by the government.

Turley's list of needed changes is no less urgent for being familiar. He would end gerrymandering and require that congressional districts be apportioned uniformly. He would make it easier to run in primaries and mandate that the top two vote-getters in primaries would be the candidates in the general even if they were from the same party. He would abolish the electoral college. And he would require a majority for a president to be elected.

If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, there should be a runoff of the two top vote-getters -- as is the custom in most other nations. This would tend to force candidates to reach out to third parties and break up monopoly control of the two parties.

None of this is likely to happen any time soon, unfortunately. The small states will not willingly give up power, no matter how unfair their advantages, so putting together the required majorities in the Congress is a lost cause. Turley might be willing to risk a constitutional convention despite the likelihood that it would be dominated by corporate interests and could get sidetracked by divisive social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

Finally, I think Turley agrees that third parties offer the best mechanism for pursuing reform. Voters who live in states like New York and California that already have third parties in place would do well to get involved. For people residing elsewhere, it's time to get to work. If you've been persuaded by the argument that a third party vote is "wasted," consider this: there is nothing to be lost by combining strategies, for example, challenging incumbents in the primaries and then supporting third party candidates in the general election if they better represent your political values. Democratic primary candidates like Jonathan Tasini for U.S. Senate in New York or Marcy Winograd who is running against security state representative Jane Harman in Califoria are worthy of support, although it would be helpful to the causes they believe in if they would commit to supporting independent and third party pro-labor and anti-war candidates in November if their primary bids fail.

The rest of the story: Reforms should target two-party stranglehold, power of incumbency by Jonathan Turley (Baltimore Sun 2010-02-15)

See, also: Rachel Maddow On Busting The Filibuster (video - MSNBC)

Con Law: Free speech is a human right

There are many proposals to extend the reach of democracy by revising the Constitution, from excising the electoral college to remodeling the Senate, but no proposal to amend the document has gained more traction than the effort to add a clause declaring that corporations should not be considered "persons" and cannot claim the same rights under the law as human beings. Since the Supremes based their recent ruling that corporate spending to influence elections is a free speech right flowing from the legal fiction that corporations are persons, the proposed amendment would undermine the foundation of the court's decision. A coalition of public interest organizations has launched a campaign to overturn the ruling. The groups -- Voter Action, Public Citizen, Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance -- say the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC poses a serious and direct threat to democracy. Their aim, through their constitutional amendment campaign, is to correct the judiciary's creation of corporate rights under the First Amendment over the past three decades.

For more information on the constitutional amendment campaign, visit Free Speech for People.
Listen to a press call on the Supreme Court decision.
View the Supreme Court ruling.

See, also: Politics: Representative Democracy and the Power of Corporations (Impractical Proposals 2010-01-24)

Actions:
Sign Campaign to Legalize Democracy's Move to Amend petition.
Spread the word by urging others to visit www.freespeechforpeople.org for information on the constitutional reform campaign.

Politics: Representative Democracy and the Power of Corporations

In a video announcing the launch of FreeSpeechForPeople.org, a new group that plans to organize against the U.S. Supreme Court's 5 to 4 decision on January 21, 2010 to remove limitations on corporations' election spending, Jamie Raskin, professor of constitutional law and the First Amendment at American University, Rep. Donna Edwards, and others discuss the meaning of the case for our democracy.
Here's Prof. Raskin on Democracy Now! and C-Span.

Among the many problems with the decision is the fact that the majority over-reached, deciding to throw out campaign financing laws merely because such restrictions offend the conservatives' ideological sensibilities. As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent, "The only relevant thing that has changed since [previous decisions limiting corporate speech] is the composition of this Court. Today’s ruling thus strikes at the vitals of stare decisis, the means by which we ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion" that "permits society to presume that bedrock principles are founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals." This is judicial activism at its most transparent and most virulent, and gives the lie to the fiction that it is the right wing justices who respect the Constitution and the rule of law.

Our democracy, already at risk because of the wealth and power of corporations, is further undermined by the court's action. Justice Stevens: "Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races."

Action was needed before this decision to make our society more democratic. We have pushed for many of them, from changes in electoral procedures to campaign finance reform. David Swanson outlines many of the needed actions on AfterDowningStreet, "including public financing of elections, free media for elections, shareholder control of corporations, public control of corporations, a variety of constitutional amendments including one to undo corporate personhood entirely, and an array of legislative steps, including Congressman Alan Grayson's bills to tax corporate political spending, to require public reporting of corporate spending on influencing public opinion, and to apply antitrust laws and other regulations to political committees. But ultimately we're going to have to build a popular movement around an amendment to the Constitution that we can force through Congress and the states."

In the long run, the action of the five ideologically driven members of the Supreme Court may provide the spark that ignites genuine reform. If it catches fire, a movement to democratize this nation will be hard to extinguish. FreeSpeechForPeople.org is organizing to do this. Partners include Voter Action, Public Citizen, The Center for Corporate Policy and the American Independent Business Alliance.

Action: Join FreeSpeechForPeople.org and sign the resolution to amend the Constitution to guarantee the first amendment rights of people.

See, also: Citizen Goldman-Sachs, Psychopath by Matt Osborne (Huffington Post 2010-01-24)

Small "d" Democracy: Instant Runoffs

We've discussed instant runoffs at length in past posts (see, for instance, Impractical Proposals 2004-12-29) because the strategy makes voting more efficient and the outcomes more democratic. Instant Runoff Voting: The road to better elections is a website dedicated to advancing the cause.

According to the site, "voters have approved IRV by significant margins in nearly all municipalities and cities where it has been introduced to voters. IRV legislation is also rapidly gaining support in a number of state legislatures.

IRV is a voting system for single-winner elections that guarantees majority winners in a single round of voting. IRV allows voters to vote their hopes instead of their fears by ranking candidates in order of preference without worrying about spoiler dynamics or wasted votes. IRV also eliminates the need for low-turnout, high-cost runoffs.

The site includes info on how IRV works, where it is used, who endorses it, and how you can get involved in improving elections on the local, state and federal levels.

Linkage: InstantRunoff.com

Clip File: Enjoyed the Health-Care Debate? We'll Keep Chasing Our Tails Until We Start Taking American Democracy Seriously by Joshua Holland (AlterNet 2009-12-01)

The Franchise: Making every vote count

The long lines at the polls become even more puzzling when you consider this:

According to Curtis Gans,

Despite lofty predictions by some academics, pundits, and practitioners that voter turnout would reach levels not seen since the turn of the last century, the percentage of eligible citizens casting ballots in the 2008 presidential election stayed at virtually the same relatively high level as it reached in the polarized election of 2004....The percentage of eligible citizens voting Republican declined to 28.7 percent down 1.3 percentage points from 2004. Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 percentage points from 28.7 percent of eligibles to 31.3 percent. It was the seventh straight increase in the Democratic share of the eligible vote since the party's share dropped to 22.7 percent of eligibles in 1980.

Increased absentee voting. Increased early voting. The Democrats up a little. The Republicans down a little. But overall, only a marginal increase in the number of voters. So why the long lines?

Although a greater interest among voters concentrated in particular precincts -- areas with large populations of black voters or students, for example -- might have created enough congestion at those polls to satisfy the media's expectation of a big turnout, isn't it more likely that the impact of the electoral college, leading as it does to the disenfranchisement of minority party voters in non-competitive states and the focus of campaigns on a handful of constituencies, led to longer lines in those few locales where voters knew their vote would count. I know people in California and New York, for example, who stayed home because they felt their choice for president was moot.

Some of the advance voting problems can be attributed to the limited number of polling places in most jurisdictions. Nevada, an exception, allowed voting in some grocery stores -- it would be helpful to know how that worked out, but most states required early voters to travel to some remote county office or isolated post office to drop off ballots. If unprecedented numbers of people voted in advance, it must have eased the pressure on election day; and repeated warnings over many months of an impending deluge of ballots gave election officials plenty of opportunity to get ready; so it still seems odd that there were the number of problems there were on voting day.

Not being much of a conspiracy theorist, I'm reluctant to sign on to the theory that there was a plot to depress the tally. But it would be useful to the proper management of future efforts of this sort if we knew what did happen this time. Even if it was only a matter of increased turnout in districts where voting mattered, there might be ways to prepare for such eventualities in coming elections.

In any event, if it is not going to continue to distort campaigns and alter outcomes of elections, we have to get rid of the electoral college. It's past time for every citizen's vote to count equally.

2008: Voting delayed is voting denied

Small thing, but the long lines at the polls, problem enough when we thought there had been substantial leaps in the numbers of citizens registering and voting, become even more puzzling when you consider this from Curtis Gans, director of the non-partisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate:

Despite lofty predictions by some academics, pundits, and practitioners that voter turnout would reach levels not seen since the turn of the last century, the percentage of eligible citizens casting ballots in the 2008 presidential election stayed at virtually the same relatively high level as it reached in the polarized election of 2004.

Increased absentee voting. Increased early voting. And, finally, only a marginal increase in the actual number of voters. So why the long lines? Could such a small overall bump be enough to jam the system on election day?

Possibly. It may be that, like the rest of our infrastructure, the mechanisms of voting are so creaky that the slightest stress overcomes them. But I doubt it. I think the problems are endemic. I blame the electoral college.

Our method of choosing presidents assures that the franchise is meaningful only for voters who reside in states where the outcome is in doubt right up to election day. In this year's contest, as in 2004, especially long lines were generated in those places where voters were told their votes would count. Some people in California, for example, have said that they skipped voting because they felt their choice for president was moot. Leaving aside districts with large African-American populations (who were doubly motivated to vote), because of the barrier of the electoral college it mattered whether you voted or not in only the few purple states.

Still, given the high numbers of people who cast ballots in advance -- which must have eased the pressure on election day -- and the repeated warnings over many months of an impending ballot deluge, it seems odd that election workers weren't better prepared. Not being much of a conspiracy theorist, I'm reluctant to conclude that the inconveniences were intended to depress the tally. Besides, most of the documented efforts at voter suppression were aimed at keeping voters away from polls with threats or frauds or purging them from voter rolls altogether. By comparison, exasperating them with long waits hardly seems worth the trouble.

Nonetheless, it would be useful to the proper management of future efforts of this sort if we knew what happened. Even if the delays were nothing more than the result of increased turnout in particular districts, there might be ways to prepare for such eventualities in coming contests.

And, whatever is discovered about the causes of long lines this time, we have to get rid of the electoral college. In election after election, the continued use of this relic of two-hundred-year-old political compromises disenfranchises minority voters in electorally non-competitive states and focuses campaigns on a handful of constituencies. It's past time for every citizen's vote to count equally: Big thing.

Electoral Reform: Instant Runoff Wins by a Landslide

Proportional representation and instant runoffs would go a long way toward making our electoral system more democratic. See Election Reform: Instant Runoffs (Impractical Proposals, 2004-12-29) and It's ba-a-a-a-ck: New Life for Conservative Initiative to Apportion Electoral Vote (Impractical Proposals, 2004-11-03). Proportional representation may be a hard concept for voters who have no experience other than with winner-takes-all ballots, but instant runoffs are so clearly superior to the method used in most U.S. elections, according to FairVote.org, that the alternative is gaining support across the country.

Many newly elected candidates are no doubt celebrating today, basking in the glow of their fresh victories. But they were not the only winners from Election Day 2007.

Instant runoff voting earned landslide support on ballots across the country. A whopping 77% of voters in Aspen (CO) voted to move to instant runoff voting. Sarasota (FL) voters topped that margin, voting 78% for IRV and prompting the Sarasota Herald Tribune to call the city "a model of election reform." In a particularly important election for next year, 65% of voters in Pierce County (WA) voted on a charter amendment to keep IRV on track for the hotly contested 2008 county executive race. In rural western Washington, voters in Clallam County narrowly rejected establishing IRV as an option in their charter.

Several cities also held ranked voting elections.

* San Francisco held its fourth IRV election overall, and its first for mayor, with first-round winners in three citywide races.

* Takoma Park (MD) smoothly held its first IRV election for mayor, with nary a single spoiled ballot out of more than 1,000 cast.

* The city of Hendersonville (NC), following in the footsteps of Cary (NC) in using IRV this fall, had a strong first IRV election for two city council seats. As one voter put it, "There's nothing to it."

* As a bonus, a graduate student in Cambridge (MA) won a city council seat in an upset victory under the choice voting system of proportional voting, now
in its seventh decade of use.

From FairVote.org

2008: Campaign Contributions Database

OpenSecrets.org's Race for the White House: Banking on Becoming President page compiles data on campaign contributions for the 2008 presidential election. Candidate profiles include total funds raised and spent, cash on hand, debts, a breakdown of sources of funds (such as individual contributions), plus week-by-week comparisons, a donor lookup, contributions by industry, and other useful information. "After just three months of fundraising, the candidates for president in 2008 have already raised more than $150 million. No presidential money chase has ever started so quickly. By some predictions, the eventual nominees will need to raise $500 million apiece to compete -- a record sum. To find out where all this money is coming from, explore the options to the left." <http://www.opensecrets.org/>