FairVote Feed: Reforms

Look to Election Rules to Reverse Decline of Political Center

Fri, 11 May 2012 08:34:20 -0700

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)

Despite having one of the Senate’s more conservative voting records, Dick Lugar (R-IN) has not been a partisan ideologue. His landslide primary defeat to Tea Party-backed challenger Richard Mourdock is the latest sign that reaching across the aisle to build bipartisan policy has become a recipe for a shortened political career.

After a campaign in which Mourdock charged that Lugar was “President Obama’s favorite Republican,” Lugar defended “constructive compromise” and warned that “unrelenting” partisanship would paralyze American government. His remarks mirrored those of Olympia Snowe (R-ME) when she announced her retirement this spring. Snowe lamented that her approach to governance no longer fit an institution in which partisans “block the other side” and demand reflexive fealty to party.

Snowe called on Americans to see “strength in compromise, courage in conciliation, and honor in consensus-building.” But moderates are far more apt to be pilloried and purged than prized and protected. Lugar and Snowe are only the latest in a string of victims of a “do-not-compromise” stance that has been reinforced within both major parties by every new hardliner victory. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Joe Lieberman (D/I-CT), George Voinovich (R-OH), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Lincoln Chafee (R/I-RI), Arlen Specter (R/D-PA), and Bob Bennett (R-UT) are among high-profile senators whose history of bipartisanship led to retirement or lost reelection bids. The ranks of moderates in the House have been similarly depleted.

The decline of the middle in the Senate is especially significant given that its rules make one-party rule almost impossible. Because the Senate needs 60 votes to break a filibuster, moderates can assist the majority by voting for cloture or side against the majority until it tempers its proposals. They often inject restraint into a dialogue often soured by venomous rhetoric.

Yet as the divide between the parties has widened and solidified, moderates today face pressure to conform or retire. Those remaining face a dual threat: stronger challenges to holding onto their party’s nomination and uphill general elections in the “opposition territory” they disproportionately represent. It’s no accident that 2012’s most vulnerable Senate incumbents—Scott Brown (R-MA), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO)—all represent states that their presidential nominee will likely lose. Overcoming that partisan challenge has become harder in every passing election.

Sen. Snowe has rightly faulted the “corrosive trend of winner-take-all politics,” in which winning parties fail to forge bipartisan solutions. But we must go further to understand this behavior. Winner-take-all politics is grounded in winner-take-all voting, in which a plurality of votes earns 100% of representation. We have had those rules for a long time, but not with modern consultants armed with new polling methods, modern technologies, and near-limitless funds. In mastering how to win the game, we have destroyed its ability to produce effective representative government.

While not as enthralling as the battle for power and clash of values that dominate political coverage, election rules matter—they condition ballot tabulation, voter behavior, and campaign strategy. Winner-take-all influences the composition of government—who’s in it and who’s not, as well as how they get there. If Americans are dissatisfied with the latter, they must examine the former.

Winner-take-all rules today simply cannot represent fairly the left, right, and center. In a two-party system, the gain of one side is undeniably the other’s loss when third parties and independents are dismissed as mere “spoilers” rather than viable alternatives. Vilifying one’s opponent leaves voters with only one viable electoral option: oneself. The apocalyptic rhetoric and black-and-white thinking that pass for political strategy work under winner-take-all.

These tools of negative rhetoric and zero-sum campaigning translate into the habits of governing. With only two viable choices, parties are rewarded electorally for obstruction more than compromise. In turn, partisans seek representatives who will fight more than seek consensus.

Winner-take-all voting incentivizes partisanship, compels centrists to squeeze into restrictive ideological boxes and rewards the “us-versus-them” mentality moderates resist. But it is not part of our Constitution, and our cities and states are already providing a roadmap for change. In Illinois, cumulative voting in three-seat state legislative districts led to shared representation across the state for both parties until 1980, when the legislature was reduced in size and went to one-seat districts. In Minneapolis and San Francisco, the instant runoff form of ranked choice voting rewards candidates who can earn the second choice support of other candidates’ supporters.

Electing representatives interested in compromise and independent thinking in proportion to the share of voters who support them will require structural election change. Pleading with voters to support centrist politicians is not sufficient when the institutional framework of American elections and government discourages and penalizes such behavior. Rather than just criticize Congress as broken, let’s act to fix it.

Snowe-ball Effect: How the Loss of Yet another Congressional Moderate Makes the Case for Election Reform

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:30:27 -0700

The Senate’s Moderates under Assault as Polarization and Partisanship Increase

Admonishing the U.S. Senate for “dysfunction and political polarization,” Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who throughout her career often received praise for eschewing party orthodoxy and embracing bipartisanship, announced on March 1 that she would not stand for a fourth term. In explaining her decision, Snowe wrote that her unique brand of moderation no longer fit an institution in which ideologues, laboring to “block the other side” and demanding reflexive fealty to party, ruled the roost.

In her statement, Snowe reiterated the importance of bipartisanship. “There is not only strength in compromise, courage in conciliation and honor in consensus-building,” she insisted, “but also a political reward for following these tenets.” Or at least, she might have added, there should be. Unfortunately, recent elections and retirements have demonstrated that moderates are more apt to be pilloried and purged than prized and protected. Snowe is simply the latest example in an increasing “no-more-moderates” trend that has only intensified as the ideological gulf between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats in the Senate has widened. Consider the following recent examples:

Sen. Ben Nelson (D, NE) – to retire in 2013; Nelson would have faced a robust 2012 general election challenge in a heavily Republican state
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D, CT) – to retire in 2013; Lieberman—the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee in 2000—lost in the 2006 Democratic primary to liberal challenger Ned Lamont, but nevertheless won the general election as an independent
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D, AR) – defeated in the 2010 general election after barely besting liberal challenger Bill Halter in the Democratic primary
Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R, RI) – defeated in the 2006 general election after barely besting conservative challenger Steve Laffey in the Republican primary; in 2010, Chafee was elected governor as an independent in a fractured three-way race
Sen. Arlen Specter (R/D, PA) – switched parties in 2009 to avoid conservative challenger Pat Toomey in the 2010 Republican primary; Specter nevertheless lost the 2010 Democratic primary to Joe Sestak
Sen. Bob Bennet (R, UT) – despite a conservative track record, Bennett was accused by Utah Republicans of being too moderate; they defeated his 2010 bid for re-election at the state convention
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) – lost the 2010 Republican primary to conservative challenger Joe Miller; Murkowski beat the odds, winning the general election as an independent write-in candidate
Rep. Mike Castle (R, DE) – though not an incumbent senator, the long-time House member was considered a lock for the general election, but lost the Republican primary to conservative challenger Christine O’Donnell

Image: New York Times

Whether defeated electorally or departing for retirement, the common theme among these aforementioned moderates is that all faced disillusionment within their own party among the base and, therefore, were susceptible to primary challenges—from the right for Republicans and the left for Democrats. When bases feel energized and confident, as did liberals in 2006 and conservatives in 2010, moderates within their respective party coalition are apt to feel intra-party pressures to embrace party orthodoxy, in order to mollify critics within the party. While some moderates such as Montana’s Max Baucus (D) and Maine’s Susan Collins (R) have been fortunate enough to avoid robust primary challenges, such individuals are the exceptions that seemingly prove the rule.

Nothing highlights the power of a dissatisfied base more than an incumbent moderate who loses the primary despite representing a “safe” state regularly won by their party at the presidential level—Republicans in “red states” (Bennett, Murkowski) and Democrats in “blue states” (Lieberman). For these individuals, victory in the general election was relatively assured—provided they could survive a primary from a base recognizing the party’s nominee could become more orthodox without jeopardizing the “safe” status of the seat.

From Left: Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln

The above list also demonstrates that many moderates today face a dual threat: not only difficulty in winning their party’s nomination as the ideological gulf between them and the base widens, but also difficulty in winning the general election. This is particularly the case for individuals hailing from states within “opposition territory”—moderate Republicans in Democratic “blue states” (Snowe, Chafee, Castle) and moderate Democrats in Republican “red states” (Nelson, Lincoln)—in which their party was the minority in federal races. As such, these individuals were vulnerable to not only primary but also general election challenges. Such is in marked contrast to the past, as Senate moderates historically were able win and hold seats in states the other party dominated at the presidential level, including southern Democrats and northeastern Republicans. However, as polarization has increased, such occurrences have become exceedingly rare.

The electoral stage at which a particular moderate stumbled notwithstanding, it is clear that this group of politicians faces recurrent pressure to conform or perish. While Snowe, Nelson, and Lieberman have exited the electoral stage, others have not. Indeed, many of the most vulnerable incumbent Senators in 2012 are moderates who represent “opposition territory” states: Scott Brown (R) in Massachusetts, Jon Tester (D) in Montana, and Claire McCaskill (D) in Missouri. Veteran Republicans Richard Lugar of Indiana and Orrin Hatch of Utah, both accused of being too moderate for their conservative states, face tough primary challenges from the right of their party. As presidential candidate (and moderate) Jon Huntsman quipped this week when discussing his struggles within the GOP, “This is what [a party does] in China on party matters if you talk off script.” While obviously hyperbolic, Huntsman’s quote nevertheless highlights the way in which a party’s demand for ideological homogeneity and desire to speak with one, official voice can potentially trouble a political system.

From Left: Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter, Bob Bennett

Yet moderates, whether liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats, are essential to the health of a functioning democracy, especially given Senate filibuster rules that make one-party rule almost impossible. In a closely divided Senate, moderate members can act as swing votes, forcing the majority leadership to temper its proposals as it patches together a winning coalition. In a Senate in which one party has a sizable majority, albeit shy of the 60-vote supermajority required to break the filibuster, moderates can cross the aisle and end the deadlock. Moderates also can inject civility and restraint into a discourse too often soured by animus and venomous rhetoric.

How Election Rules Affect the Political Fortunes of Moderates

Snowe’s retirement immediately whipped the political punditocracy into frenzy. It would be a mistake, however, should Snowe’s clarion call, which warned of a paralyzed legislature, lamented a moribund public discourse, and spoke of the need for reform, be lost in the resulting tumult. It is essential for Americans not only to grapple with the question of why our polity has mutated into a creature so disquieting, but also to strike at the root of the cause. That root, as Snowe adroitly noted, is the “corrosive trend of winner-take-all politics,” to which she attributes the prevalence of zero-sum tactics and “brinkmanship” in Congress.

Winner-take-all politics, in turn, are linked inexorably to winner-take-all election rules, in which a plurality of the vote wins 100% of representation; voters who select the losing party receive nothing, no matter the margin of defeat. And the rules of a voting system, while perhaps not as enthralling as the battle for power and the clash of values that dominate political coverage, matter—they condition ballot tabulation, influence voter behavior, and affect campaign strategy. “Electoral laws are of special importance for every group and individual in society,” political scientist Douglas Rae noted in 1967, “because they help to decide who writes the other laws.” In other words, winner-take-all rules greatly impact the composition of government—who is in it and who is not, as well as how they get there. If Americans are dissatisfied with the latter—and polls consistently indicate they are—then they must examine the former.

From Left: Lisa Murkowski, Mike Castle, Claire McCaskill

It is astonishing, as one begins to investigate critically our system, how archaic, broken, undemocratic, and destructive our rules are. While many Americans share Snowe’s concerns over political polarization and the seeming inability of partisans to place aside their differences for the public good, they have failed largely to recognize the contribution of winner-take-all rules. After all, under a framework in which the gain of one party is undeniably the loss of the other, it is understandable—though not desirable—that leaders in the political minority might begrudge collaboration with the majority, if such means handing the latter an accomplishment upon which it may run in the next election. It is no surprise, then, that each party defines itself in singular opposition to the other; winner-take-all encourages this behavior.

Many Americans are tired also of negative campaigns, spooky advertisements, and the regularity with which one side brazenly accuses the other of toiling for the ruin of the country, but, again, fail to examine the culpability of winner-take-all rules. After all, in a two-party system permitting just one winner, if negative advertising can devastate or disqualify a competitor, a candidate for elected office need only vilify her opponent to leave voters with just one remaining viable option: the major party that ran the attack (that, or not to vote). Simply put, the apocalyptic rhetoric and black-and-white thinking that pass for political discussion today work under winner-take-all. If you see the world in shades of gray, too bad—recognizing the humanity of the other party and occasionally teaming with it is no way to win votes.

From Left: Scott Brown, Jon Tester, Richard Lugar

An Alternative Electoral Framework that Could Advantage Moderates

The most natural alterative to winner-take-all is proportional representation (of which there are many forms), a voting system that allocates seats to parties in proportion to their share of the vote. For a while, Illinois employed a "semi-proportional” system, called cumulative voting, for elections to the state legislature; districts featured three seats each. Under this arrangement, each third of the electorate—left, right, and center—typically won a seat. Such meant that most representatives shared constituents with colleagues from other parties. The result was that moderates and independent-minded legislators had the ability and the incentives to forge bipartisan solutions.

While proportionality is feasible for elections to the U.S. House, such a framework, however, is not applicable for senatorial and gubernatorial contests that must feature, by definition, one winner. While no election system is a panacea, there is a lot to like about ranked choice voting (RCV, also called instant runoff voting), an alternative framework—used recently for mayoral elections in Portland, Maine, and San Francisco, California—that would allow voters to rank candidates in order of preference.

RCV consists of a series of rounds, in which last place finishers are eliminated and their voters redistributed to remaining candidates based on second choices. This process continues, round by round, until a candidate receives a majority of continuing ballots. RCV’s requirement of a majority, rather than a plurality, to win office is very important, because a candidate—unless he or she commands over fifty percent of first choices—must build a majority coalition, which means bidding for the supporters of eliminated candidates. Whereas winner-take-all highlights partisan divisions, RCV creates incentives for candidates to emphasize points of concurrence.

Such a system advantages moderate candidates—provided they have genuine support—in a number of ways. First, under RCV, politics is less of a sprint toward the poles of the ideological spectrum. Second, RCV usually sees a decline in negative attack advertisements, the rules encouraging candidates not to slander an adversary—and risk the ire of his voters—but to build bridges and form partnerships. RCV, in that narrow appeals to a niche of base voters is a less sagacious campaign strategy, also encourages ideologues to moderate, in order to appeal to voters outside their partisan bases—ironically, much like their heroes, Franklin Roosevelt for liberals and Ronald Reagan for conservatives.

* * *

Importantly, the habits of campaigning become the habits of governing, the negative rhetoric and zero-sum thinking of the campaign trail become the negative rhetoric and zero-sum thinking of the Senate floor. If we desire a government founded upon compromise and conciliation—as indeed the Senate was designed—then we must fashion an electoral system that selects for candidates possessing such proclivities. Clearly, winner-take-all is antagonistic toward this goal; it not only compels moderates to squeeze themselves into restrictive ideological boxes but also rewards the very “us-versus-them” mentality moderates by definition resist. I suspect Snowe’s retirement will not, unfortunately, have a lasting impact on the political discourse nor will it galvanize Americans to demand structural change. What is clear, however, is that it should. Snowe had the courage of her convictions. It is time for Americans to have the courage of theirs.

Was the Iowa Caucuses’ Real Winner Not in the Race?

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:36:55 -0700

Last night, as the numbers rolled in from Iowa, cable news shows pundits analyzed the numbers in almost every way humanly possible – with particular obsession with who was going to “win.” But the media just may have missed the biggest winner: a candidate who wasn’t seeking Iowa votes last night. They also missed the biggest loser: a plurality, “top of the heap” voting system that can easily misfire in clarifying who is the strongest candidate.

First, the media hyped "winning" Iowa as if it really mattered in any meaningful way involving delegates. But Iowa won’t elect its national convention delegates for months, and the ultimate breakdown of delegates likely will have little correlation to last night’s results – and won’t be winner-take-all based on the statewide vote.

Looking at the hard vote total numbers, Mitt Romney “won” the caucuses by 8 votes over Rick Santorum But it’s all relative. In 2008, Romney had won 29,949 votes, or 25.2%. That result was seen as a crushing disappointment because that year he trailed Mike Huckabee's 34.4% of the vote.

With arguably a weaker field, somewhat higher turnout and more sweeping GOP establishment backing this year, Romney’s vote total only grew to 30,015 votes -- e.g., just 66 more votes. But because of the slight uptick in overall turnout, his percentage of the vote actually declined from 2008, down to 24.6%. The opposition vote was more fractured than in 2008, however, giving Romney his “win” – a “win” that means nothing for delegates in a non-winner-take-all contest.

That misunderstood outcomes makes plurality voting a loser yet again. It wouldn’t be hard for Iowa Republicans to determine a more definitive winner. By adopting instant runoff voting (easy to do and count on paper ballot in what essentially is a straw poll contest), we would know how Romney would have fared if matched one-on-one against Santorum, Based on second choice polling and favorability ratings, Santorum would have been favored – but we’ll never know for sure.

Turning to the night’s real winner, it wasn’t Ron Paul, whose longshot bid for the nomination grew longer despite his remarkably good night. Paul and Romney were the only candidates who contested the caucuses in both 2008 and 2012, but, unlike Romney, Paul more than doubled his vote from 11,817 to 26,219. According to New York Times entrance polls, Paul won 48% of the vote among attendees under 30, with Santorum taking 23% and Romney just 13%. Paul also beat Romney by more than two-to-one among independents, first time caucus attendees and voters with an income under $50,000.

Despite those gains, Paul’s third-place finish and downturn in support in the final week underscores his difficulties in a party where his libertarian stances on some issues like foreign policy are out of step with the party’s majority. But it’s those very stances that draw the passionate backing of younger, more independent backers – thus making it questionable that these voters will ultimate shift to back the eventual Republican nominee.

Enter Gary Johnson, who just may end up being the night’s big winner after the rise and likely fall of Rick Santorum. The former two-term governor of New Mexico sought the Republican nomination in the past year, but was kept out of most debates – and had trouble gaining traction because of similarities in his views to those of Paul. Now Johnson has announced that he’s seeking the Libertarian Party nomination, and he may well being on the November ballot in every state.

With states relying on the ever-inefficient plurality voting rule to allocate electors and given other potential third party and independent candidates – from the Americans Elect nominee to the Greens and the new Justice Party formed by former Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson – Johnson could have a far bigger impact in the race than many are predicting right now if he ends up attracting disgruntled Ron Paul backers.

Stay tuned. 2012 promises a wild ride, one made more unpredictable by our antiquated voting rules and practices that are ill-equipped to handle voter choice.

(A note on turnout in Iowa: Although some pundits are touting the slight rise in GOP turnout from 2008, it in fact should give Republicans reason to be concerned. A PPP poll last weekend found that about one in six Iowans planning to vote in the GOP caucuses had voted in the Democratic caucuses in 2008. Without a competitive caucus on the Democratic side, their choice was easier for them to make than it was in 2008, when the Democratic caucuses were nearly double the Republican turnout last night. In other words, the overall turnout in Iowa caucuses last night plunged to less than half of overall caucus participation in 2008.)

Why Settle? A Review of the Conference on “Creating the Voting Rights Act of 2012”

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:36:53 -0700

Why Tuesday? held its 2012 election campaign kickoff event on November 7th. The organization, which is famous for travelling the country asking political leaders why America votes on Tuesdays, hosted a program entitled “Creating the Voting Rights Act of 2012.” Why Tuesday? will have every 2012 presidential candidate explain what they would do to improve voter turnout in the United States.

The conference had four panelists who addressed current voting barriers, possible solutions to those barriers, and how voters, particularly young voters, can take action in urging political elites to get serious about electoral reform efforts that combat poor voter participation. The speakers were: Meghan McCain, daughter of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain; Why Tuesday? Executive Director, Jacob Soboroff; Mimi Marziani, Counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice; and David Becker, Director of the Pew Center on the States Election Initiatives. The moderator was Why Tuesday? Board member Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

Mimi Marziani of the Brennan Center began by explaining that state legislatures have severely targeted voting rights today. To date, there are 21 new laws in 14 different states that have decreased the ease of voting. The Brennan Center’s report found that restrictions on acceptable forms of identification at the polls and reduced periods of early voting will likely affect up to five million students, racial minorities, poor, disabled and elderly Americans.

In Texas, for example, a law was recently passed declaring college or university IDs to be invalid forms of identification on Election Day. However, Texas does allow handgun licenses as an acceptable ID. Looking at the statistics provided by the Brennan Center, we find that African American students make up 17% of the university population in Texas. But only 7.5% of African Americans in the state of Texas have handgun licenses. This law puts students, especially those who are studying out-of-state, at a potential disadvantage in successfully casting their ballot on Election Day.

In Florida, a civics teacher who was helping her students register to vote (doing something FairVote has backed strongly in making use of the state’s new law-- one passed with bipartisan support- allowing 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to “pre-register” to vote) now faces thousands of dollars in fines because she was not in compliance with Florida’s new election law. Florida’s new law on voter registration makes it harder for third party organizations to aid eligible citizens in registering to vote.

Those in favor of these restricting election laws say it is voter fraud that has driven them to make these changes. But opponents of these laws, like Norm Ornstein, explained that the claims being made about voter fraud at the polls is virtually non-existent.

Whether these new laws now seen as suppressing voter turnout are the product of political motives, or whether they are guided by a desire to protect the right that so many Americans hold dear, it is clear that modernizing voter registration is a better way to safeguard the right to vote. One out of every nine Americans moves each year, and that amount is double among young people. We live in a technologically advanced society, yet the question still remains, why are voter registration procedures still functioning within the confines of the 19th and 20th centuries?

The United States is just about the only major democracy that puts the burden of voter registration on the voters. If voter registration information is shared between states, updated by the states, managed online, and is operated on an opt-out basis rather than an opt-in basis, it would take away that burden put on voters. It would also reduce problems that arise when election officials receive waves of new forms due to a mobile society right before the deadline, and would eliminate the struggle of trying to read illegible handwriting on paper applications.

Solutions such as the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) and state-run automatic registration when eligible citizens turn 18 years old will help alleviate some of the costs of voting. There are many brilliant ideas on how to fix our voting system that have surfaced from both electoral reform organizations and unaffiliated voters alike. But with a country in the midst of a debt crisis and an economy slow to bounce back, it is hard to get political leaders to see the importance in reforming the current electoral system. The ability to choose the few people who are tasked with making decisions on behalf of the many is important, and that selection process should not be looked at as insignificant by those leaders themselves.

Here’s how FairVote suggests you can get involved!

-If you are a student or know a student, have them take advantage of any poll worker opportunities in your community
- Voice your views on the importance of voter participation by using email, or through free social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter
- Have discussions with those you know about why you are a voter, how meaningful it is to participate in choosing who represents and speaks for you in government
- Be ready to work for structural reforms to our electoral process. When we are in a position to cast meaningful votes in contested elections, we can expect voter turnout to rise.
-Show appreciation for your ability to vote by going to the polls on Election Day!

Stay tuned for FairVote doing a lot more to make it easier to get involved in these activities.

Voter Fraud: Let's Modernize Voter Registration First

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:52:36 -0700

The Heritage Foundation held a conference on October 6 entitled, “The Constitution and the Right to Vote: Protecting Against Voter Fraud.” Expert panelists discussed issues regarding voter fraud in the U.S. and the increasing need for voter ID laws.

John Fund, author and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, began his speech by talking about the latest municipal election in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 4. Albuquerque adopted a law requiring voters to show identification at their polling locations. Reported by KRQE News 13, Albuquerque voters showed up in high numbers to vote on Tuesday. Mr. Fund made the point that any beliefs about voter turnout being depressed as a result of voter ID laws are non-other than “dubious,” citing Albuquerque’s successful election as an example despite its voter ID law.

Fund is right that having voter ID laws don't prevent relatively high turnout, as was also true in states like Indiana and Georgia that had voter ID during the 2008 presidential elections. But KRQE News 13 was pointing out the reason voter turnout was so high was because Mayor R.J. Berry’s bond package was on the ballot. The plan to spend $25-million on a new sports complex during economic times where every dollar counts was not something that resonated well with many voters.

In addition to this anomaly in voter turnout, Albuquerque’s voter ID law was passed in 2005. The immediate effects of a law like this would be much harder to see six years after its implementation. It also doesn't change the fact that certain eligible voters may not have voted due to the law.

Turning to questions about voter fraud, Hans von Spakovsky, a Senior Legal Fellow for The Heritage Foundation’s Legal and Judicial Studies, used Wake County (NC) as an example of a location where three people voted twice in a recent election. What was not said about the three people, was information regarding their lack of knowledge concerning voting procedures. After telling a poll worker on Election Day that they had already voted once under North Carolina’s rules for early voting, they cast a second ballot to “make sure their vote counted.” In a county where 440,000 votes were cast in the 2008 presidential elections, three people violating the law in such an apparently non-malicious way is obviously not many.

This is not to dismiss in the least the importance of maintaining fair elections, but in the case of voter ID laws, having photo identification in this instance would not have kept these people from voting twice. It would have confirmed they were the person they said they were, matching the voter’s appearance with the picture on the card and providing an in-state address, doing nothing to provide a solution for what was a lack of voter education.

It is safe to say that the U.S. electoral system has its flaws. It is also clear that the Heritage Foundation favors voter identification laws as a way to reform the often inaccurate registration rolls. States do not have an effective method of sharing information across state borders to account for the abundance of mobility within the country and election boards increasingly go without the manpower necessary to run tip top elections. But, America already has the lowest turnout rates in comparison to other modernized democracies, and state governments already require voters to jump through many hoops in order to register and vote. If a voter ID law is to be pursued anyway, safeguards need to be built in that it doesn’t lead to eligible voters being denied their right to vote.

Other advocacy organizations have provided their own solutions to fixing inaccurate voter rolls. The Brennan Center believes one way to fix voter registration is to make it permanent, preventing voters from being taken off registration lists even if they move. The Pew Center on the States has already produced a program called the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), where the responsibility of updating and getting voters on registration rolls will be left up to the states.

FairVote is open to many suggestions that will modernize voter registration in our support for full and accurate voter rolls. We are particularly interested in the idea of a national system grounded in every eligible voter automatically and efficiently receiving a "Democracy Passport." This would be a unique national government identifier that would systematically register every eligible citizen and update voter registration rolls.

FairVote also supports the establishment of a federal standard that all states must meet to make sure eligible citizens are registered to vote. Still, it will be left up to the voters to decide whether they will accept the solutions state governments believe will solve this problem, and it is the voters who will determine if they think it is right for them to take on the extra burdens of problems that are institutional in nature, an institution that is in dire need of reform.

Modernizing Voter Registration: An Overview of the American Enterprise Institute Conference

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:26:44 -0700

The American Enterprise Institute held a conference on September 19th discussing the ways in which states currently handle voter registration and ways to improve it. Two groups of electoral reform experts, each with three panelists, plunged into discourse regarding the complications of current voter registration systems and possible solutions to ameliorate how citizens go about registering to vote.

A few key points were made clear about why voter registration is even necessary. Looking back on the history of elections, there once was a time when elections were more or less debates over the candidates, and eligible voters able to participate cast their vote by orally stating the candidate they supported. This method of voting was prone to be rigged with fraud, intimidation to vote for a specific candidate, and even riots, as there was no way to ensure that only those people who met the requirements to vote were the ones actually voting. Voter registration was introduced in part as a way to validate eligible voters while also keeping those who were not eligible away from the polls.

Maintaining accurate registration rolls has been a difficult task for many states. For example, it is easy to look at the way European countries handle voter registration and question why the U.S. does not share in the same success stories as Europe— having significantly higher rates of citizens registered to vote and lower rates of errors in the voter rolls.

One reason is that the United States is unique in having such an extremely mobile population. As stated by Charles Stewart III, professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, within a four year time span, 85 million people move throughout the United States, with 45 million changes of address. That is a lot of people to track, and with each state having its own regulations about voter registration, citizens may not be informed about that information and may be unaware that they must update their voter registration in compliance with the laws of the new state in which they reside.

Accompanying this burden of citizens taking the initiative to keep their voter registration up to date is poor record-keeping by some states. Since the 2000 presidential election especially, states have been much more cautious about purging voters from the rolls in order to avoid accidentally getting rid of voters who are still eligible.

The Director of Elections for the state of Ohio, Matthew Damschroder, highlighted three problems that hurt state Board of Elections the most.

•First, most of the country still relies on paper-based methods of registration forms. –This brings the complication of trying to read the hand-writing of citizens. If an election official entering the registration information into the computer system cannot read the hand-writing, and inputs a misspelled name, for example, this can cause major problems when that voter shows up to vote on Election Day.

•Second, registration information is unverifiable by the voter.—Often times, citizens send off their registration form and simply hope for the best. It is not standard practice in every state to have citizens verify that the information election commissions have in their system is in fact correct.

•Third, the current registration system is dependent on “third parties” (not political parties, but independent associations).—People from various organizations get eligible voters to fill out registration forms that those third parties will then drop off to election boards for the applicant. This is not always reliable. In Ohio, a woman working for a third party entity had five-hundred registration forms sitting in the back seat of her car, along with her laptop. When her car was broken into, the thief not only stole her laptop, but made off with the registration forms as well, seemingly useless items that were then discarded in a dumpster. The registration forms were found the day after the registration deadline, and hundreds of eligible citizens who thought they were registered showed up on Election Day to find out that they in fact were not, thus losing their ability to vote.

In light of the many factors like these that signal a registration system in distress, there is some hope to having a better voter registration system. The Pew Center on the States announced a new approach to reforming the registration system. Pew brought together 42 technical experts, academics, and election officials from 21 states to produce a plan for better handling voter registration. The result was the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, where data on people who may be a new voter or may be moving can easily be shared between states. ERIC would allow states to update records on existing voters and get rid of duplicate and invalid records from state files.

Here’s a reminder about FairVote’s stance on modernizing voter registration. We believe:

States should establish means to automatically place eligible voters on registration rolls, ideally based on a unique national government identifier- a kind of “Democracy Passport.”

The federal government should establish minimum standards that all states must meet to ensure all eligible voters are registered and that provide a means to establish a more nationally coherent voter roll.

States should establish a standard pre-registration age of 16, actively (and perhaps automatically) registering citizens in their high schools and at the DMV in conjunction with a voting curriculum that will prepare first-time voters to vote as soon as they turn 18 years old.

To learn more about FairVote’s position on voter registration visit Universal Voter Registration, and click here to watch the full broadcast of AEI’s Bringing Voter Registration into the 21st Century conference.

Update: Lebanon Discusses Adopting Proportional Representation

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:06:43 -0700

The Arab Spring movement has influenced Lebanon differently than many of its neighbors. Unlike nations like Syria and Yemen, there aren't street protests. Rather, the turmoil in the country is within the Parliament, not the people themselves. In a country that has relied on winner-take-all elections, the key pro-democracy movement is for adopting a proportional representation voting system to be used in the next parliamentary elections in 2013.

President Michel Sleiman and Prime Minister Najib Mikati agree that the best solution to Lebanon's extremely divisive political system is to put in place proportional voting. Interior Minister Marwan Charbel put together a committee for electoral reform. He affirms that a new law will be presented to Parliament by late September. Others backing the proposal include Speaker Nabih Berri, Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, the Lebanese Forces lead by Samir Geagea, the Marada Movement lead by Suleiman Frangieh and the Kataeb Party lead by Amine Gemayel.

But opponents of reform have emerged. Walid Jumblatt, Progressive Socialist Party leader and Lebanon's most prominent Druze political figure, has made a clear stance against the idea, saying that "it is better to postpone discussing proportional representation and to keep the current situation to preserve diversity and plurality."

Grounded in the fact that Lebanon's democracy today is based on quotas rather than voter preferences, Jumblatt's argument goes against what proportional representation stands for. As the current electoral process works today, each party is guaranteed a set number of seats in each district. The number of seats in Parliament is divided equally between Christians and Muslims (50:50). Within each block, each religious sect holds a set number of seats.

Not only does the unchangeable number of seats assume falsely that no religious sect is going to see its population grow disproportionately than other parties, but it also assumes that there will be enough people in each district to support the candidates of each religious sect. By guaranteeing a number of seats for each political party based on each religious sect, diversity is maintained at the expense of proportional representation based on voter preferences.

Instead of having a limited number of seats for each religious sect, proportional voting would allow the people of Lebanon to choose the candidates they feel are stronger based on their political views, not on religious beliefs. Elected officials will therefore be able to better represent citizens based on what the people have voted on Election Day, not on a pre-established archaic law that only promotes national divisions. Not only will proportional voting be better able to represent citizens but it promises to promote higher voter turnout.

Despite multiple public endorsements for the impending law, many are still skeptical about the reform being passed due to political parties not willing to give up their guaranteed seats. Media adviser to Speaker Nabih Berri, Ali Hamdan told the Daily Star that "the [adoption of proportional representation] requires a national political will ... so far there is [only] semiunanimity over the adoption of proportional representation."

Although the electoral committee reform is facing high opposition, it should rally as much support as possible before the end of September. Mobilizing citizens about the cause will help pressure politicians to passing the new electoral law on proportional representation in time for the Parliamentary elections of 2013.

Ranked Choice Absentee Ballots: Preventing the Disenfranchisement of Military and Overseas Voters

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:44:31 -0700

American citizens living abroad, including men and women in uniform, all too often face difficulties in voting in elections at home. When the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE Act) was passed in 2009, it was widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive reforms for military and overseas voters. Enacted to expand the protections of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act of 1986 (UOCAVA), the MOVE Act mandated, among other provisions, that states send timely requested absentee ballots to UOCAVA voters at least 45 days before a federal election.

In the nearly two years since the MOVE Act was passed, many states have made significant changes to their election laws to help guarantee military and overseas voters’ access to the ballot. To comply with the 45-day requirement, some like Minnesota and Vermont have voluntarily moved up the dates of their primary elections. Others like Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina have changed the dates of their primary runoff elections as a result of UOCAVA enforcement lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice.

There is still a long way to go, however, to fully enfranchise the roughly 6.6 million Americans in uniform or residing abroad. A recent report by the Military Voter Protection Project found that only 4.6 percent of the nearly 2 million military voters covered by the study cast an absentee ballot that counted in 2010. And just this week, Senator John Cornyn of Texas sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to protest what he called the Department of Justice’s “poor track record” of enforcing the MOVE Act’s 45-day requirement for the November 2010 elections.

Military and overseas voters continue to point to tight ballot turnaround times as an obstacle to voting in federal, state, and local elections. The problem is even worse in states where primary and general elections, or first and second elections in traditional runoff systems, are held close together. In those cases, there is often not enough time for election officials to count first-round votes, certify the results, and print and mail absentee ballots, and for military and overseas voters to request their ballots, fill them out, and return them in time to be counted. When their ballots arrive too late—or don’t arrive at all—voters are effectively disenfranchised and excluded from the political process.

Ranked choice absentee ballots (also known as “instant runoff absentee ballots”) provide a legal and practical solution to the ballot transit time issue. Instead of requiring voters to request and return separate ballots for a primary and general election, or each round in a runoff system, voters receive two ballots: a standard absentee ballot for the first election and a ranked choice absentee ballot for the second election. The ranked ballot contains all the candidates from the first election, and voters rank them in order of preference, from first to last. Both ballots are returned before the first election, and the standard ballot is counted as usual. In the event of a runoff election or a general election, the ranked ballot is counted towards the highest ranked candidate who advances to the second round.

Ranked choice absentee ballots are already used successfully for runoff elections in Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Springfield, Illinois. Because voters receive and return both ballots at the same time, they don’t have to worry that the short turnaround times between elections will keep them from participating in a general or runoff election. These ballots also do not raise the security and election integrity concerns associated with proposed technological innovations such as ballot submission online or via e-mail or fax.

In addition, ranked choice absentee ballots can help states avoid the burden of changing their election dates. While such changes may help states avoid DOJ lawsuits by providing more time for military and overseas voters to return ballots, they may also have the unintended consequence of reducing turnout among polling place voters. As a forthcoming FairVote report indicates, the greater the time between elections, the greater the dropoff in voter turnout. For example, when Texas increased the gap between election rounds, turnout in runoffs generally dropped significantly.

State-by-state implementation of ranked choice absentee ballots is a crucial step toward effectively enfranchising military and overseas voters, but it is only part of the answer. States enjoy broad discretion in establishing voter registration requirements and ballot return deadlines, and as a result these voters are beset with a confusing patchwork of state and local regulations and processes for voting absentee. UOCAVA and the MOVE Act also do not directly cover state and local elections, even though these elections often have tighter ballot turnaround times than do federal races.

The Uniform Law Commission has sought to remedy these issues by developing the Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act (UMOVA), a model state bill to extend UOCAVA and MOVE Act protections to all state and local elections. Six states, including Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah have passed the act so far, and more have had UMOVA bills introduced in the legislature.

FairVote believes that national, state, and local officials should continue to address ballot-access barriers that military and overseas voters still face today. Ranked choice absentee ballots, along with greater uniformity in absentee voting rules from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, will help make the promises of the MOVE Act real for millions of U.S. citizens.

For more information on the use of ranked choice ballots for military and overseas voters, including a detailed review of legal issues related to the proposal, see the new FairVote Policy Perspective, Legality of the Use of Ranked Choice Absentee Ballots for Military and Overseas Voters.

Lower Presidential Election Turnout in Safe Republican States

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Curing Our Democracy Part II: The Redistricting Connection and the Pitfalls of the District-Based Electoral Vote System

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:44:51 -0700

For the prior entry and introduction to this post, see Part I.

Even without reforming electoral vote allocation, Nebraska Republicans attempted to achieve their goal of reducing the competitiveness of the 2^nd Congressional District through the partisan redistricting system. These politicians realized that they did not need to discard the district-based electoral vote allocation when attempting to solve their problem of a Democratic presidential candidate competing within the state; they simply could try to redraw the boundaries in a way favorable to Republicans.

By shifting the urban part of Sarpy County into the mostly rural 1^st District, redistricting will decrease the Democrat's advantage in the 2^nd District while dispersing Democratic voters into an already overwhelmingly Republican district. Republicans have been successful in tilting the districts toward their side, if only marginally so due to the prior overpopulation of the 2^nd District.

Admirably, however, state legislators in Nebraska did not go as far as they could have; by, for example, dividing urban Omaha voters amongst all three congressional districts. Their Republican counterparts in Texas have shown less restraint by slicing up liberal-leaning Austin into four different districts to disburse Democratic voters and make reelection more difficult for disliked Democratic incumbent Rep. Lloyd Doggett.

And this is where the flawed systems of electoral vote allocation and redistricting collide: even where the goal is not met, the intent and the incentive for partisan gerrymandering remains. In Nebraska, legislators clearly intended for their redistricting plan to serve three interrelated purposes: (1) reducing the prospect of President Obama competing for an electoral vote in Nebraska during the 2012 race, (2) decreasing Democratic voter turnout in 2012 to hurt the reelection chances of Senator Nelson or other Democratic candidates, and (3) securing a more safely-Republican seat for current 2^nd District Representative Terry Lee.

Partisan redistricting thus allows state-level politicians to not only choose their own voters, but also attempt to stack the deck against certain candidates running for President, Senate and the House of Representatives. To address these problems, states like California have replaced the legislator-led redistricting process with independent, non-partisan commissions. Such reforms can minimize the ability of partisan politicians to punish their enemies and reward their friends, but for competitive elections and legislative diversity, multimember districts with proportional voting are needed to maximize the effectiveness of these improvements.

Multimember districts with proportional voting would also reduce the ability of politicians to play games with minority populations. Interestingly, Latino residents of Nebraska increased 77 percent over the last decade, and now represent approximately 10 percent of the total population. While Sarpy County as a whole is only 15 percent minority, the city of Bellevue and Offutt Air Base, both of which are being shifted out of the 2^nd Congressional District into the highly Republican and white 1^stDistrict, are much more diverse at 25 and 30 percent, respectively.

It has been astutely pointed out that such redistricting may raise Voting Rights Act and Equal Protection concerns by diminishing opportunities for minority populations in Nebraska to elect preferred candidates. Multimember districts with proportional voting would alleviate these issues by allowing sufficiently large minority populations to vote together and elect at least one of their candidates of choice. However, as long as partisan redistricting of single-member districts remains the standard, minority votes will continue to be diluted in states like Nebraska.

Maine also offers evidence that the interaction between two poor election practices, district-based electoral vote allocation and redistricting, can lead to consequential partisan manipulation of the system. Early in the 2008 presidential election there were indications that Senator John McCain might be competitive in Maine's 2^nd Congressional District. Although McCain eventually lost that district 55% to 43%, the prospect of Republicans picking up an electoral vote in routinely-Democratic Maine has not been lost on state legislators.

Following a court order mandating that Maine redistrict before the 2012 elections in a case that took on partisan overtones, some legislators have reportedly considered splitting the state's two congressional districts in a way that would pit the Democratic incumbents against each other, and affect the presidential race. Indeed, during the last decade's redistricting cycle, state Republicans proposed changing the district line to a north-south configuration that would have forced two Democrats to run against each other in the 2004 election.

Redistricting can also be used to influence the presidential race in a state with electoral vote-splitting. The 2^nd district already is mostly rural, less affluent, and more conservative than the 1^st district, and the Republican-controlled legislature may be able increase such characteristics through partisan gerrymandering. That result might entice the 2012 Republican presidential nominee to campaign in Maine, making a play for one of its electoral votes much like the Obama campaign did in Nebraska in 2008.

Allocating electoral votes by congressional district thus increases the stakes for redistricting and creates incentives for politicians to ratchet up partisan considerations in an already contentious process. Along the way, the interests of voters and communities take a backseat to those of legislators and politicians. Unsurprisingly, the parties to the case have proposed different processes by which redistricting should proceed under the court order. The plaintiffs, who are Maine voters, want to remove politics by allowing a panel of federal judges to redraw the boundaries; Republicans and state officials favor leaving the details to the legislature; and Democrats are emphasizing the need to maintain the state's use of a bipartisan advisory commission. Although the process is now seemingly moving along in a cooperative fashion, the incentive for gaming the presidential race through redistricting remains.

The lesson gleaned from the experience of Nebraska and Maine is simple: electoral vote splitting by congressional district and partisan redistricting has the potential to be a toxic concoction to a properly functioning democracy. Without independent redistricting, the current system allows state legislators the opportunity to poison the political chances of their opponents, and even infect the race for the presidency. In addition, some proposed drugs, such as winner-take-all rules, are worse than the illness, leading presidential candidates to completely ignore large segments of voters and entire states.

There are remedies though. The National Popular Vote plan would make every vote worth campaigning for in a presidential race, and multimember districts with proportional voting would help foster fair elections and fair representation. It's time for the country to get serious about taking its medicine.