Dec '00 / Jan 2001

A Gift Given, A Gift Received: Water
to Iraq
By Edilith Eckart

Election Analysis Progressive
Directions?
By Bill Thomson

Modernizing Our Electoral Rules &
Practices
By Rob Richie

Democracy 101
By Blair Bobier

Clean Money: Campaign Finance
Reform
By John Moyers

Book Review: The Cultural Creatives
Paul H. Ray & Sherry Ruth
Anderson Reviewed by
Peter Montague

Remembrance: Robert Theobald
By Bob Stilger

Transforming Our Dreaming
By JosŽ Stevens

Democracy and the Airwaves
By Suzi Aufderheide

StarLink: More Bad News for Biotech
by Ronnie Cummins

The US Is Warned "Wake Up To Global Warming Threat"
By Environmental News Service

U.S. Position Threatens to Derail Climate Change Negotiations
By Cat Lazaroff

Martin Luther King, Jr: Global and
Social Shaman
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.

Sexual Union, Inside and Out
By Peter Moore

A Pagan Speak to Jesus
By John Darling

Cosmic Calendar
By Salina Rain

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Modernizing our Electoral Rules and Practices
By Rob Richie

While the drama in Florida has immediate consequences for control of the White House, it also is triggering a spirited conversation about modernizing our frequently antiquated electoral rules and practices-from outdated voting equipment to the Electoral College, plurality voting and winner-take-all elections themselves.

As evidenced by the controversy in Florida, the United States (unlike nearly every other established democracy) does not administer national elections on a national level. County election administrators often struggle for resources, meaning that much of the country uses aging equipment that causes serious problems in how we count votes. One welcome outcome of the Florida recount likely will be attempts to modernize equipment at all levels of government. Such efforts are important not only for better assurance that every vote will count, but because modern equipment allows implementation of ranked order ballot systems such as instant runoff voting (IRV) and choice voting.

There is now increasing talk of eliminating the "spoiler" charge and minority rule once and for all by adopting Instant Runoff Voting for electing the president. Most advocate IRV in a direct election, but as argued by some proponents of maintaining the Electoral College, it also could be used on a state-by-state basis with mere statutory changes in states. Voters passed charter amendments on instant runoff voting this past November 8th in Oakland and San Leandro, California. The San Leandro measure creates an IRV option, while the Oakland measure enacts IRV for any special election to fill a city council vacancy.

Another encouraging outcome is that Representatives Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Jim Leach (R-IA) have introduced HR 5631 to study proportional representation, instant runoff voting and other pro-democracy reforms in the wake of the Florida controversy. Urge your representative to support this legislation (find out more at http://www.fairvote.org/library/statutes/ferc.htm).

David Kairys in the Washington Post (Outlook, Nov. 19, 2000) wrote:
"The truth is that our electoral system has been surpassed by better systems now in place in almost every other democracy around the world. Citizens of those democracies either vote directly for a president or, in parliamentary systems, elect legislators who select a prime minister based proportionately on electoral support. Either way, each person's vote carries the same weight and effect, and a head of state emerges with the support of a majority · most democracies would interpret [this] election as a "center-left" win. Al Gore and Ralph Nader, together, got 52 percent of the popular vote and could form a majority coalition. This reflects a small but real shift to the left in popular political attitudes. We are so used to plurality winners and two-party dominance that we hardly pay attention to where the majority wound up."

Lani Guinier, professor of law at Harvard Law School, in her piece in The Nation (Dec. 4, 2000; www.thenation.com) observed:

"What we need are election rules that encourage voter turnout rather than suppress it. A system of proportional representation-which would allocate seats to parties based on their proportion of the total vote-would more fairly reflect intense feeling within the electorate, mobilize more people to participate and even encourage those who do participate to do so beyond just the single act of voting on Election Day. Most democracies around the world have some form of proportional voting and manage to engage a much greater percentage of their citizens in elections. Proportional representation in South Africa, for example, allows the white Afrikaner parties and the ANC to gain seats in the national legislature commensurate with the total number of votes cast for each party. Under this system, third parties are a plausible alternative. Moreover, to allow third parties to run presidential candidates without being 'spoilers,' some advocate instant-runoff elections in which voters would rank their choices for President. That way, even voters whose top choice loses the election could influence the race among the other candidates.

Winner-take-all elections, by contrast, encourage the two major parties to concentrate primarily on the 'undecideds' and to take tens of millions of dollars of corporate and special-interest contributions to broadcast ads on the public airwaves appealing to the center of the political spectrum. Winner-take-all incentives discourage either of the two major parties from trying to learn, through organizing and door-knocking, how to mobilize the vast numbers of disengaged poor and working-class voters. Rather than develop a vision, they produce a product and fail to build political capacity from the ground up.

Before the lessons of Florida are forgotten, let us use this window of opportunity to forge a strong pro-democracy coalition to rally around 'one vote, one value.' The value of a vote depends on its being fairly counted but also on its counting toward the election of the person the voter chose as her representative. This can happen only if we recognize the excesses of winner-take-all voting and stop exaggerating the power of the winner by denying the loser any voice at all."

Rob Richie is Executive Director for the Center for Voting and Democracy, www.fairvote.org

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