.jpg)
|
|
|
Presidential elections should be for all of us Rob Richie and Steven Hill - Center for Voting and Democracy 06.24.04 - Every presidential election matters, but 2004 has particular
significance. Re-election of George W. Bush with the return of Republican
majorities in the U.S. Senate and House could tip the ideological balance
of the Supreme Court and federal courts for a generation. It could trigger
a wave of Democratic retirements in the House that might cement Republican
domination on Capitol Hill for decades. It could unleash a wave of hard-right
policy initiatives. So everyone should be involved, right? In a democracy, it's one person,
one vote? There's just one problem: that's not the way we elect the president.
We cling to a thoroughly outmoded Electoral College that divides us along
regional lines, undercuts accountability, dampens voter participation,
and can undermine legitimacy when the electoral vote trumps the national
popular vote. As the bumper sticker notes, Democrats have to RE-defeat
Bush this year because the Electoral College denied Al Gore's popular
vote advantage of a half-million votes in 2000. Instead of a simple national election, we hold 51 separate contests in
the states and the District of Columbia, with each state having a number
of electoral votes equal to its number of U.S. Senators and House members
(ranging from three electoral votes in the states with the fewest people
to California with 55). This arrangement awards more electoral votes per
capita to low population states which tend to be conservative, giving
Republican candidates an unfair advantage. It's like having a foot race
where one side starts ten yards ahead of the other. A presidential candidate needs to receive the highest number of votes
in the right combination of states to win a majority of the Electoral
College vote. The perverse incentives created by this method are painfully
obvious from this year's campaign -- most states already are effectively
ignored by the candidates and groups seeking to mobilize voters because
in a competitive national race most states are dominated by one party
or the other. Most campaign focus and energy -- and increasingly, even
the candidates' messages for how they plan to govern -- are pitched to
undecided swing voters in the key battleground states. If you feel like
your issues and concerns are being ignored, chances are it's because you
live in the wrong state and/or are not part of the faceless slice of undecided
swing voters. The Electoral College's democratic deficit is compounded by the use of
plurality elections -- the candidate with the most votes wins 100 percent
of the electoral votes from that state, even if less than a majority.
Plurality elections mean that a popular majority can be fractured by the
presence of a third party candidate. Far more than any ballot corruption
in Florida, Al Gore was hurt by the nearly hundred thousand voters in
Florida who supported Ralph Nader. So what can be done? Over the years, leading national political figures
like Strom Thurmond, Orrin Hatch, Ted Kennedy, Kweisi Mfume, Hillary Clinton
and John McCain have supported approaches to amend, reform or scrap the
Electoral College. The time has come to institute a national direct election.
There are important questions to resolve for a nationwide direct election,
however. One of them is related to our antiquated plurality tradition
where the highest vote-getter wins, even if less than a majority. This
has happened in several gubernatorial elections in the past decade. That
possibility occurring for a nationwide presidential election presents
problems of legitimacy. To prevent this problem, most direct election amendments call for a second
"runoff" election between the top two finishers if no candidate
receives at least 40 percent of the vote. But 40 percent is an arbitrary
standard that is too low for winning our highest office. A strong leader
should be able to reach out effectively to enough voters to command majority
support. Two-round runoffs also pose problems. Candidates would have to scramble
for extra cash to run a second campaign, and additional costs to election
officials for a nationwide election could be a half billion dollars. And
voters would have to trudge out to the polls one more time. Rather than mandate a low 40 percent threshold and two rounds of voting,
any amendment to the Constitution should allow electoral mechanisms to
determine a majority winner in a single election, such as instant runoff
voting (IRV.) IRV simulates a two-round runoff in one election by allowing
voters to rank their "runoff" choices along with their first
choice, 1, 2, 3. Instead of having a second election, ballot-counters
use the rankings to determine the runoff choices of those voters whose
first choice failed to advance to the runoff. The system is used for major
elections in Great Britain, Australia and Ireland, and this year in such
diverse settings as the Utah Republican Party state convention and city
elections in San Francisco. With large majorities of Americans against the Electoral College, Democrats
have nothing to fear in picking up on Hillary Clinton's call in November
2000 for a constitutional amendment for direct election. And they have
much to gain: a unique opportunity to end an anti-democratic, 18th-century
anachronism. (c) 2004, Center for Voting and Democracy URL:
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.html?itemid=17177
|
|
|
This website is volunteer managed, designed and donated. Content is the sole responsibility of Democrats of Napa Valley Club. Democrats
of Napa Valley |
||