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TechnoratiOregonians Exercising Democracy Through 'Voter Owned Elections'
Some political scientists argue that voting is irrational, that the act of political participation doesn't bring enough benefits to the individual to make it worth the effort.
This might be so in many places, but Oregonians don't think so. Recently, 10,000 have declared, 'things are different here.'
That's how many voters coughed up $5 and gave their signatures to candidates running for mayor and city council in Portland, under the city's new 'Voter Owned Elections' system. Moreover, the election is still months away, in May, and it's only a primary, to boot. What is going on?
Yogi Berra, one of baseball's most famous orators, once observed - "If the people don't want to come, nobody's gonna stop 'em." And there-in lies the problem with elections, and with democratic government more broadly. You can't compel participation; you can't stop people from sitting out the vote.
But what if you could attract people, make it more fun, more popular - and, more rewarding to participate?
Voter Owned Elections, also called Clean Elections is in seven other states and one city, does just that in at least three ways.
First, it helps give more choices to voters, meaning more different kinds of candidates who are likely to catch someone's fancy. What's that mean? Take the current Portland all-male city government; all white, too. They are fine men, all, but - I mean - well, you get the point. In contrast, among the seven Voter Owned Elections candidates, there's Amanda Fritz, nurse and neighborhood activist - it's her second time running under the system, and she might well win this time; John Branam, African American, development director for the public schools; and Charles Lewis, founder of an inner-city non-profit music program. There is also Sho Dozono, born in Japan, a civic leader and businessman, who is running in exactly the opposite way from what candidates like him would ordinarily choose. In fact, some of his major backers in the Chamber of Commerce and Oregonian newspaper have been the most ardent foes of Voter Owned Elections. Three other candidates - a software engineer and transportation activist, and two environmentalists, one who is organizing director for the watchdog Citizens Utility Board and the other chief of staff to a retiring city councilor -- round out the slate. Even the most political among them - Jim Middaugh, top aide to departing Commissioner Erik Sten, describes himself this way. "I'm an organizer, rabble-rouser, activist type," he says, adding that he's eager to employ his "what do I have to do today to get things done" philosophy on the city council. Do these people sound like the 'usual suspects,' here in the City of Roses?
Second, Voter Owned Elections does something else to increase the reward for voters - it gives each person an equal stake. In traditional political campaigns, a few people will give big contributions, a lot of people will give small contributions, and most won't give anything at all. And all three groups will share the same expectation once the election is over - the big dogs, the big givers, will have more access to the elected official, and will be more likely to get their needs addressed. Not under Voter Owned Elections. Once candidates collect the set number of $5 contributions they need to qualify to run (1,000 for city commissioner, 1,500 for mayor), they cannot ask for, and cannot receive, any further private contributions for their campaign. Everyone is equal on their contributors list - at $5 a pop - and once the campaign begins, and once they are in office, no-one gets asked for money.
Finally, candidates and elected officials will change the way they spend their time. Do the math yourself. Take a situation that is actually occurring in Portland. In January a 'surprise' council seat opened up, when Erik Sten announced he'd retire on April 4, well before his term is over. Talk about last minute! But in just a couple weeks, a candidate was able to make the decision to run, use the Voter Owned Elections system, and collected more than 1,000 signatures and $5 contributions, in turn receiving enough public funds to run a credible primary campaign ($140,000). How would a traditional privately funded candidate approach this challenge? Who would they have needed to meet with, to decide about running? Who will they need to keep meeting with, to raise money for the rest of the campaign? And, if they happen to win and get into office, what about that campaign debt, and what about the next campaign???
Voter Owned Elections is providing a healthy alternative to politics as usual in Portland. Months before a traditionally low-turnout election - a municipal primary, for goodness sakes! - more than 10,000 citizens are already involved giving seven relative newcomers to politics a chance to present themselves to voters. And for those voters, the rest of the campaign will be about what campaigns are supposed to be about - issues, positions, problems, solutions, and conversations between hopeful public servants and the people they seek to represent.
All the people, that is; have-nots as well as haves; denim pockets as well as deep pockets. Because in Voter Owned Elections, when you 'max out' as a donor with a simple $5 contribution, you get more for your money, not less. You get choices. You get hope. You get fairness. You may just get the democracy you deserve.
Things are different here. And that is a very good thing.
Jeff Malachowsky lives in Portland, OR and was a founder of the non-partisan National Institute on Money in State Politics.
27 Comments so far
Show AllHundreds of millions of dollars will be raised for this presidential election. By November almost all of it will be gone. Where does it all go? I would think a huge portion goes to broadcast companies who charge top dollar to air political ads on public airwaves. The same companies who operate the major news outlets and punditry brigades.
Where ever a fortune is being made no amount of polite asking is going to change things. The stakes are so high this time out that we have to start thinking about how we can make things very uncomfortable to anyone working inside the system. Suggestions?
Down with Majority Rule!! Horrors?! Anybody care to hear more?
"You can't compel participation; you can't stop people from sitting out the vote."
"Actually, from the little I know of Australia, this is not true. For them election day is a holiday and voting is compulsory. I don't know what the penalties are for not showing up at the polls, but to say you "can't" compel participation in an election is only true of the US."
radsolv suggeston: I dislike laws that make acts that should be voluntary, compulsory. However, how about this for a suggestion on an approach to getting more people to actually vote in an election. Offer a tax exemption, federal, state, local, depending for actually voting? How much? Depends. How much will motivate a person and how much tax loss could a government afford. Several election cycles should converge on that answer.
radsolv
Any method that levels the campaign playing field is an improvement over the generally-accepted-method that he who has the most $ behind his candidacy wins.
I would love to see proportional representation in the USA. Then "marginal" groups such as Green Party, Libertarian, etc. could qualify for automatic inclusion in legislatures on the state level based on achieving a qualifying percentage of voters, thereby becoming a part of the process of government, rather than the perpetual voiceless outsider. I think many more people would want to participate if the possibility were there that their political views could actually be represented. Hey, no one mandated a two-party monopoly.
Giving politicians money = civic participation.
I agree with Oregonian37: $5 dollar contributions are better than corporate donations, yes. But c'mon.
After they get elected, you can write a letter (to which they seldom respond), go to your neighborhood association meetings, or speak a three minute piece at city council and look like a nut.
?
Or volunteer, ironically, for an NGO. (This is why, sociologically, civil society has a habit of replacing unwieldy Mt. Olypmus-style governments.)
"Voting is irrational? What's the alternative if you don't like what autocrats are doing to you?"
Well, I always thought that if we really believed in genuine democracy and egalitarianism and equality, we would put our "money wher our mouth is" and do away with voting and professional politicians altogether.
Instead, we would constitute our representative assemblies by random lottery - as we currently do with jurys.
Of course, all people selected for the assembly would be well-compensated - including all expenses for relocation, receive any necessary technical training, and be guaranteed their old jobs back when their term is up.
I believe the ancient Athenians did something like this?
Voters are irrational.
Yaaaaaay, an article informing us of what we can do to change and
reshape our broken system of government. And it keeps things
simple. Way to go Oregon and Commondreams for highlighting this creative
iniative to an old problem.
truthmonger has it precisely right. Proprietary software has no place in an election whether used to vote or count those votes. Hand counting and posting results is essential - anything else is a waste of time - and it's both cheap and quick! Instant run-off elections with all votes counted is the best and cheapest way to go but it ain't gonna happen because those now in control will not relinquish any.
Oregon's vote by mail system has been monitored several times over the years by national and international groups and has been found to have next to no measurable fraud or abuse, paticularly when compared to the alternatives. As for the ability to throw away or substitute a ballot, that possibility exists in all of the systems. That in and of itself doesn't make it ok, but vote-by-mail can't be singled out for that.
As for voter-owned elections, as a Portlander, I have been very excited and actually became markedly more involved in politics (not as a candidate) with the advent of that system.
One more point. Clean money campaigns are not designed to be a cure-all for accurate and transparant elections. That will require the overhaul mentioned on this thread. VOE's are for the specific purpose of not making candidates/future office-holders beholden to big-money campaign donors. They are part of the reforms needed, not the whole shebang.
"And there-in lies the problem with elections, and with democratic government more broadly. You can't compel participation; you can't stop people from sitting out the vote."
Eh? We have compulsory participation in elections over here. Works fine. It's a basic civic duty, after all.
PS: it's disgusting that it takes so much money to run. Make running election ads for free a requirement for licensees of the radio spectrum.
Whoops... I guess I credited the wrong poster for first mentioning the flaws in "all-by-mail-in" elections. I should have said jskinner.
In Washington the Legislature made public financing of local elections illegal.
After a years long battle, they were just in the past few weeks able to reverse that crazy law.
Clean Elections is the one thing people tend to agree upon across the political spectrum. Third party's are especially enamoured of it.
This is the heart of every issue that concerns us.
As a downstate Oregonian, I am fascinated with Portland's experiment and I'm eager to see how it works out. I hope more local areas will adopt the idea.
I agree wholeheartedly with COMarc that our popular "all-by-mail balloting" is wide open to foul play. Just for starters, No one really knows how many ballots were mailed in. They can't be traced back to a precinct sign-in ledger. It's wide open to vote-padding or its opposite.
I pray for the day we decide to return to the local precincts, each small enough for votes to easily be counted by hand on site, ballot security and that all important sign-in ledger kept locked up on site.
I love it and so simple!Tony
There is a 59-page outline of what Barack Obama plans to do for America if he's elected President. This man hasn't left out a thing. Not only that, he includes a detailed plan of how he's going to carry out every one of his intentions.
It's very compelling - and he will definitely have my vote if he is chosen to run for President. I've never in my life seen or heard such a detailed outline of what a candidate plans to do once he gets into office - regarding every topic any thinking American could possibly be interested in.
If you'd care to take a look at it, it's at this web site:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/ObamaBlueprintForChange.pdf
Australian elections are held on a Saturday, while not a holiday, is not a normal working day.
Penalties although not harsh are sufficient to ensure about 95% compliance.
Mind you although attendance at a polling station is compulsory, actually voting is not, as you can spoil your ballot. This is termed 'voting informal' and can be as high as 10%.
"You can't compel participation; you can't stop people from sitting out the vote."
Actually, from the little I know of Australia, this is not true. For them election day is a holiday and voting is compulsory. I don't know what the penalties are for not showing up at the polls, but to say you "can't" compel participation in an election is only true of the US.
PS ... one other point I keep making. When the Dems have an internal contest like the one for a nomination to run as the party's candidate for an office, they can basically set whatever rules they want. They have to stay within federal law. But within that limit, they can do what they want.
So, why don't the Dems run something like this for their presidential nominations? They easily could.
The answer is of course that they want big money to be able to decide who their candidate is. The last thing the Dems would want would be a system where a Gravel or a Kucinich could compete fairly with a Hillary or an Obama corporate funded campaign.
What jskinner says is important. We keep hearing about differently problems in our system of elections. But just fixing any one doesn't fix the system. It needs a systematic overhaul that eliminates ALL the ways in which democracy is denied and subverted.
Just one example... I keep hearing about paper trails on voting machines. Yes, that's needed. But, if you have a crooked vote counting system down at county HQ, putting paper trails on the machines doesn't on its own lead to pure and democratic elections. Or, even if the votes are cast and counted fairly, if you've got a system that only allows for a choice between two corporate-approved and backed candidates, that still ain't a free and fair democratic system.
So, yes I like this. But its just one step.
truthmonger - Sorry, but mail-in ballots are among the most easily manipulated. After all, who's watching? Anyone with inside access can pitch yours and submit a forged one in its place or simply change your vote. Then, they all get run through optical scan machines anyway; software-driven devices running on proprietary code. No security there!
The public funding aspect of this movement is encouraging, but until they decide to publicly hand-count the ballots at the precinct and immediately post results there, their election security and transparency is as lacking as anywhere else.
There's a lot more to clean elections than equal access and equal funding for candidates.
As our ex-governor once said "Please visit Oregon, but then go home".
"Some political scientists argue that voting is irrational,..." and some climate scientists argue that global warming is a hoax.
Congratulations, Portland! Your progressive duplication of the Clean Elections model that is gaining traction all across the country is one more instance at striving for true democracy. And the accelerated effort to fill the vacated council seat argues for shorter campaign seasons at all levels of elections. It's wasted money going to the media conglomerates and boring, dividing and confusing the electorate.
I hear that Oregon is one of the few states with mail-in ballots. More people can vote, you can track a paper trail, etc. Can anyone explain why the rest of the country won't go this way? I mean besides keeping Diebold in business and assuring fixed elections?
Yeah Oregon !
Voting is irrational? What's the alternative if you don't like what autocrats are doing to you?
I've never even heard of this! This is so exciting.
kathyodat