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Broken Elections
On Tuesday, Los Angeles reached a new, all-time low for voter turnout in a mayoral election. Contrary to the claim in a L.A. Times editorial that the abysmally low voter turnout was not "bottom scraping," the thirteen percent turnout was in fact as bottom of the barrel as it gets. Sure, it could get lower-but it hasn't before.
"Bottom scraping" or not, thirteen percent voter turnout for a mayoral election is hardly cause for civic celebration.
The old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind. Well, L.A.'s elections are "broke," but they're in good company. California is broke, and so is L.A.
Instead of running a seemingly endless series of expensive elections that the city can't afford and no one shows up for, how about trying something different? That something different is Instant Runoff Voting.
L.A. requires runoff elections to ensure that a candidate is elected with a majority of the vote. Historically, that has meant two separate elections held months apart. The problem, of course, is that each election costs something in the neighborhood of $8 million and voter participation drops precipitously for the second election. In 2007, for example, only six percent of voters participated in L.A.'s runoff election. By using Instant Runoff Voting, L.A. could combine two rounds of elections into one, saving millions of dollars and increasing voter turnout in the process.
Here's how Instant Runoff Voting, or "IRV" works: instead of voting for just one candidate, voters rank the candidates in order of preference-marking their first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on, on the ballot. If a candidate wins a majority of first choice rankings, that candidate is elected. If, however, no candidate receives an initial majority of first choice rankings, the candidate with the fewest first choice rankings is eliminated from the race and that candidate's supporters have their votes count for their second choice. The votes are counted again to see if any candidate has a majority. If not, the process repeats until a candidate emerges with majority support
Besides saving the city millions of dollars, IRV would shorten the campaign season, and save everyone-candidates, supporters and volunteers-time and money. Right now, for example, two candidates for different seats on the Community College Board, Nancy Pearlman and Angela Reddock, are gearing up for yet another campaign and another election despite winning decisive first round victories. Ms. Pearlman captured 49% of the vote; her nearest competitor won 13%. Ms. Reddock won 48%, the second place finisher took 20%. Their commanding leads notwithstanding, both Pearlman and Reddock must venture back on the campaign trail. Again.
Since switching to IRV for local elections in 2004, San Francisco has saved millions of dollars. Voters from a range of ethnic backgrounds in that incredibly diverse city have found it easy to use. What's more, in San Francisco and in Burlington, Vermont, where IRV is used to elect the mayor, observers have noted that IRV leads to more civil campaigns. That's because candidates need to court the second choice votes from their opponents' supporters, and therefore have an incentive to avoid negative campaigning.
IRV has drawn broad, bipartisan support throughout Los Angeles including: the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the Los Angeles League of Women Voters, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the Mexican American Bar Association, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, Los Angeles Controller-Elect Wendy Greuel, State Board of Equalization Chair Judy Chu, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, State Controller John Chiang, Council members Bill Rosendahl and Ed Reyes, Council President Eric Garcetti, School Board President Monica Garcia, and Community College District President Kelly Candaele.
With record low voter turnout and sky-high budget deficits, the time has come to fix L.A.'s broken elections.
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6 Comments so far
Show AllIRV is good. Online voting is almost free, safe with SSN ID, easier to do from home, and will have much better voter turnout.
While at it, why not have online referenda the same way?
IRV would indeed be an improvement on the present system.
But there are other solutions too. For example a semi-lottery election. In a semi-lottery election each candidate would attempt to get as many votes as possible. If once the votes have been counted a candidate has a 50% or more of the votes the candidate is declared elected. If not then the winner is chosen by lottery with the chances of winning being proportional to the candidate's percentage of the total votes.
Now it may be argued that the majority would not be represented much of the time with this system because a candidate with 4% of the vote might get in even though another candidate had 45% of the vote. And at times this would be true, but averaged out over the elections the majority will be well represented. Averaged out the minority views will also be represented proportionally to their frequency in the population. Under the current system the minority interests are seldom represented so a semi-lottery election would better reflect the views of the voters.
There are three main reasons for going to a semi-lottery election system.
The first is, as mentioned above that it more fairly represents the views of the electorate and would bring into the political discussions views that are currently excluded from the debates.
The second is that it will change the dynamic of the elections. Currently far too many people must be practical and not meaninglessly waste their votes by voting for what they want because the candidates that represent their views do not have a chance of winning. Or even worse the voter feels blackmailed into voting for candidate A who is the only one who stands a chance of stopping candidate B. Often candidate A is almost as odious as candidate B. Some choice. It is not surprising that people lose interest in voting. However with a semi-lottery election every vote has meaning in that it increases the possibility of the representative that you want getting a seat. Two candidates representing somewhat similar views will not end up splitting the vote and allowing a candidate representing the opposing view to take the election with less support than the first two candidates combined. Vote splitting is no longer a problem or issue.
The third reason for going into a semi-lottery election system is that it will make it more difficult to buy politicians.
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Several variants of the semi-lottery election system are possible. One would be to combine it with a challenger-incumbent system. With this the semi-lottery election would be used to select a challenger to the incumbent. If there were no incumbent then two challengers would be selected. With a challenger-incumbent system the voter is given a chance for second thought but at the expense of reducing the representation of the minority views. It also has the advantage that a good incumbent can be retained.
Online voting would be good for some, but there are a lot of voters who aren't "connected." Or it could be a combination thing like the Income Tax filing. Being an Oregon Mail-In Voter, I can't imagine a better way to go - and if you drop off your ballot in one of the drop-off sites, you can save the 42 cents. Sure beats having to go through the hassle of getting to the poling place.
IRV is not perfect, but it is pretty good and fairly easy to understand. In Australia, we have IRV but you can also vote "above the line" - putting a single check against a political party. This has the effect of your vote acting as if you had filled out the preferences as per that party's recommendations. This system means that even minor parties have some power, as they can trade their preferences for concessions.
As to online voting: it's problematic. The voter wants their vote to be anonymous, and wants to be sure that their vote is counted. At the same time, they want to be sure that every other vote is by a properly registered voter who only gets to vote once. And: if there are irregularities, there must be some sort of grounds for appeal - a voter must be able to *prove* that their vote was miscounted. If votes are inserted into the system, we want to be able to identify who did it.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/pmurray
http://www.paulmurray.id.au/ageofworms
"As to online voting: it's problematic. The voter wants their vote to be anonymous, and wants to be sure that their vote is counted. At the same time, they want to be sure that every other vote is by a properly registered voter who only gets to vote once. And: if there are irregularities, there must be some sort of grounds for appeal - a voter must be able to *prove* that their vote was miscounted. If votes are inserted into the system, we want to be able to identify who did it."
For anonymity we can use our SSN as ID.
To make sure our vote is counted, we can go back and check it online.
To make sure every voter is registered and only gets to vote once, we can go back and check to see if there is only one vote attached to our ID as it should be.
If we can pay with credit cards, do our banking online, buy stuff online, pay our taxes online, if corporations, the IRS, the Pentagon and just about anything else do their business safely online, why can't we vote online? It may not be perfect, but it is compared to voting machines.
While low voter turnouts are deplorable, I'm inclined to doubt that IRV--highly desirable though it is--will prove to be the golden key that raises participation to reasonable levels. I believe that low turnout can more easily be explained by *absence of information*.
Such information exists, of course. But if it's not in a voter's hands when they need it, it doesn't exist for *them*.
In a national election, I hear all kinds of things from and about the presidential candidates. I *know* I can cast a vote on that subject, so I pay attention. I form an opinion. That opinion motivates me to go to the polls.
Of course, I hear lots of things about candidates in other races, as well. But will I be voting on them? Who knows? I certainly don't. I'm not so into politics that I keep track of which district I'm in or which representatives are going for that particular seat. Of course, I know what city I'm in. But I get very little information about candidates for city council. So I have a hard time knowing how to vote.
Once I decide I'm going to the polls, I do homework on the other offices and ballot measures, because I hate feeling like a clueless dummy when I'm standing in front of the ballot box. That means finding opinions about my options and deciding which ones are both sensible and trustworthy. It's a not a particularly arduous process, but it takes a bit of time.
Those scenarios illustrate the lack of information that suppresses voter turnout in a non-presidential election--information exists but voters don't know if they can believe it or if it applies to them; or they don't have any information at all.
Such problems are solvable. At citizensAdvisory.org, I propose a sophisticated client/server system to make such information *conveniently* available to voters. (Now though, I think it could be done better entirely on the web.)
An important additional observation in that regard: If I trust Greenpeace to give me voting advice, then in some sense I have become a *willing proxy* for Greenpeace. So if Greenpeace makes a recommendation for dogcatcher in Saskatchewan, and I'm in Saskatchewan (so I see the recommendation) then I'll be *motivated* to go to the polls, to help achieve our common objectives. (With the right system, Greenpeace can make such recommendations without fear of spamming other members, because only people in Saskatchewan will see it.)
If I can get *all* the information I need to vote on *every* issue--and get it all in one place--then going to the polls is just a couple of extra minutes in the day to achieve important objectives--rather than a huge mysterious process I'm participating in with little information I can trust.
That, I believe, is the solution to the issue of voter turnout--and to the issue of corporate money dominating elections. (Done right, it also enables multi-party politics in cyberspace--allowing coalitions of advisors to find regional contests in which they can effectively determine the outcome, which would precipitate a whole new era of "grass roots" politics.