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Party Machines Hated Proportional Representation (PR) Image from Kathleen Barber's Book |
Lawrence Lessig is trying to raise $1 million through crowdsourcing to run for president on a democratic reform platform. As of today, his
effort is halfway towards the goal. One leg of his proposal is proportional
representation for the US House based on FairVote’s latest plan. I have written
in the previous post about how this system would work. This article is about
the history of Ranked Choice Voting.
Ranked Choice Voting is not a new idea. It is constitutionally protected
and has a long history in our nation. It has been more of a forgotten idea. But this
is changing. The reform is reemerging as an alternative to the two round voting
used in non-partisan municipal elections. It can also work with partisan elections where the results can mirror the primary / general election dynamic. Here is a very brief account of the history of Ranked Choice
Voting. Most of the historical information in the article was taken from
Kathleen L. Barber’s books - Proportional Representation & Electoral Reform in Ohio. &, A Right To Representation.
In the mid 19th century, the Industrial Revolution was
transforming society in developed nations. Accordingly, the franchise of
democracy was affected. There was a fear among elites that the growing middle
class would, as a majority of voters, displace the establishment in government. In the early 1860's, the influential
English thinker and member of Parliament John Stuart Mill found
a way to accommodate majority rule while still give the minority a voice. He
came across English barrister Thomas Hare’s pamphlet "On The Election
Of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal."
In his treatise, Hare was advocating the Single Transferable Vote (STV). We call this Ranked Choice Voting today in our nation. STV
also is referred to as Preferential
Voting and Hare / Clark Method. The system can be called Instant Runoff Voting when
used in single-seat elections and Choice Voting (PR/STV) when used
with multi-seat proportional representation.
Australia and Ireland were early converts to the system and still
use it to this day with national elections. In fact, Kathleen Barber says there is no tradition of
party-list proportional representation in English speaking countries.
United States
In the post Civil War United States, the enfranchisement of black
males and an influx of European immigrants threatened the balance of power.
Again, the establishment was worried about class issues and the impact on
suffrage.
Barber says the South Carolina legislature considered RCV to
protect the interests of white minorities during Reconstruction. They settled
instead on using the semi-proportional Cumulative Voting.
After the military left the state, plurality voting came back. The simple
barriers of literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation and violence became the
way to simply keep blacks out of power.
Between 1870 and 1900 more than 11 million European immigrants
came to the US. Most of them settled in the cities of the Northeast and Midwest.
Political parties met the needs of the new immigrants thus cultivating loyalty.
These loyal voters were the base of powerful political
machines that dominated the "wards"—which
are single member political districts with winner-take-all voting rules.
As a reaction to the rule of the party bosses, there were attempts to reform elections and break up the ward
system. In 1872, majority Republicans in the New York legislature passed a bill
mandating Cumulative Voting, a form of semi-proportional representation, for
New York City. The Democratic governor vetoed this system which would done away
with single-seat wards—and instead also give a minority of voters an
opportunity to elect a candidate of choice.
Between 1890 and 1920, many progressive voting reforms were put
into practice. Women's suffrage, direct election of US Senators, open
primaries, ballot initiative and referendum, home-rule municipal charters and
non-partisan elections are still with us today. RCV was among these reforms
adopted at the time.
RCV took hold in New York City along with cities in Ohio,
Massachusetts and other places. Oregonians amended their state constitution to
explicitly accommodate it—and this language exists to this day.
The system did what it was supposed to do—give voters more choices
by the ability of ranking candidates. Voters were no longer stuck in a ward or
district dominated by one party and could choose women, independents or racial
minorities without splitting a constituency at the polls. The key is to have multiple seats up for election with the ballot results allocated proportional to the votes cast.
Mill and Hare envisioned the promise of minority representation,
but in a sense of protecting gentry from the masses. With RCV in the US, minority representation came
true but in a way that helped folks who were usually excluded from democratic
institutions. In fact, the federal Voting Rights Act has used forms of Fair Voting (proportional representation) to remedy racially polarized and minority voter dilution voting in places where
single-member districts are difficult to create. Over 100 jurisdictions in
our nation use this kind of voting for inclusive elections.
The Establishment Pushes Back
At first, opponents of RCV went to court with various suits. They
claimed it violated the equal protection of the 14th Amendment. But the Courts disagreed and RCV was upheld as legal.
Opponents then mounted repeal efforts. In most
places there was a ballot question calling for repealing RCV every time there
was an election! Even though voters repeatedly turned the pro-party machine effort down, the same repeal
question appeared on the ballot faithfully, year after year.
After World War II, the Cold War and racial issues came into
prominence. In some of the cities using RCV, blacks were getting elected and
opponents conducted "whisper campaigns" bemoaning racial
block voting. In New York, during the
height of the Red Scare, of couple of Communist Party members were elected to
the city council. Opponents decried RCV as Stalinist and un-American.
It was these charges, unrelenting repeal efforts and voters
forgetting why the system was implemented in the fist place that led to
successful repeals. By 1960, all cities except for Cambridge MA, had repealed Ranked
Choice Voting.
This fall voters in Duluth Minnesota and the whole state of Maine will
be considering the reform. These ballot measures have a great chance of
winning. RCV is established in California’s Bay Area, the Twin Cities and
Portland Maine.
Now that a leading reformer has added this idea to his
unique presidential campaign effort, it looks like Ranked Choice Voting's time for national exposure might be coming
after all.
Krist Novoselic is current Chair of the FairVote Board of Directors
A version of this was originally published in the Seattle Weekly,
June 3, 2008
Krist--
ReplyDeleteI work on the Lessig campaign (and am a big Nirvana fan...listening to Milk It right now).
1.) Thanks for the support. Your blog posts not only have been astutely put, but also have been driving traffic and donations--and our web analytics reflect that.
2.) A small, quick albeit high impact favor to ask. Can you go to https://lessigforpresident.com/resources/ and update your Twitter profile pic and background image with Team Lessig messaging? I know this request sounds a little silly, but it actually makes a huge impact. It worked really well with Mayday fundraising
We really appreciate your support so far and hope you'll help us out with some more social media support.
Thanks again
It's possible for the candidate with the majority of votes to not win. Here's an explanation of why that can happen: http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/complexifying-ranked-choice-voting-system-93837
ReplyDeleteIt's possible for the candidate with the majority of votes to not win. Here's an explanation of why that can happen: http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/complexifying-ranked-choice-voting-system-93837
ReplyDeleteHi Sheila,
DeleteNo voting system is perfect, but RCV does a far better job of promoting majority rule than competing systems. For example, candidates win with far more votes under RCV than under a system with low turnout runoff elections.
The Pacific Standard magazine article you linked to relies on a really unfortunate study of very poor quality. FairVote wrote a detailed response to it that you can find here: http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/blog/a-response-to-deceptive-claims-about-draft-academic-paper-on-ranked-choice-voting-and-turnout/