Update from CV&D - part one

[New Democracy]

Dear list members,

     Here is the latest update from CV&D - part one.

Don,

Donald E. Davison of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald
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5/20/97

To:  CV&D activists/scholars
Fr:   Rob Richie, CV&D

I wanted to put together a quick update for folks on
several matters -- there are some important electons
going on overseas, and interesting new insights into
US elections to pass on.

Below you will find information on:

*US House races --  black incumbents in white majority
districts in 1996 , "marginal" races, 1970-1996 and recent
special election in New Mexico

* Questions to consider -- teriminolgy /  variant of STV

* Election and electoral system info on Ireland, Turkey,
France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Algeria, Bulgaria

* Quotes from new books

1. Blacks winning in white-majority districts:   Much ado
has been made about Cynthia McKinney and four other black
incuments, winning re-election in new white-majority districts.
But few have looked at the fact that the new districts were still
heavily Democratic and that once the black incumbents won
their primaries, it would have been shocking for them to lose.
    Below is the vote for president in these districts compared
to the vote for the black candidate -- note that Clinton  faced two
major opponents covering different parts of the ideological spectrum,
while the black incumbents generally did not:

- Cynthia McKinney, GA 4
       Clinton - 64.4%      McKinney - 58%

- Corrine Brown, FL 3
       Clinton - 58.4%      Brown - 61%

- Sheila J. Lee, TX 18
       Clinton - 73.0%      Lee - 77%

 Eddie B. Johnson, TX 30
       Clinton - 69.8%,     Johnson - 55%

 Sanford Bishop, GA 2
       Clinton - ?          Bishop - 54%

Clinton ran 15% of his national average in the districts of
McKinney, Lee and Johnson -- there is NOT ONE district in the
nation that has a Republican representative where Clinton ran
15% of his national average in 1992 and only one Republican
representing a district where Clinton ran more than 9% ahead
of his national average (Jay Dickey in Arkansas, clearly an
anomaly because it is Clinton's home state).

2. "Marginal" districts in the U.S. -- We have touted the "representation
index", which is the percentage of eligible voters who elect someone
to the House of Representatives -- 23% in 1994 and 32% in 1992.
     Another way to look at the effectiveness of votes is ones cast in an
election with a reasonable chance of going either way. Traditionally,
this has meant a race that was won by 10% or less. Note that often
not even one in five districts (out of 435 in all) are this close.
     Below are some stats from the National Committee for an Effective
Congress and Vital Statistics. Check out 1988 -- an amazing year for little
competition (99% of incumbents won, 236 elections won by over 40%
victory margins, etc). Note that things weren't more competitive in the
1970s....

Year          # Marginal districts
1996          80
1994          85
1992          82
1990          59
1988          36
1986          47
1984          ?
1982          ?
1980          78
1978          74
1976          76
1974          105
1972          67
1970          59

3. New Mexico last week had a special election to fill a
congressional seat. Here is an excerpt from an op-ed
I wrote recently on the race:
      "On May 13, Republicans won a major upset in a special
congressional election in New Mexico. In a heavily Democratic
district, a conservative Republican won 43% of the vote, a
Democrat took 40% and a Green gained 17%, one of the
best third-party congressional results in years.
      "Given that the Green candidate ran to the left of the
Democrat, it's clear that most voters did not want to be
represented by a Republican. But in New Mexico and many
other states, a winner only needs the most votes, not a
majority. Indeed, Bill Clinton was opposed by most voters in
his presidential victories. In 1992, he won just 43% of the
national vote and a majority in only one state: Arkansas....
      "...Two acid tests of a voting system are whether it
promotes majority rule and full participation. Plurality
elections and current methods of run-off elections fail.
With third parties and independents a growing --- and
healthy -- force in our politics, it's high time for a change."

4. Terminology:  We need to settle on our terminology, but
it hasn't been easy because we really want to do the "right"
thing -- words and phrases matter, and I'm convinced
we've been dealt a bad hand in current terms.
       I've had generally positive responses to my trial of
the term "full representation" for "proportional representation,"
although some would prefer "whole representation," "fair
share" or "universal representation."
       For the alternative vote, I have been using "the instant
run-off," but also am interested in "choice voting" or
"bottoms up" (borrowed from Australia). For single
transferable vote, we've been using "preference voting,"
but many would like to go to "choice voting."
       If you have any comments on these, please let me know.

5. "Bottoms up":  Some local elections in Australia are held
using a system they call "bottoms up." It essentially is STV/
preference voting without the transfer of surplus -- or SNTV
(single non-transferable vote, as used in Japan until recently)
with a mechanism to avoid wasting your vote on weak
candidates.. Thus, voters rank candidates in order of
preference, and ballots are transferred from the bottom
up until one candidate is left. A variant could be to not do
 transfers to candidates who have passed the winning
threshold in a previous round.
     Do any of you have reactions to this system? Although full
STV/preference votingwould be preferable, we might want to
explore proposing this system for local, non-partisan elections
in the U.S. -- it gets around the big educational hurdle, which
is explaining the transfer of surplus ballots from winners.

6. Journalists get confused by Irish elections:  Both the
New York Times and the Associated Press -- who should
know better -- have run articles mocking the Irish electoral
system, the single transferable vote. Here are excerpts from two
stories, followed by a message I sent to the foreign desk
of the Times -- note references to Ireland's strong economy,
which might be news to some people:

ASSOCIATED PRESS, 5/15/97
        DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - Irish Prime Minister John Bruton
today called parliamentary elections for June 6, a contest likely to
influence the search for peace in neighboring Northern Ireland.
        Bruton announced the date in the Dail, the main chamber
of parliament, then traveled across town to the official residence of
President Mary Robinson for her formal assent.
        Bruton's 29-month-old administration faces an uphill
fight to win re-election, according to recent opinion polls that place
his three-party coalition 10 to 15 percentage points behind the
opposition in this country of 3.5 million.
        But in Ireland's complex system of proportional
representation - where votersrate the local politicians in order
of preference and parties can win seats with a small overall
share of votes - analysts say the outcome is impossible to call. ...."

[NOTE FOLLOWING FROM REPORT OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL
REVIEW GROUP IN IRELAND IN 1996:  "The Irish system certainly
achieves its primary purpose of proportionality in party terms".]

New York Times, May 19, 1997, "Irish Governing Parties
Fight for Political Life"

        - sub-headline is "Even safe seats in Ireland
        appear up for grabs in next month's election"

        - Quote. "[A Fine Gael candidate] will be helped
by Ireland's highly complicated system of proportional
representation, a  process slightly clearer to most voters
than the provisions of the Schleswig-Holstein accord."

ROB RICHIE'S MEMO TO NY TIMES FOREIGN DESK
        I was troubled to see James Clarity's article today
in which he -- and thus the Times -- demonstrates a lack of
understanding of the Irish political system.
        Jabs at proportional representation systems are
rather common in the New York Times -- almost as common
as the use of proportional representation around the world.
On the latter, I would think very few Times readers would
have any inkling from your paper's coverage that of the 37
nations given a rating of "1" or 2" from Freedom House in
1995, 31 use proportional representation (only 4 use U.S.-
style plurality elections in one-seat districts). The term
"proportional representation" is rarely used in Times
articles that are not critical of a political system --
e.g., the old Italy and Israel situations.
        But let's look at Ireland and its "single transferable
vote" system, also called "choice voting." Clarity calls the system
"highly complicated," yet does not mention that Irish voters
have upheld choice voting in two national referendums and that
the Constitutional Review Group in 1996 reported the system
continues to have popular support. The reason for choice
voting's popularity is simple: it gives voters real choices. No
constituency is "safe" from competition -- despite your sub-
headline and "analysis" by Clarity in his article -- as nearly all
districts elect representatives from more than one party. No
under-performing incumbent has a free ride, as supporters of an
incumbent's party can vote first for other candidates from that
party without splitting the party's vote.
        The healthy competition within districts carries over
to national elections in Ireland. No government has been returned
to power in nearly 30 years -- in stark contrast to winner-take-all
elections in the United Kingdom and the United States, where
not only are most districts one-party bastions, but where the
British Conservative Party ran parliament from 1979 to 1997
without ever winning 45% of the national vote and the
Democrats controlled the U.S. House of Representatives from
1955 to 1995. Giving voters real choices has had good
economic consequences; Ireland's economy has grown at an
average rate of 7% in the last three years, and it now surpasses
the United Kingdom in its gross domestic product on a per-
capita basis. (Please see enclosed Economist article on Ireland.)
        Mr. Clarity -- and his editors -- may believe that it is
complicated to ask voters to put a "1" by your first choice
candidate, a "2" by your second-choice candidate and so on.
Yet the nations with the highest rates of voter participation in
the world last year used choice voting: Australia (96%) and
Malta (97%). Voters certainly have shown that they can make
choice voting work and that their representatives in turn will
work hard for them.

7. More electoral illiteracy at the Times:  On May 4th, Craig
Whitney wrote a Page 1 analysis for the New York Times on
"Why Blair's Victory May Not Travel Well in Europe." Whitney's
piece makes all kinds of weird leaps of logic -- based in
general in a distrust of proportional representation, although
apparently not realizing that France (where he is based) has
a winner-take-all system. Here is a key excerpt, with my comments:

     "...[A]chieving consensus in European countries on what to do about
it
     [unemployment] is all but impossible, in part because the party
political
     spectrum is much more fragmented than in Britain, and because in most
     countries on the continent, proportional representation imposes a
     need for coalition government and broad agreement.
        - COMMENT: I see. Consensus isn't possible in systems
        designed to achieve consensus. And having parties that disagree
        on such major policies is "fragmenting."

     Thatcher absolutely despised consensus, and because of the British
     electoral system she won healthy majorities in Parliament even
     though her Conservatives never won a majority of the popular vote.
        - COMMENT: Thank goodness she didn't need a majority!

     Thus she was able to break the stranglehold that British labor
     unions had over the economy when she arrived in power, and she
     legislated flexibility in British hiring and firing practices. She
     was also able to cut British income taxes to a top rate of 40
     percent -- about what Americans in the upper tax brackets pay on
     some of their income, but far less than what the richest pay in
     France (54 percent) or in Germany (53 percent).

     Two decades later, Blair has accepted most of these Thatcherite
     prescriptions as essential for Britain to compete effectively in the
     new global economy.
        - COMMENT: But are these issues debateable? What about
        the fact that  Ireland's economy has grown much more than the
        UK's economy without these policies? Is consensus on such
        big, debateable issues in a winner-take-all system a good thing?

     Here in France, though, there is no such consensus. President
     Jacques Chirac keeps saying that businesses would hire more people
     to work for them if they didn't have to pay high payroll taxes that
     usually add 50 percent to the cost of every salary.
        - COMMENT: No consensus despite also having a
         winner-take-all systems, apparently

     But according to public opinion polls, most people in France -- and
     not just the Socialist opposition -- oppose cutting these taxes if
     it means reductions in the generous unemployment, pension and health
     care benefits that everybody in France has thought of as a right,
     not a privilege, for 50 years. So far, nothing much has happened --
     and that is one reason Chirac called for new elections.
        - COMMENT: That darn majority, again.

     ...Change is not totally impossible; in both Sweden and Germany,
     widespread sick-leave abuses have led to changes in the rules so
     that now you have to be sick for more than a day or two before you
     can start collecting sick pay.
        COMMENT: "Not totally impossible"? What an admission
        when commeting on some of the most stable nations on
        the planet!

See Part 2 of the update for analyses of the British elections and more.