[EM] Messaging for voting activism: "pride" and turnout

[steve bosworth]

[EM] Messaging for voting activism: "pride" and turnout



More “Pride” Voting with EAPR than GOLD



Thank you Jameson Quinn<https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn?source=post_header_lockup> for your article (Make America (Proud to) Vote (Again?) , #MAVA, 27 July 2017 ).  It expresses our common values very well.  Yes, “pride in democracy …. should be America’s legacy to all its citizens”.  Yes, GOLD would greatly improve our existing arrangrments “for electing the House of Representatives and/or state legislatures”.  However, responding to your key phrases quoted below, I would like to suggest that Evaluative Associational Proportional Representation (EAPR) would be even more efficient than GOLD in removing

  1.  “gerrymandering” [This is because all EAPR’s citizen’s evaluations during its special “primary election” would determine all the electoral districts and non-geographically defined “electoral associations” through which all the congresspersons in the nation would be elected];

  2.  the wasting of votes, e.g. GOLD may “ ignore” 10% of the votes but it is still “proportional overall” [Rather than up to 90% of Gold’s voters, 100% of EAPR’s voters would “support” their respective congresspersons.  This is partly achieved quantitatively and qualitatively both by all voters (perhaps by default) “grading” each candidate in the nation as either Excellent, Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or Rejected; and by giving each congressperson a weighted vote in the House exactly equal to the number of citizens whose votes had helped to elect them.  With regard to this second feature of EAPR, what GOLD calls a “supermajority of voters” would instead continue proportionately to strength the voting power in the House of the congressperson they respectively valued most highly.];

  3.  GOLD’s STV potential elimination of some most favored candidates before all the winners have been discovered [EAPR avoids this by using the above mentioned Majority Judgment type “grading” of candidates];

  4.  the “risk [of] causing a spoiled election”;

  5.  “zero-sum thinking”;

  6.  the “penchant for mudslinging”;

  7.  arbitrary features and needless complications, e.g. GOLD sometimes having a) to “split” votes or to “transfer votes” fractionally, b) to “assign additional territory to winners”; c) Also:  “But in some cases this could leave more or less than 2 in a district; more, if a 3rd-place candidate locally got exceptionally many votes from out of the district while still having decent support locally, or if the top 2 in the district have less than 50% of the vote combined; and fewer, if the second-place candidate in a district has fewer than half of the local votes of the first-place.”;

EAPR would also do more to help

  1.  each citizen to have “a chance to vote for somebody from across the state who really speaks” to them;

  2.  prompt citizens to think of the qualities an ideal congressperson would have [i.e. by using the above mentioned Majority Judgment type “grading” of candidates];

  3.  “new ideas getting a fair hearing”;

  4.  provide the “geographic spread” as explicitly requested by voters in EAPR’s primary election;

  5.  “increase turnout”;

  6.  Give the “freedom for better candidates to run without spoiling the election, and with a viable path for new parties to grow (and thus also for voters to hold existing parties accountable and make them less complacent”; and

  7.  “The upshot is that the winners will have several good characteristics that voters can be proud of.”



EAPR candidates would also “rate each other” [Each failed candidate must “transfer” all her votes to the available congressperson whom she “grades” most highly.].



Of course, the constitutional amendments required for the adoption of GOLD rather than EAPR might be expected to be more easily achieved because it retains both single member districts and each congressperson having only one vote in the House.  Alternative, the fact than only EAPR allows each citizen to guarantee that his or her one vote will continue fully to count in the deliberations of the legislature might immediately make it much more attractive to many more citizens, and thus more easily achieved.  This might especially be true for the some 18 states in which the relevant constitutional changes could be achieved directly by citizens using their currently available Initiative and Referenda procedures.  The adoption of EAPR in these states could help to pave the way for the adoption of the necessary US Constitutional amendment for EAPR to be used to elect the House of Representatives.



If you do not find the above brief explanations of how EAPR would work to be sufficiently complete, please feel free to ask me questions or for a copy of my relevant draft article (stevebosworth at hotmail.com).

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