[EM] California (Re: Two round methods)

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the reply.  I'm going to quote just a portion of your email
(your response about California's system), and I'll respond with a few
pertinent links

On Sat, Oct 2, 2021 at 6:00 PM Kevin Venzke <steak at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> I don't have an inherent problem with "one on one," and I don't remember what your complaint
> was about the California method. I would just be concerned with what is the best way to pick
> the finalists.

Okay, I'm guessing that you don't remember our 2018 conversation
(which is okay, because I don't remember THAT much of it).  There's a
link to it below.  Before that, let's discuss something you said in
the mail I'm replying to:

> Hmm? In the American system you can't win with a majority on the first "round" because only
> half the political spectrum participates in a contest. Republican and Democratic are done
> separately.

This is true in many parts of our fine nation, but guess what?
Welcome to California!  That's not the way that we do it here.

We have what many others call a "jungle primary" (or, more dryly, the
"nonpartisan blanket primary"):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary

Everyone gets the same ballot.  That had me scared in February 2018,
because I had been door-to-door canvassing for a political group that
was trying to make sure that a Democrat (any Democrat) beat the
Republican in a nearby U.S. Congressional district:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California%27s_10th_congressional_district_election

Because I was scared little Democrat, and felt that much of my late
2017 and early 2018 effort was going to be wasted, I sent this email
to the EM-list:

<http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2018-February/001687.html>

That led to our wonderful March 2018 discussion (previously mentioned
in this email):
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2018-March/thread.html#1688

Having a meaty conversation with EM-list around that time was a good
distraction.  I was scared to death about the state of American
politics around then.  As I knocked on doors in the heat of the
California Central Valley that summer, trying to convince people to
vote for Josh Harder, I thought about our conversation about approval
voting, and spoke with many of my fellow activists who didn't want to
think about math.  That was especially true after the June 2018
primary election, when all of the other candidates were eliminated,
and the rest of the work in CA-10 was focused on the head-to-head
contest between Democratic Party Challenger Josh Harder, and
Republican incumbent Jeff Denham.  Since the race between Harder and
Denham was close, most folks just wanted to focus on THIS election,
and not talk about pie-in-the-sky voting reform that wouldn't happen
before November 2018.

The mood started to get pretty glum on election night at the
election-night party held in Modesto by Josh Harder for the
volunteers.  Denham was ahead by a seemingly wide margin.  It took
several days of gathering mail-in ballots before we knew the result:
<https://www.vox.com/2018/11/7/18066354/josh-harder-congressman-election-results-jeff-denham>

Thankfully, Harder had an easy win.  Even better, just south of
Harder's district, TJ Cox won in CA-21 in perhaps the closest federal
race in 2018.  I had also canvassed for Cox, so I was relieved that
perhaps the bus trip that I took down to the district to help voters
get registered had paid off.

I calmed down a bit after the November 2018 election, and had some
time to write down my thoughts about approval-based election methods:
<https://robla.blog/2018/12/09/replacing-the-jungle-primary-december-edition/>

> If it were possible to win a majority of the electorate during the primaries, you would
> practically have to elect that person. Otherwise you have the potential that small changes
> in turnout could reverse the result. That would be really bad.

What if TWO people won a majority approval in the primary election?
Let's keep using the CA-10 example from above, and take all of the
candidates that received more than 10,000 votes in the primary:

* Jeff Denham (incumbent, Republican) 45,719 votes (37.6%)
* Josh Harder (Democratic) 20,742 votes (17.0%)
* Ted D. Howze (Republican)  17,723 votes (14.6%)
* Michael Eggman (Democratic) 12,446 votes (10.2%)
* Virginia Madueño (Democratic) 11,178 votes (9.2%)
* Others (11.4%)
* Total: 121,757 votes (100.0%)

At least a couple folks I spoke to liked Virginia Madueño, but rallied
around Josh Harder after the primary election.  As I recall, on
election night, Denham and Howze were in the lead, and Harder was a
close third.  It was only the mail-in ballots that swung toward
Harder.  But note: this election was a "vote-for-only-one" (FPTP)
election.  I know that many people that I spoke with in CA-10 were
eager to get ANYONE other than a Republican.  It didn't help that TJ
Cox (who was also polling pretty well in CA-10)  dropped out of the
CA-10 race and entered the CA-21 race  That's the one that he JUST
BARELY won:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California's_21st_congressional_district_election

Cox's wife (Kathleen Murphy) is an emergency-room pediatrician whose
primary office was in Fresno (closer to CA-21 than CA-10) and
Cox/Murphy owned several cheap homes in the Central Valley (in both
CA-10 and CA-21) because Cox and Murphy each individually needed a
place to crash in 2018.  They were both working pretty hard that year,
and I think their kids were attending school in CA-21.  Being able to
consolidate near Fresno probably helped both of them get more sleep
that year.

Anyway, just painting a picture of a real-world election that I know a
bit about (CA-10).  My hunch is that at least a couple of the
Democratic candidates would have received a majority of approval
votes, and Howze MIGHT have pulled off a majority (though I doubt it;
he seemed like quite a crackpot, as the 2020 election showed):
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_California#District_10>

My hunch is that Denham, Harder, Cox, Eggman and Madueño could have
gotten over 50% approval.  Maybe even Howze.  As I recall, Eggman
entered at the last minute, just before the deadline (he lost against
Denham in 2016, but had name recognition, so maybe he could have
pulled it off).  Cox withdrew, but I know there were a lot of
heartbroken activists about Cox shifting to CA-21.  Howze was the "Pro
Trump" candidate in the race, and Denham was trying to say "well, I'm
for Trump on most things, but I'm here for the residents of CA-10".
Howze was also a last-minute strategic entrant into the race.

California has an ENORMOUS Latino community in the Central Valley, who
were scared of ICE, because even in the cases where a citizen is a
lifelong resident of the United States (and thus a citizen according
to the United States Constitution), that still didn't prevent
detention for those citizens who didn't speak English very well, and
couldn't prove that they were citizens (because many people don't have
passports here in the United States, and it used to be fairly easy to
cross from San Diego to Tijuana and back without a passport for many
people until fairly recently)   That meant that a lot of people were
afraid to register to vote.  Plus they had day jobs, which were much
harder than any of the jobs that I've worked since high school (I
picked strawberries for part of the summer after I graduated from high
school; my dad was able to find me and my sister a better-paying job
before the summer was over).  I'm guessing many of the Latinos picking
strawberries in California's Central Valley don't have their fathers
lining up better work for them.

My long tangent is why I changed the subject of this mail.  I would
love to use California's CA-10 and CA-21 as example districts, since
the data from those elections is really interesting (at least to me).
If no one wants to use the Californian examples, and instead talk
about candidates A, B, C, D, and E.... well, that's okay.  I realize
that California isn't as interesting to people who don't live here,
but just beware: Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were from California.
The "Rise Above Movement"
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_Above_Movement>) is based in
Southern California.  Arnold Schwarzenegger used to be governor of
California.  The TV series M*A*S*H and "Little House on the Prairie"
were filmed in California.  El Niño comes from just west of
California, and it affects the weather all over the world.  Weird
things happen here.  IGNORE US AT YOUR PERIL!!!!!1!!1!   :-)

Rob