The Proletariat

TCT: If Madison were to embrace instant runoff voting, which allows voters to rank candidates and transfer support, it would not be possible to avoid separate primary and general elections and hold a signal election to fill the seat

It is about time. I believe this is the first time the Capital Times has endorsed instant runoff voting.

IRV can save Madison thousands and thousands of dollars which are currently needed with the tough budget process. The cost of a runoff election can exceed $50 a vote.  It is not only “special elections” where IRV can save Madison money, but also runoff (general) elections for city council, Dane County Board, Mayor, County Executive, and the school board races.

Currently in all these local elections we have 3,4,5 or more candidates running for office in which only the votes of the top two vote getters are counted. If you supported a candidate who came in third, fourth, or fifth, your vote does not count.  In a first past the post system only the votes of the top two candidates are counted. In order to correct for this fact, city and county government pays for a whole new election. It is not very difficult to fathom how such a process can get very expensive for both the city and county.

In a typical local election you have a multi-candidate primary with only a fraction of the voters of the general election. In other words, only a small percentage of voters in the general election participated in weeding of the initial candidates.  Wouldn’t it be great if there was someway we could just go into the booth,  select our preferred candidates, with the end result of an elected official with a majority vote.

Well, that is exactly how IRV works.

One Man’s Opinion : Now how the Electors are divided is up to the state. Currently 48 states do it the old fashioned democratic way — winner takes all. That means the winner of the popular vote in the state wins all of the electoral votes.

Sounds like some  GOP Folk is hating on some Greens and their desire for proportional representation. About a year ago I wrote a post on proportional representation titled Why Wisconsin Must Lead. The argument was for an IRV based system called STV in which electors would be apportioned based on the popular vote.

First, it seems GOP Folk is using the word democracy rather loosely. It was not until 1824 that voters actually got to select the president. There are certainly some on the right who’d argue that the Electoral College by its republican virtures is undemocratic by definition.  The EC was pushed by the republican founders out of their complete distrust for the popular will of the people.

The fact that the majority of states have a winner take all has nothing to do with respect for democracy. It has every thing to do with gaming the system and maintaining party control. That would be akin to saying that the primary object of gerrymandering is the popular will of the people.

What GOP Folk really means when he says “popular vote’ is a plurality of the popular will which is rarely the majority.  With such reasoning we are to believe that Clinton’s 43% in 1992, is some grand statement of America’s popular will. At least at its core the electoral college aims for a proportional if not majoritarian approach to the popular will.

While distrust of slaves, peasants, poor, uneducated, and those without property were motivating factors for the electoral college, it is its proportional nature which allows it form a national conscience.  Proportional representation is as the word implies an attempt to represent different segments of the population. The aim of proportional representation in the end shares more in common with electoral college than a winner take all.

I don’t think anyone really believes the “EC Question” can be solved by changing the constitution.  However,  the constitution in no way limits a state in apportioning the electoral college in the way it sees fit. What is so wrong with 5:4:1 anyway,

What are those you ask? Well that would be the warm and fuzzy determination of elections. For example: If Wisconsin split 50:40:10 the Electoral Votes would be divided 5:4:1 for the respective parties.

It seems to me in the end that is much more representative of the popular will of the voters than McCain or Obama taking all the electoral votes. While one can argue the winner take all may help a particular political party it is much more difficult to argue it reflects the democratic will of a state.

With a caucus, like STV, a voter’s second choice becomes very important. In the end it is more important what Biden and Richardson supporters will do than who is currently winning the three way horse race.

In yesterday’s Zogby poll Clinton leads with 31% followed by Obama at 27% and Edwards at 24%. The same poll today shows Clinton and Obama’s support falling with Clinton at 30%, and a Edwards / Obama tie at 26%.

Yesterday’s MSNBC (pdf) poll showed Edwards 24%, Clinton 23%, and Obama 22%. 68% of the MSNBC voters stated that if their candidate was not viable, they would select another candidate. When those non-viable candidate’s votes are redistributed, we have Edwards at 33% and Clinton and Obama tied at 26%.

Even more than the horse race, some of the demographic information is very interesting. While all three candidates had women’s support in the 20’s, Clinton drops to 16% support from men. If we look at union support Edwards has 36%, Clinton 23%, and Obama at a dismal 13%, the same as Richardson.

The main question is wh0 will the 30% of male and union voters support on their second choice. On both measures the scale strongly leans towards Edwards. The longer term question is, do the Democrats want to go forward with a candidate who has only 13% union support (Obama), or 16% male support (Clinton). In the end that is something Iowa Democrats will have to decide.

I have recently written a few posts on STV. Most recently, a post on how STV, proportional representation, is a much better method for allocating electoral college votes than the current winner take all or a national popular vote. I even wrote a post that used Wisconsin’s ten electoral votes as an example of how STV or proportional representation would work.

What is interesting is how the Democratic caucus works very similar to STV. Maybe the best way to look at STV is a caucus in primary form.

If you have listened to news reports for the past few days, you have heard the term 15% viability. That 15% is just an average, the actual percent of viability is determined by the number of caucusers and delegates available. STV, in a primary system, uses a method called Droop Quota. The formula for the droop quota is simply (# of pollers / # of seats + 1). That number would be similar to what in a caucus is referred to as percent of viability.

In both a caucus and STV the voter him/herself determines if and how their vote will be counted. As a contrast, lets see what happens in a Wisconsin winner take all primary. Lets say Hillary received 35%, Obama 29%, Edwards 26%, Richardson 5%, and Kucinich 5%. You, as the voter have very little control with how your vote is counted. It really does not matter who you voted for because in a winner take all primary all those votes would go to Hillary. The obvious problem with such a system is the vast majority of voters would be anti-Hillary.

In a caucus, if your candidate does not meet the viability threshold, you still have the chance to vote. Representatives from viable candidates come and make their pleas for support. As a voter you still have an option to join the non committed group, but then that’s the point, its your choice.

In an STV primary you would vote for your candidates in order of preference. Like a caucus if your candidate does not have enough support to be viable, then your second rank is used. To use our Wisconsin example again, Clinton would receive 3 electoral votes (5% surplus), Obama 2 (9% surplus), Edwards 2 (6% surplus), with 0 for both Richardson and Kucinich (5% surplus). The second rank choices for both Richardson and Kucinich would be distributed to the remaining three candidates.

Here are videos on how to caucus from the top 3 Democrats.

Clinton Caucus Video

Edwards Caucus Video

Obama Caucus Video