Not sure if something worthwhile will come out of my fingers, but I am going to take a stab at articulating some feelings I’ve been having as I watched the vote and the subsequent reaction to the gun background check legislation.

There’s part of me that ra-ra-ras along as politicians from my side of the spectrum excoriate the senators who voted no.  I also ra-ra along as I see my friends lamenting how gun manufacturers have used money to fund the NRA, who in turn have threatened senators to vote no despite apparent public support.

The biggest feeling I have when I see all the feelings on the issue is confusion about why people don’t see that the system is working as expected.  All the blame seems childish to me.  Fury and recrimination against some senator from some state I don’t live in…I understand it feels good to envisage ones enemy, but you’re fooling yourself if you think you’re committed to an issue just because you hate the personification of it.

You want to do something about Congress’s inability to get this legislation through?  Think about it:  We have an election system that allows for out-of-state funds that stem from all sorts of sources (including corporations) to heavily influence election outcomes.  Blaming the NRA for championing their perspective with the help of their monied supporters is like blaming lions for eating antelopes:  It’s a foregone conclusion that such things would happen.

Humans are worth trying to influence with rhetoric, but if you want to influence how the NRA influences the laws that get passed in this country, step back and think about how to change the system.

Here’s a hint:  Election reform.

There are a lot of excuses we all come up with when we’re told to write to our elected officials about an issue.  Here are a few that come to mind for me:

• Meh.  That issue isn’t very important to me, I’ll let you folks fight that one out.

• Hmmm.  I’ll keep my eye on that one and see if it amounts to something.

• Yeikes!  My baby’s diaper needs to be changed and my other kid just started building a fort in the dishwasher.

• YES!  My representative is already a champion of that issue, no need for me to contact them about it.

• ARGH!  My representative is strongly opposed to what I think about that issue, contacting them would be a waste of time.

Proportional representation — the umbrella term for methods of electing legislative representatives in proportion to their popular support — can’t help me un-fort my dishwasher, but it can help make it much more likely that I’d elect at least one representative who’s interested and motivated to listen to my views.

Consider the case of Representative Maud E. Rhet and voter Connie S. Vertif.  Is it worth Connie’s time to write to Rep. Rhet to beg and plead for her causes if she knows that Rep. Rhet’s views on those causes are diametrically opposed to hers?  It’s certainly a noble thing to register dissent, but it’s hard to imagine it would change the way Rep. Rhet will vote, especially if Connie’s view isn’t already popular.  As Connie gets out her quill and ink to write to Rep. Rhet, it occurs to her that if the shoe were on the other foot, the best she herself could do is be polite, but not actually change how she’d vote on this issue, because of the views in a letter that are out of step with A) what she believe in and B) her constituency; which only needs to be 50% + some safe margin of the electorate.  And so, the quill and ink are put away.

The same holds for situations in which a representative strongly agrees with a given citizen:  Picture the happy voter; every morning his representative in the newspaper fighting for 4 out of 5 of the issues he cares about.  Sure, it might be worth it to write about that 5th issue (if you don’t already know that your representative disagrees strongly with you about it), but even so, 4 of those 5 issues are things that aren’t ripe for influencing the way your representative will vote by contacting them.

Political systems should be structured so that expressions of voters’ will — expressed both at the ballot box and the times in between — influence how governments behave.  With proportional representation, the situation described above would likely play out differently:  When a voter is represented by a delegation of, say, ten representatives, it’s much more likely that there will be at least one representative who could be influenced by a voter reaching out and expressing their opinion.  And representatives have something to gain under proportional representation systems for paying attention to such a voter, because figuring out a position that strongly appeals to smaller groups of voters makes sense under proportional representation, whereas in a system like we have today, issues are often fought on one side or the other of a two-party divide.  Not only is a voter likely to have representatives who are ripe for influence, but a voter is also likely to have one or more representatives who strongly agree with their position in the first place (a 50-50 prospect at best in the “single winner” district system of today).

No election system will ever be a magic bullet for everything, and the same is true for proportional representation:  It won’t change my kid’s diaper, but it does offer the change to increase civic engagement by knocking several big items off of the list of reasons not to engage, which is just one of many big improvements proportional representation brings over traditional election methods.

I’m firmly convinced that we’re only ever going to get politics as good as our election system, and for that reason I’ve decided that my biggest priority for political engagement is going to be supporting electoral reform.  I am a member of Californians for Electoral Reform (CfER), which is an organization that advocates for Instant Runoff Voting (IRV, also known as RCV) and Proportional Representation.  Occasionally, I run across like-minded individuals who like the idea of changing our election methods but either don’t like IRV or like an alternative called Approval Voting better (not going to call it AV because some people call IRV “Alternative Vote”).  I’m writing this post to put my 2 cents onto the Internet about why I think IRV is the right choice for electoral reform.

The Center for Voting and Democracy (FairVote) has a great write-up comparing IRV to other voting systems.  I’ll expound on some of the points from the FairVote piece and throw in a few pearls of wisdom of my own.

Approval Voting Doesn’t Effectively Solve the Spoiler Problem

The classic example of the “spoiler problem” is the Bush/Gore/Nader election of 2000.  There is some percentage of voters who might prefer to vote for Nader, but are afraid to do so because it will hurt Gore and end up helping elect Bush.  IRV solves this problem by allowing voters to select Nader as their first choice but to list Gore as their second choice, and in the event that Nader is eliminated their second preference is counted.  Advocates of Approval Voting will tell you that Approval Voting also solves this spoiler problem, because a voter can approve of both Nader and Gore.  I think that’s right in this particular example, but it’s not true in lots of other examples.

Consider the example of Alice, Bob and Charlie running for office.  Alice is a right-wing candidate, and Bob and Charlie are similar left-wing candidates.  If a voter prefers Bob or Charlie but doesn’t have a strong preference between the two of them, Approval Voting works fine and the voter can simply approve of them both and hope that one of them wins.  But what about the case where the voter definitely prefers Bob to Charlie, but prefers Bob or Charlie to Alice?  Now the voter is stuck in the spoiler vote morass:  The voter could approve of Bob and Charlie, but approving of Charlie could help Charlie get elected over Bob.  This is illustrated by the results of the 2012 Dartmouth Student Government Elections (raw election data):  Only 1.2 approvals per voter for president in a field of 5!  (“If just 16 of Kantaria-Danford voters chose tactically not to vote for Klein and Joshi despite approving of them, then that was the difference.”) This is a huge issue in my view, because what we need is a voting system that allows a voter to encode what they want without having to worry about whether they’re being strategic (our current system incentivizes strategic crossover voting…ugh).  One might argue that no voting system is perfect (and I admit IRV isn’t perfect), but in my view this weakness in Approval Voting illustrates the biggest problem with it of all….

Approval Voting Doesn’t Motivate Civil Campaigning

In the example above, Bob and Charlie are motivated to campaign hard against each other, because convincing voters who might approve of both of them that they should only approve of one of them is the best path to victory for both Bob and Charlie.  IRV doesn’t eliminate all negative campaigning, but it does motivate like-minded candidates to work together to seek second-preference votes.

Giving credit where credit is due, Approval Voting does do a better job in a situation where there are two extremist candidates and a centrist candidate.  If you have 39% of voters whose first-choice preference the left-wing candidate, 41% whose first choice is the right wing candidate, and 20% whose first choice is the moderate, but the moderate is also approved of by 80% of the voters who favor extremist candidates, Approval Voting will anoint the moderate the winner, whereas IRV will eliminate the moderate in the first round (since IRV eliminates the candidate with the least first choice votes in each round).  This behavior of encouraging moderate candidates is something Approval Voting fans are quick to point out.  IRV advocates sometimes reply that candidates should have strong first-choice support to be elected, and would argue in this case that electing the right-wing candidate is a good result, and that in other cases IRV can select a moderate candidate if they have decent first-choice support, which would allow them to emerge as the second-choice votes of extremist candidates are transferred.  I have mixed feelings…Condorcet is the ultimate solution for a situation like this in my opinion, but for myself I’ve concluded that IRV is the right balance of agility in dealing with real-world voting situations without being too complex to be comprehensible to the average voter.

Summing up, I am a fan of Approval Voting in so far as I think it’s a lot better than our current system, but I think IRV has more to offer in terms of fixing real-world election problems.

I want to be the next texts from Hil

I’d use Tumblr more, but I’m finding myself a) content to post articles to Facebook (and leave twitter for short original content) and b) I don’t have enough free laptop time to craft long posts.

Hey folks,

Same awesome sentiment as my previous two posts (I II) on the subject, but with a brand new date:  Tomorrow!

The quick summary is that evil forces are trying to push a repeal of Ranked Choice Voting (also known as Instant Run-Off Voting) in the city of San Francisco.  RCV is awesome for 10,000 reasons, among which are:

• Eliminates the spoiler effect, allowing people to vote their conscience
• Reduces negative campaigning
• Saves money on unnecessary run-offs
• Saves voter time and avoids low voter turn-out

If you know any San Franciscans, please let them know that the rules committee is taking the issue up tomorrow, February 2 at 1:30 PM.  We had a great turn-out last week, but the evil forces “continued” their motion to this week, so we’ve got to show up again.

A quick refresher (in addition to my previous posts linked above) on what to speak to if you can attend the meeting:

——
In terms of talking points, we should both continue to praise what RCV has done well (don’t assume that anyone has heard anything we have said previously, and besides repetition is good) and IN ADDITION we need to start showing why September elections are so bad. So any of the info put on this list in recent days, if anyone has time to compile that into a talking points sheeet that would be great.

NYT: Gaming the College Rankings http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=905611&f=21

In a debate that has been played out numerous times on the Internet, conservatives have advocated for tougher voter ID laws and liberals have reacted with cries of “voter suppression.”

Do I believe the requirement is an attempt to suppress minority votes?  It’s tricky semantics:  Do I believe that, for example, massive tax cuts for the rich are an attempt to hurt poor people?  Kinda yes, kinda no…it’s more about willful blindness (which, I might add, I learned on Law and Order is one of the criteria used in court to decide cases of guilt when somebody “should have known” something).  Ask yourself, would conservatives support legislation that would jeopardize a significant portion of their voting base?

The blindness comes from two sides:  Side #1 is the benefit side.  Pop quiz:  What percentage of votes are cast illegally (in such a way that voter ID laws will prevent it from happening)?  Don’t know?  There’s a reason we don’t know:  Nobody has studied the issue.  There are occasional convictions related to voter fraud…I counted one page that had a bit over 400 convictions (link here, note that the site says their research was not meant to be comprehensive) between 2000 and 2010.  But even if for each one of those convictions there were 100 instances that went uncaught, to me that’s a pretty small problem in terms of numerical impact on election outcomes.  On the detriment side, the NAACP says that 25% of blacks lack government ID that would be required to vote (link).  My black friend was the first to point out that the lack of IDs in the black community is blameworthy, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but I’ll leave that alone for the moment.

Stamping out what seems to be on the order of at most thousands of fraudulent votes per year vs…25% of the black vote.  Not to mention Latinos or poor white people.

Alright, conservative community, you can’t say that you don’t know about the negative consequences, and unless you’ve got a secret study somewhere there’s not much you can say about the upside being so huge.  So what makes people stand behind this kind of crap?  Because I genuinely believe that most conservatives aren’t racist…it actually it part of the problem that when this analysis is thrown in the face of a conservative it produces a reaction of “How dare you accuse me of racism?  We are asking for common sense reform here; it’s not too much to ask that you show as much ID to vote as you do to buy alcohol or drive a car.”

So instead of rehashing the racism accusation, I’ll try to cut a little deeper and say that what gets me about all this is that it is a perfect reflection of what drives many of us left-wing types crazy about the conservative mindset:  Using ideology instead of reason to formulate policy decisions.  There’s an ideological (and, to a small extent based on numbers) attraction to wanting to verify voter identification, and there’s a very in-your-face practical reality-based downside in disqualifying a lot of voters.  How, pray tell, does one decide how to think in a situation like this?  Conservative answer:  Go with the ideology.  Progressive whimper:  Uh, what happen to the part where you weigh the consequences and make the right decision?  Conservative answer:  Go with the ideology.  Get a grip!

I used the word “unbalanced” in the title because I wanted to propose that it wouldn’t be impossible to propose something workable in this space.  Want more verification of voter eligibility?  Ok, propose something that would be projected on balance to not have a negative effect on minority voting.  I won’t even give hints here, there are 1000 things that could be done to make it easier for people to vote (many which would help minorities more).  Why isn’t this obvious?

This email is going to RCV activists and supporters, and I can’t emphasize enough the important of having a big turnout for tomorrow’s Rules Cmte hearing in San Francisco, City Hall, Room 263. Even if you don’t live in SF, we need to pack the commitee chamber with bodies (they do not need to know where you live). And then you also need to be prepared to go to the microphone and give up to two minutes of testimony (here is a link for Talking Points, also see below — say whatever you want, but say something). The hearing will be televised, both all around City Hall and to people who watch it from home or office, and at two minutes per testimony I think we should set a goal of having enough people there that they have to listen to 40 minutes of RCV testimony. So that means 20 people. Can you commit to being one of those twenty?

I would like to get a head count so we know how many are coming, so please RSVP to me as soon as you receive this email.

Also, the time of the hearing has changed, from 1:30 to 2 pm. And looking at the other agenda items before the two charter amendments on RCV, if you were to arrive by 2:45 pm, that should be sufficient. But it’s hard to predict, the Supervisors can table items and sometimes move thru the agenda quickly. So if you can arrive by 2:30 pm, that would be ideal.  

I have been involved in a lot of mtgs lately at City Hall, and we are making progress on our agenda of stopping the repeal charter amendment. But some key swing votes are waiting for this Rules Cmte hearing, and so we need to bring overwhelming force to City Hall tomorrow. I am hoping you will help us do that. Please let me know if you will be there by RSVPing.

 Thanks

Steve

Dear friends,

An important hearing regarding the future of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in San Francisco is occurring this Thursday, January 26, at 2:00 PM in the Rules Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The hearing will take place at City Hall, Room 263. It’s “all hands on deck” time, we need people to come and testify. Each person at the hearing is allowed two minutes to say what’s on your mind. Please come and defend local democracy!

RCV and public financing in San Francisco are under attack by the political and wealthy elite — the local one percenters — and it is important to turn out at this hearing to defend political reform!

Background: Two charter amendments have been proposed, one by the most conservative supervisors, Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell, to repeal RCV and replace it with a December runoff (or possibly a September primary followed by a November runoff). A second charter amendment has been proposed by Supervisors David Campos and John Avalos to preserve and and improve RCV by expanding voter education and pushing faster for more than 3 rankings (this charter amend also would move city attorney and treasurer races to the other odd year, to be elected in the same year as mayor, district attorney and sheriff, which would get rid of one election year and save money – plus give voters a year off with no elections!). The Board of Supervisors is weighing whether to put both of these charter amendments on the ballot in June, which is always a low-turnout election in which the electorate is whiter, wealthier and more conservative than the rest of the city.

In addition, Supervisors Jane Kim, Campos and Avalos have introduced an ordinance to tweak the public financing of campaigns program to deal with the “zombie candidate” problem, improve our public financing, and move the filing deadline for candidates from mid-August to mid-June. This is part of an overall political reform package to improve San Francisco elections, which includes preserving and improving RCV.

The Elsbernd-Farrell charter amendment is the culmination of a long-standing effort by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, San Francisco Chronicle, downtown businesses and their local political consultants to repeal Ranked Choice Voting. They want to return to low turnout runoff elections where they can use their huge advantage in independent expenditures to pound any opponents into submission. This is a direct attack on democracy in San Francisco by local “one percenters.”

It’s telling that they are trying to get their repeal measure on the ballot in June – when voter turnout historically in San Francisco is only a bit more than half of what it is in November (see this link showing changes in voter turnout from June to November, and how it’s even lower among minority neighborhoods). They know that if this measure is decided in November, when most voters are at the polls to vote for president, they will lose. So they want to decide it in low-turnout June and sneak it through when no one’s looking. If they can take down RCV, then public financing is next and then district elections itself. After they finish with San Francisco, Oakland is next. Here is a link to an oped by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano laying out what is at stake.

So please turn out this Thursday, January 26, 1:30 PM in Room 263 City Hall for this crucially important hearing. If you can’t make the hearing, please contact your own Supervisor as well as Board President David Chiu (David.Chiu@sfgov.org) and give them your thoughts. We want to tell elected officials that we believe that both RCV and public financing provide a good foundation for our local democracy, and we can improve it and make it even better.

Here is a link to Talking Points that you can use for your testimony at the hearing or your e-mails and phone calls. I have also pasted the Talking Points into the e-mail below.

Thank you so much for all of your support for San Francisco’s local democracy. Together over the past decade, we have been making San Francisco a model for the rest of the nation. Let’s not lose it now to the local “one percent” wealthy and politically elite who want to manipulate the rules for their own advantage.

(Please pass this on to your own email lists and Facebook pages)..

Sincerely,

Steven

RCV Talking Points

* San Francisco has been a pioneer in many ways, including elections. The City’s use of ranked choice voting and public financing of campaigns has gained national attention and praise for innovations in representative democracy.

* Why should this be decided on a June ballot, when voter turnout is only a bit more than half of what is in November? Shouldn’t we decide an important change like this in November, when voter turnout is highest in more San Franciscans will have a say? Are the opponents trying to sneak this through when no one is looking by putting it on the June ballot?

* Since using public financing beginning in 2002 for the Board of Supervisors races, and ranked choice voting since 2004 for the supervisorial races, San Franciscans have seen a doubling of racial/ethnic minority representatives elected to the 11-member Board of Supervisors, from four to eight, including four Asian Americans. Recently San Francisco elected its first Chinese American mayor in an RCV election, and the runner-up was a Latino candidate using public financing in the mayor’s race.

* A wide cross-section of San Francisco is well represented on the Board of Supervisors, including the gay/lesbian community, moderates, liberals, progressives and conservatives. With ranked choice voting and public financing, San Franciscans have elected one of the most representative city governments in the United States.

* When San Francisco used December runoffs until 2004, voter turnout usually plummeted in the second election.  In ten of the city’s 14 December runoffs between 2000 and 2003, voter turnout declined by more than a third, with most runoff winners having fewer votes than the first-place candidate had in November.

* Because voter turnout in December runoffs was so low, most officeholders are now being elected with far more votes — 29% more, on average — than they ever won in low turnout December runoffs. In fact, when Supervisor Sean Elsbernd won his District 7 race with RCV in 2004, he had nearly 50% more votes than his predecessor who was elected in a December runoff.  That means that more San Franciscans are having a say in who their local representatives are, and that’s good for democracy.

* In 2001, for example, Dennis Herrera won his citywide city attorney runoff with fewer than 39,000 votes — less than 9% of registered voters and 10,000 fewer votes than the November leader Jim Lazarus had. Voter turnout in December plummeted to 16% of registered voters (12% of eligible voters), one of the lowest in San Francisco history, clearly showing that most voters did not take a “second look” at the candidates (one of the supposed benefits of a separate runoff election).

* By contrast, with RCV in 2005, Phil Ting won his citywide RCV election for assessor-recorder with two and a half times more final runoff votes than City Attorney Dennis Herrera had because the assessor-recorder election was decided in a higher turnout November election while the city attorney race was decided in a low turnout December runoff election.

* That’s been true in virtually every RCV race — candidates are winning with far more votes than they would have received in a low turnout December runoff or June or September primary.

*San Francisco taxpayers have saved approximately $7 million tax dollars by getting rid of an unnecessary second election and finishing electoral contests in a single November election using ranked choice voting.

* December runoffs or a September primary not only cost taxpayers more money, but required candidates to raise money quickly. In the final San Francisco runoffs, independent expenditures quadrupled over the first round, according to a study by the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Such one-on-one races are notorious for highly negative campaigns, all the more so in the modern era of big money “independent expenditures’. With RCV, old-fashioned door-to-door politics and coalition-building matters more than traditional big money politics.

* Voters are handling RCV well. 99.6% of voters cast valid ballots in the mayor’s race, and 73% of voters used all three of their rankings in the mayor’s race. Critics have claimed that minority communities are confused, yet if that is true then how have those communities DOUBLED their representation on the Board of Supervisors?

* The only three exit polls ever conducted of RCV elections (two by San Francisco State University and one by the Asian Law Caucus) have shown an extremely high rate of understanding, with 87% of voters reporting that they understand ranked choice voting, a result that cut across all ethnic and racial lines.

* With RCV, voters aren’t stuck anymore with a single shot vote for the lesser of two evils, but are liberated to rank their three favorite candidates. With RCV, voter choice is king.

* However the 2011 election revealed ways that we could make San Francisco elections even better. Complaints were heard that there were too many mayoral candidates, which made it difficult for voters to discern differences between the many candidates; that the city’s successful public financing system was plagued by so-called “zombie candidates” who could not withdraw from the race without repaying the public money they had spent, which added to the overabundance of candidates; that some voters were confused by the ranked choice system; and that winners are being elected with less than a majority. In addition, due to a recent Supreme Court decision that ruled that “triggers” for receiving more money dependent on the spending of privately financed candidates is no longer legal, it is necessary to modify the City’s public financing system in order to fix that problem.

* If the real problem is too many candidates, there are ways to fix that other than repealing ranked choice voting or public financing. We could move the date for receiving public money to the same as the qualifying deadline for candidates so that no candidate receives public money before everyone sees who is in the race; and other improvements to the public finance system.

* For RCV, voter education efforts could be improved. Outreach could include more information on how the ballots are counted and not just the mechanics of how to rank candidates.  The ballot design also could be clearer, and San Francisco’s voting machines should be modified to allow for more than three rankings (San Francisco’s current vendor, Dominion Voting Systems, has developed a digital scanner that allows up to 11 RCV rankings). RCV elections this year in St. Paul (MN) allowed six rankings (using equipment similar to San Francisco’s), while Portland, Maine allowed 15 rankings.. Debate organizers could begin limiting the number of participating candidates to no more than the 5-6 front runners as Election Day draws closer.

* San Francisco rightly has been recognized as a national leader with RCV, with more cities using it every year. Next year, we’ll certainly wish we had RCV for presidential elections if more than two candidates run, to prevent another Gore-Nader-type split. The freedom to rank your three favorite candidates is a blessing that we should treasure and make work. Mend it, don’t end it.