The Almost Forgotten Election

First Quarter 2002

...and the Need for Serious Electoral Reform

Last November, one year after the Bush-Gore election that culminated in the month-long Florida scramble, major media announced the results of a recount of all the Florida ballots. The startling finding, according to The Washington Post (11/12/01), was that Bush would have won after all by about 225 to 493 votes. Bush would have won, that is, even if either Al Gore or the Florida Supreme Court had gotten their wish for recounts. Gore wanted hand recounts in four counties, and the court wanted a hand count of undervotes statewide. So all the complaining that George W. Bush or the U.S. Supreme Court stole the election from Gore was unfounded.

What is remarkable about all the attention given to the Florida ballot debacle is that no one in the media gave any attention to the fact that nearly half of the eligible voters in Florida and across the country did not even vote. In a follow-up Post article on November 13, Edward Walsh and Dan Balz commented that real reform will require a federal response to what is now local and state control of elections. A federal response is necessary, they say, "to produce a more uniform system that would guarantee that the ballot of every eligible voter would be counted." The irony of this comment is that nearly half of the eligible voters never cast ballots. This is a far more serious problem for American democracy.

Thankfully there are several little-noticed exceptions to the general pattern of ignoring the deeper failure of our electoral system. One is a substantial study conducted by the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois (217-333-3340; 312-996-6188). Their report was released last spring: "Illinois Assembly on Political Representation and Alternative Electoral Systems." Our American electoral systems, says the report, "cannot accommodate the growing diversity of interests [in this country]." In almost every state and locality, as well as at the federal level, the United States depends on a simple winner-takes-all system. This system typically reduces an election to two candidates fighting for everything, because one will lose everything and one will win everything. People with diverse views not adequately represented by either of the candidates lose interest, see the electoral system as shutting them out, and stay home on election day.

There are alternative electoral systems that can help overcome the unrepresentative character of our system, though few Americans know anything about them. The Illinois study helps explain one alternative called "cumulative voting." Cumulative voting encourages more competition and the representation of minority party representatives. Illinois once had cumulative voting and then returned to the simple winner-takes-all system. Now the legislature is reconsidering that decision. Other kinds of electoral systems, which are explained very briefly in an appendix to the Illinois study, would do even more to make possible the representation of America's true diversity. (For more on Illinois, see www.midwestdemocracy.org.)

A project at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, called the Vanishing Voter, does not consider serious reform of electoral systems, but it is trying to figure out why fewer and fewer Americans are voting. For more information on both low voter turn-out in the United States as well as alternative voting systems, turn to the Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD): 301270-4616; mailto: info@fairvote.org, and to the Voting Solutions company. On "instant runoff" systems, which are being adopted particularly in California cities, see  Instant Runoff  and California IRV Coalition. 

One of the most esteemed commentators on American politics, culture, and society, William Raspberry, has picked up on the CVD resources and regularly offers insights on the limits of our increasingly unrepresentative American electoral system and the need for reform.

Writing in The Washington Post on January 1, 2001, Raspberry urged reformers not just to fix the voting machines but to "fix the electoral system." There are ways, for example, says Raspberry, to make sure that no candidate can be elected with less than a majority of the vote. Preference voting, for example, would have allowed those whose first choice in 2000 was Pat Buchanan not to let their "lost vote" go to the advantage of Gore unless they had made that their second preference. And likewise, the lost votes of those who preferred Ralph Nader would not have gone to the advantage of Bush if they had not indicated that second preference.

"But another, far more important, outcome [of preference voting]," says Raspberry, "would be the empowerment of third parties. It would be significantly easier to build third-party movements if supporters knew they weren't helping to elect their least-favored major-party candidate. In addition, it would give third-party supporters more clout with the major parties, which would be tempted to modify their campaigns to make their candidates attractive at least as a second choice."

There is a growing number of voices urging Americans to consider serious electoral-system reform and not only ballot-machine reforms. The major media pay little attention to those voices now, but the day is coming when America's increasingly diverse population will call for a better system than the one we now have. Get ready! Study the alternatives now.

—The Editor