Is Voting Reform a Reasonable Progressive Issue?
The main objection I hear to tackling electoral reform as a progressive cause is that the major parties are too emeshed with their corporate backers to agree to it. In other words, the only solution is to extract corporate interests from the electoral (and legislative process) by mandating that all elections be publicly financed.
Given the recent Supreme Court decision overturning federal campaign finance reform, I think it will be extremely difficult to mobilize grassroots support for publicly financed elections. In my mind it makes more sense strategically to nibble around the edges of electoral reform. For two reasons. First, the best way to build a movement is to inspire progressives that they can win small victories. Secondly, the experience in other western democracies is that any reform that improves participation by the disenfranchised reduces corporate interference in the political process.
Simple Ways to Improve America’s Abysmal Voter Turnout
The specific reform that seems easiest to achieve (in part because there is already a bill in Congress) is Rep. Susan Davis (D-California) Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act (HR1604). HR1604 would amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to allow all US citizens the prerogative of voting my mail if they so choose. In other words it removes restrictions in 22 states that require specific reasons, such as doctors’ notes, for voting absentee by mail. The bill cleared the House Administration Committee on June 10th. The next step is a vote on the House floor.
At present there are thousands of Americans who have difficulty voting because of long or irregular work hours that make it hard to get to the polls on election day. Moreover HR1604 would also substantially reduce the cost of elections for cash strapped state and local governments. As well as restoring voting rights to inner city Americans who never seem to be allocated enough polling places or voting machines.
A second complementary reform is for activists to lobby their states to make election day a civic holiday, as it already is in most industrialized countries (and in Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and West Virginia.
Taking On the Winner Take All Voting System
Addressing our “winner take all” voting system will be more difficult. However, based on the experience of other western democracies, it will substantially alter the legislative bodies that represent us – a first important step in extricating multinational corporations from our political process.
At present the US, Canada and the UK are the only western democracies that still conduct their national elections via an archaic “winner takes all” system in which voters only have the option of voting for one of the two major, corporate sponsored candidates. Under proportional representation voting used in other industrialized countries, instead of electing one representative in each small district or ward, multi-member districts (or wards) are established in which several candidates are elected at once. Under this system the candidates who win seats in these multi-member districts are determined by the total proportion of votes their party receives.
As I have previously blogged, (see 2010: The Dream of Proportional Representation) several US cities and states have already adopted Instant Run-off Voting (IRV), an alternative voting system used to ensure the single candidate chosen for a single seat truly represents the will of the majority of voters.
Interestingly there is nothing in the US Constitution that would prevent states from choosing their Congressional delegation as a bloc by proportional representation or their senators by IRV or Single Transferable Voting (under STV, voters rank order their choices for two or more candidates). In fact until the passage of the 12th amendment in 1803, the President and Vice-President were chosen by STV. The Constitution merely stipulates that each state shall have two senators and that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several states by their apportioned numbers.”
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