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Votes Without Poison

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Strange election. So … round up the usual suspects!

Immediately after Hillary dried her tears and conceded, out came the Tweets, then the analyses: the “third parties” are to blame!

Over the weekend, I focused* on one such election post-​mortem. The basic idea is not altogether wrong: minor party efforts together may have cost the Democrat her Electoral College advantage this time around, just as Nader’s Green Party run spoiled Al Gore’s bid in 2000 and several past congressional races have been spoiled for the GOP by Libertarians.

Is there a problem here? Yes. But do not blame the minor party voters. It’s the way we count their votes that is “problematic.” The current ballot-​and-​count system turn voters most loyal to particular policy ideas into enemies of those very same ideas.

When we minor party voters turn away from a major party — usually because said party tends to corrupt or betray our ideas, or make only small steps toward our goals — our votes aren’t so much wasted as made poisonous.

Because the candidate least preferred may prevail.

But there’s a way out: On election day, voters in Maine showed how to cut through the Gordian Knot. Voting in approval for Question 5, Maine now establishes “ranked choice voting.”

Under this system, you don’t “waste” your vote when expressing a preference for a minor party candidate. You rank your choices and, if your first choice proves unpopular, your second choice (or maybe your third) gets counted. So you don’t “poison” your cause.

Republicans and Democrats have more than enough reason, now, to adopt ranked choice voting across the country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* See yesterday’s links page to my weekend Townhall column for the basic references. But there were many, many articles on the Minor Party Effect, including a skeptical one by Sasha Volokh’s.

 

Ask the next question.

Questions Answered:

What is the effect of minor parties on major party outcomes?

What causes those effects, voter intent or something else?

Is there a way to prevent this, short of further sewing up the ballot access system to minor parties?

The Next Question:

What might our elections look like if people spent more time discussing issues and ideas … and less about class, culture wars, and sex crimes?

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Accountability ballot access incumbents moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Vote Early & Often?

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Voted yet? The Pew Research Center thinks about 50 million Americans have, representing 38.5 percent of the voter turnout forecast.

I’m for making it as easy as possible for people to cast a ballot. Who isn’t? Well, I mean who among normal people isn’t? I’m not counting politicians and their hacks.

But even I am opposed to extended “early voting.”

Here’s why:

First, the longer the voting period goes, the greater the cost — as more paid advertisements, phone calls and mailings are needed to keep reaching voters over many weeks. No problem here with more money in politics — money is essential, and my candidates and ballot issues could certainly always use more promotion. But let’s not artificially advantage big money by running the meter.

Several states now allow more than six weeks of voting prior to so-​called Election Day. Even a three-​week voting period is far more expensive than building toward a single day — or, say, a weekend through Tuesday voting period (four days).

Second, we ought to vote together, close to the same time, all of us privy to the latest public knowledge. This year’s drip of near daily “October”* surprises, thanks to WikiLeaks and the FBI, shows the potential problem should a major scandal or incident impact the race after so many folks have already voted.

Third, early voting tends to advantage incumbents. Challengers often don’t catch up to the better known and organized incumbent until the final days of the race.

As for voting often, as in more than once, that’s a crime. Plus, with these candidates, once is more than enough.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*Well into November, some of these surprises, eh? I mean, it is as if they saved the blood rituals for last.

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A Brexit Effect?

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Before the Brexit vote, the likelihood of British secession from the European Union garnered a mere 25 percent chance. That was according to European betting markets, which are usually more accurate. In June, the Brits voted Brexit.

Donald Trump has made much hay of this, understandably.

On Tuesday, the odds of a Trump victory hit the same mark: 25 percent.

Gwynn Guilford’s report on this was drolly titled “Donald Trump has the same odds of winning as Jon Snow ruling Westeros, according to betting markets.”

On June 11, Business Insider had reported that Hillary was increasing her lead; on October 18, it exulted that the Irish betting markets had “already declared a winner” — not Trump. On November 1, the news aggregator merely noted that Moody’s is calling the election a landslide for Clinton.

But BI is also covering the scandal that has disturbed the Clinton camp. There’s no love lost between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, explains Natasha Bertrand in “‘The Antichrist personified’: ‘Open warfare’ and antipathy toward Clinton is reportedly fueling the FBI leaks.” The meat of her representation is that “much of the agents’ frustration … may boil down to partisanship”; the FBI is “Trumpland.”

Yet the article ends quoting another FBI official insisting that both Trump and Clinton are awful candidates.

A plausible judgment.

Whether late-​in-​the-​game revelations of Clinton corruption and FBI probing can defy current odds and produce a Clinton defeat remains to be seen. As of Thursday evening, polls-​only forecasts placed the odds of winning at 67/​33 in favor of Mrs. Clinton, while electionbettingodds​.com placed them at 70.2/29.2.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

N.B. Late-​breaking Brexit news: The United Kingdom’s high court ruled yesterday that Parliament must vote to approve Brexit before the secession can proceed.

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Question 5 Fixes Flaw

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This week, Krist Novoselic, rock-​n-​roll bassist of Nirvana fame and fellow board member of FairVote​.org, appeared on Fox Business’s Kennedy to explain ranked choice voting.

Krist compared a single ranked ballot under the proposed system to two ballots under the current method. Often, a voter will mark the ballot for one candidate in the primary, and, if the candidate doesn’t make the cut, for another in the general election.

Ranked choice voting sort of collapses multi-​candidate primaries and the shorter list of the general election into one, allowing voters to rank their choices so that when their first choice doesn’t make it, their less valued candidates get counted.

So if you prefer a candidate unlikely to win you aren’t “wasting” your vote by marking that candidate first, as today in most American elections, because your vote goes to your second choice.

The current system encourages “strategic voting,” where we deny our preferences to work around the defects of the electoral system. We end up voting for candidates we do not like, to avoid even worse, promoting mediocre and downright bad elected officials.

In Maine, Question 5 on the November ballot, sets up a ranked-​choice ballot system for “the offices of United States Senator, United States Representative to Congress, Governor, State Senator and State Representative for elections held on or after January 1, 2018.” It has a not insignificant amount of support, from Mainers across the political spectrum.

But not from the state’s governor (and voicemail-​performance-​artist) Paul Le Page. He dubs it a way for “loser” candidates to get a “second chance.”

Just like a politician! He focuses on politicians’ chances not voters’ options.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people moral hazard nannyism Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

Four Measures for Rogue Government

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Rule of thumb: don’t enact today laws that, had they been obeyed by folks in the original 13 states of our union, would have prevented independence.

Voters in Missouri, South Dakota, and Washington have the “opportunity” to enact such laws this November.

In “Beware of Anti-​Speech Ballot Measures,” Tracy Sharp and Darcy Olsen, presidents of the State Policy Center and the Goldwater Institute, respectively, offer a warning. Focusing on Measure 22, the South Dakota Government Accountability and Anti-​Corruption Act, they show how dangerous notions like forcing “nonprofit organizations to report the names and addresses of their donors to the state government” can be.

Such disclosure would subject non-​profits “to possible investigation by an unelected ethics board that is given the power to subpoena private documents and overrule decisions made by the state attorney general.…” Rogue, star-​chamber government.

Fever dream?

No. Sharp and Olsen highlight a famous U.S. Supreme Court case that protected the NAACP from the state’s demand for the group’s funding sources. Both women also offer personal tales of how nasty the opposition (in government and out) can become when big issues are on the line.

I can personally attest.

These measures fly in the face of what really matters — encouraging robust public debate. Democracy doesn’t work when people dread participation. As our authors challenge, “[d]o we want America to be a country where government keeps public lists of law-​abiding citizens because they dare to support causes they believe in?”

Especially when, without the secret (unreported!) activities of the Committees of Correspondence, the USA would not have become united states in the first place.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original (cc) photo by Michael Tracey on Flickr

 

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Accountability ballot access folly general freedom media and media people national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

The Two-​Product Economic System

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What if our economy worked like our political system?

Only two major companies would provide any particular product for sale. But don’t worry — we’d still have a solid choice between “This Product Is Obnoxious” and “I Don’t Trust This Product.”

Those two companies would create a non-​profit entity — a Commission on Product Debates — empowered to determine the rules under which any upstart company could present its “third-​choice” product to consumers.

That Commission would prevent any third-​choice product from standing on the marketplace stage where consumers could compare it face-​to-​face with the two established choices … until it captured 15 percent of the market.

Last week, in real life, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that its upcoming September 26th debate would feature only Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Neither Libertarian Gary Johnson, averaging 8.4 percent in the five commission-​approved polls, nor Dr. Jill Stein, the Green, at 3.2 percent, met the 15 percent threshold set by the Commission.

Forget that polls also show nearly two-​thirds of consumers — er, voters, want Johnson and Stein in the debates. You can’t win ’em all.

Or any at all … if you can’t take your product to market. And the presidential debates are an essential space in today’s political marketplace.

No third-​party or independent presidential candidate has been allowed on that debate stage since Ross Perot qualified in 1992, at the time polling at 8 percent — below Johnson’s current percentage.

That was before the Commission required a polling threshold. After those debates, one in five Americans voted for Perot on Election Day.

Duopolies do not serve us well. They cannot. That is not even their aim.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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