Category: ballot access

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ballot access government transparency Popular

The Rank Reality of Math

Maine, Ranked Choice Voting, black box, elections, democracy

U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-Maine) doesn’t like Ranked Choice Voting.

Last week, I suggested that’s because he lost his re-election to Congress in his state’s first use of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Perhaps I spoke too quickly? Congressman Poliquin argues that RCV is a “black-box voting system.”

“We heard from countless Maine voters who were confused and even frightened their votes did not count due to computer-engineered rank voting,” read a campaign statement.

Who wants frightened voters?

The “voting system utilized by the Secretary of State is secret,” Poliquin’s campaign spokesman further complained. “No one is able to review the software or computer algorithm used by a computer to determine elections. This artificial intelligence is not transparent.”

Computer-engineered elections? Artificial intelligence? Oh, my!

“I think it’s time that we have real ballots, counted by real people,” the congressman told reporters. “. . . instead of this black box that computes who wins and who loses.”

By all means, yes.

Nathan Tefft is a professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and claims to be “a real person.” With a PhD in economics. He got all the election data and replicated the ranked -choice process used by the Maine Secretary of State in conducting the count, confirming the state’s results.

“The Maine secretary of state’s office has published all the election results on its website — every ballot, every ranking in every town,” the Bangor Daily News informed. “It’s all there in massive data files that can be inspected and downloaded.”

Wait a second . . . what about the black-box, the secrecy, the dreaded use of AI?

All a fable.

“Yeah,” Dr. Tefft noted, “it’s just math.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
ballot access general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people Regulating Protest

Three Bad Propositions

initiative, petition, power, money, elections

Two propositions on this November’s California ballot, Propositions 8 and 11, have found an opponent.

“Both would have voters decide very narrow union-management conflicts in two relatively small medical service sectors,” explains Dan Walters, long the dean of California columnists. Unions are sponsoring Prop 8, which “purports to limit profits in clinics that provide dialysis treatments to sufferers of kidney failure.” Ambulance companies are behind Prop 11, which would “require ambulance crews to remain on call during meal and rest breaks.”

Walters thinks it “foolish to expect November’s nine-plus million voters to make even semi-informed decisions about their provisions, much less understand how dialysis clinics and ambulance services operate, or should operate.”

Well, yes, but this criticism applies to government universally. Legislators don’t understand how every business or industry functions, or should function, either. Even when politicians pretend to comprehend, by what right do they micromanage other people’s businesses and labor contracts?

Freedom, not government regulation, should be the default position.

But Walters’ fix runs against this logic. He thinks that upping the required percentage of signatures for ballot placement “by half . . . might discourage the misuse of the system for issues that cannot be fairly and rationally decided by voters.”

Don’t bet on it.

As Walters himself admits, making it tougher and more expensive to petition a measure onto the ballot won’t block the well-heeled: “any interest group with a few million bucks and an axe to grind can qualify a ballot measure, regardless of their merits.”

But it would disenfranchise grassroots groups.

Defeat bad measures; don’t destroy the democratic process.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
ballot access incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Intentionally Confounding Incumbents

Memphis, ballot, instant runoff, term limits

The three issues on the ballot in Memphis this November are “not complicated,” writes Commercial Appeal columnist David Waters, “unless you read the actual ballot questions.”

Which is all most voters will see.

All three directly affect the self-interest of members of the Memphis City Council, which placed them on the ballot and determined the language voters will attempt to decipher. 

Waters called that ballot wording “incomprehensible” and “intentionally confounding.” His newspaper colleague, Ryan Poe, accused the council of “trying to stack the deck.”

The first measure would weaken the council’s term limits, passed in 2011 with a 78 percent vote and just about to kick in. The ballot language, Mr. Poe explains, “reads like voters are being asked to place limits on council members . . . rather than extend them.” By an extra term.

The second issue would repeal Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which was brought forth by citizen petition and enacted via a 71 percent yes vote. The confusing ballot wording brings up a 1991 federal court decision without providing voters any context or explanation.

Though IRV has not yet been used, council incumbents fear it.* This becomes especially clear when you discover that the third ballot question is actually a sneakier, second attempt to repeal IRV.

“Instant runoffs, and run-off elections in general, tend to make it easier for challengers to unseat incumbents in multi-candidate district races,” argues Waters. He adds, “Incumbents generally become stronger the longer they are in office.”

To incumbent politicians, reform is a dirty word. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Back in February, the council was caught paying a lobbyist to convince state legislators to restrict their city’s ability to implement Instant Runoff Voting. 

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Categories
ballot access national politics & policies

Party Line, Nudge Nudge

I’m all for government transparency. But transparent politicians?

The office of New Mexico’s Secretary of State sent out a press release, yesterday, announcing that Secretary Toulouse Oliver “is formatting the 2018 general election ballot to once again include the option for ‘straight party’ voting.”

“The more options people have,” Oliver is quoted for explanation, “the easier it is for more eligible voters to participate — and participation is the key to our democratic process.”

This sounds all very nice and good. More options!

But hers was not a conscientious and noble adoption of a choice-promoting democratic notion. The whole point is to nudge voters to not consider a non-R/non-D alternative — perhaps especially in the state’s contest for the U.S. Senate.

In which former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is making a not-longshot run.

As a Libertarian.

Though the Secretary of State’s office pretends to be for democracy, I have trouble buying that Ms. Oliver’s motives are non-partisan. Ditto Gary Johnson.

“Pushing voters toward straight ticket voting is a worn-out staple of major party incumbents,” says the candidate, “and flies in the face of the reality that the great majority of voters are independent-minded and don’t need or appreciate a ballot that provides a short-cut to partisanship.”

It’s a standard way to gain, as one Democratic State Senator put it, “partisan advantage in low-information elections.”*

Matt Welch at Reason quotes ballot access expert Richard Winger to show how old a gimmick it is. It’s been on its way out, actually (only nine states sport the “feature”), probably because . . . it’s just so obvious a ploy. 

Transparent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

* The partisanship is also not appreciated by the Republican Party of New Mexico, which is suing the Secretary of State.

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Categories
Accountability ballot access folly general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility U.S. Constitution

Should Non-Citizens Vote?

voting, elections, democracy, illegal, aliens, migration, borders, citizens

“A lot of people would like to say this is an immigration issue. It’s really not,” offered Gary Emineth, the head of North Dakotans for Citizen Voting and a candidate for state senator.  

“It’s really about preserving the right for U.S. citizens, and in our case, North Dakota residents, to only be the voters in all elections across the state of North Dakota,” added Emineth. “And that’s why we want it in the constitution.”

Turning in more than 35,000 voter signatures on petitions last Friday, Emineth and others placed a constitutional amendment on this November’s ballot that, if passed, would make voting the exclusive right of U.S. citizens in North Dakota.

Elsewhere in the country, Emineth points out, non-citizens are already voting — in Chicago and San Francisco, and in 11 cities across Maryland. Moreover, campaigns are underway across the country to give non-citizens the vote — in California, Connecticut, New York City, Boston and Montpelier, Vermont.

Opponents claim the North Dakota measure is completely unnecessary, as the state doesn’t currently allow non-citizens to cast a ballot, nor has any city yet attempted to allow non-citizens to vote. But Emineth’s goal is to keep it that way.

Moreover, University of North Dakota Law Professor Steven Morrison acknowledged to The Forum in Fargo that “the proposed amendment does clean up what could be a grammatical loophole since the word ‘every’ doesn’t conclusively exclude non-citizens from voting. . . .”

It is a very simple proposition: Do you want voting to be the exclusive right of U.S. citizens? Or should non-citizens be allowed to vote?

Coming to a ballot near and Fargo.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* With some help from Liberty Initiative Fund.

 

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Categories
ballot access general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers responsibility term limits

The Yellow and White Lines

term limits, elections, voting, limits, white lines, yellow lines, democracy

If I’ve heard it one million times, I’ve heard it ten: “We already have term limits; they’re called elections.” A statement usually offered as the beginning and end of wisdom regarding the problems term limits are designed to tackle.

Equally “profound” is the collateral claim that “the only term limits we need are an informed electorate.”

Such generalities “prove” too much. Any formal restraint of government could be thus airily dismissed.

  • “The only Bill of Rights we need is an informed electorate.”
  • “The only checks and balances we need are an informed electorate.”
  • “The only prerequisites for running for office we need are an informed electorate.”

If formal rules don’t matter, why write these things down or try to enforce them in light of principle and precedent? Just get your informed electorate and let the informed electorate handle it.

To preserve and strengthen our republic and our liberties, we do need an informed electorate. We also need many other things, including well-known, widely accepted, consultable, objective limits on government power.

One such limit limits terms.

Term limits on legislators, executives and even judges combat political corruption, empower informed voters, and give informed and capable electoral challengers more opportunities to effectively present their ideas.

The fact that a given political or cultural factor is crucial to the commonweal doesn’t mean that no other factors are also crucial.

Don’t tell drivers of cars that all they need are skills and gas.  You also need lines on the road — limits to keep us out of the ditch, and from head-on collisions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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