Election 2004: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
November 26, 2004
The good news is that lots of Asian Pacific Americans got involved as candidates, campaign staff, donors and volunteers during campaign 2004. It was especially heartening to see the number of youth who came off campus to push their candidates and causes.
A new APA congressman, Republican Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, will be coming to Washington, and women (occupying 64 House seats, up from 60) and minorities both increased their presence in Congress. African Americans joined the House from Wisconsin, Texas and Missouri, and a Latino joins the House from Colorado. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) join Sens. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawai‘i) and Daniel Akaka (D-Hawai‘i), making the U.S. Senate only 95 percent white.
Texas provided APAs with one of the biggest upsets in the country. Hubert Vo, a real estate investor, refugee from Saigon and Democrat in an increasingly Republican state, won a seat in the Texas House from Houston by a mere 31 votes. He defeated Republican Rep. Talmadge Heflin, who has been a state legislator for 22 years.
Among other positive developments for APAs nationwide was the successful use of ranked-choice voting (a form of instant-runoff voting) to select members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (its version of the city council). By some estimates, RCV will save taxpayers millions in runoff election costs, and it will save voters from having to endure the mud-slinging, ad hominem attacks that especially hurt minority candidates and those who are not well-funded when runoff elections are needed.
The Public Research Institute at San Francisco State University is doing a comprehensive study of the use of RCV in the latest San Francisco election, but its analysis is still under way. Meanwhile, according to exit poll data collected by the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, 71 percent of those responding to questions about RCV, including 72 percent of APAs, said they liked it, with most saying they liked it a lot.
Even more encouraging, 67 percent of voters found RCV easy to use, and only 18 percent found it difficult. Thanks to the efforts of APA organizations and supporters in the Bay Area, APAs also had a positive experience with RCV; 59 percent found the ballots easy to use, and only 27 percent said it was difficult.
While instant-runoff voting is popular in the more advanced democracies around the world, it is still not very common here. Fortunately, aside from the success in San Francisco, voters in three other areas of the country moved closer to using IRV. Voters in Ferndale, Mich., voted to amend their city charter so that they can elect their mayors and councils through IRV. Likewise, voters in Burlington, Vt., overwhelmingly passed an advisory referendum on whether the city charter should be amended to include the use of IRV in mayoral elections. And voters in 16 western Massachusetts towns approved a non-binding motion in support of IRV.
Turning to the bad news in the election, the long lines at the ballot boxes in many states are a sign that fundamental changes are needed in the way we run our elections. Many other countries with mature democracies use innovations we should implement immediately: nationally organized elections to cut down on local idiosyncrasies; a national holiday for election day; mail-in ballots (also successfully used in Oregon); and same-day registration.
The lines also reveal an ugly side of politics that may be publicized shortly as the vote recounts unfold in New Hampshire, Ohio and possibly other states. In Ohio or Florida, for example, a Republican secretary of state could have depressed Democratic turnout by decreasing the number of voting machines in minority neighborhoods and on college campuses. Whether the suppression of voter registration and turnout was deliberate, our democracy is still not as strong as it should be when only 71 percent of our adult population is registered to vote.
Another ugly aspect that demands immediate action is the fact that we do not have a democracy at all in many elections. For example, over 95 percent of the members of the House of Representatives won their races by a margin of 10 percent. One commentator stated that our Congress has become like the British House of Lords, with virtually lifetime appointments. This is a far cry from what the founders envisioned for the more populous chamber of our federal legislature, and it shows us that serious reform must begin immediately.
According to Rob Richie, head of the nonpartisan Center for Voting and Democracy, “This lack of competition is partly due to redistricting, partly due to incumbent advantages, partly due to campaign finance, but primarily due to the fact of winner-take-all elections in single-member districts. We support full- representation voting methods as the one indispensable part of any reform package seeking to provide real choices and fair representation to all voters.”
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