A Better Electoral System
April 23, 2008
Each year at this time, I ask my Asian Pacific American public policy students at the University of Maryland to compare the electoral systems of the United States with those of the other democracies of the world. We select one country from the following list: the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Then students pick any other country (except the United States) where they have ancestors, family, friends or any other connection.
I ask the students to consider what would happen if they were to arrive today as an immigrant in each of their two countries and decided they wanted to vote. What if they arrived today and decided to run as a candidate for local, state or national office?
Once students complete this research, we discuss as a class how easy or difficult it would be to vote or run for office in each of our selected countries. Then we compare the results to the electoral rules in the United States.
Because this is a public policy class, we consider the underlying assumptions made by policy makers as they craft the laws of each nation. Are they trying to make it easy for newcomers and marginalized people to participate? Are they erecting unnecessary barriers of time, money or status that limit the entry of newcomers as voters or candidates? Who are the winners and losers when it comes to political participation?
The following week, we do the same exercise but the students compare any two states, except Maryland. Is it easier to be a candidate in Texas or Wisconsin? What is the effect of same-day registration in Minnesota? How do the Clean Election laws in Maine affect whether poor people can afford to run for office? We then look at Maryland’s and ask whether we would change them to meet the standards of any other state.
There is no “best” way to do things, but simply “better” ways to do things once we decide what we want to maximize. For example, if our goal is to make the procedures for voter registration as easy and quick as possible, “motor voter” laws that allow voter registration at state motor vehicle offices will encourage greater participation. If the goal is to slow down or diminish voter participation, then forcing them to follow more procedures over a greater length of time is best.
Given this simple civic exercise, the problems with the American electoral process become clear. You don’t have to be an election law expert to see that most of the other democracies of the world have procedures that make more sense if your goal is to encourage participation. For example:
» America’s county-by-county and state-by-state electoral standards make registering to vote a big deal, when other countries simply add you to the voter rolls when you reach the voting age.
» The United States also lags behind in the procedures for counting votes, which are done in many American states using machines with privately held software that is vulnerable to hacking.
» Campaign seasons that drag on for months or years make it impossible for people with office-bound jobs to run for our highest offices. Unlike many other democracies, only millionaires or people who can take time away from their offices (such as lawyers and already-elected officials) can get involved at the highest levels in this country.
» The money barriers to participation, encouraged by television networks that benefit from paid political advertising, are so blatant that my students express amazement at how brazen our politicians are in their pursuit of big donor contributions. No other country has such large-scale organized payoffs by huge corporations and trade groups, given in return for obvious legislative favors that result in billions of dollars for friends of politicians (Sen. Obama is a notable exception to the rule, having mastered the art of online fund raising in a campaign that has averaged only $109 from each of his more than a million donors).
As we watch the rest of the primary season play out in Pennsylvania, Indiana and the remaining states, keep in mind there is no reason why we have to elect our presidents and other elected officials this way. It is time that the United States moved out of the 18th century, from Democracy 1.0 to version 2.0.
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Sorry, Phil:
As with EVERYthing, it is never so much the model or system so much as the practitioners thereof.
And the problem, at heart, is the assumption, with scant evidence, that our domestic “democratic” model is the sine qua non.
On the contrary, what with its demonstrated vulnerability to every “democratic” shill-and-con imaginable, we continue to show the world how NOT to conduct governance.
P.T. Barnum?, it was said, opined that every minute, a “sucker” was born, hence our circuses.