by Rebecca Manning

This was the message from a Claim Democracy conference I attended in Washington, DC recently. Advocates from all over the country gathered to share their experiences with improving election procedures at the local level and to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Center for Voting and Democracy. It was inspiring and depressing — inspiring to be re-energized by the self-evident truths in the need for improvements, and depressing to know that it has taken fifteen years to get only this far.

From the recent city council elections here in Asheville, the partisan v. non-partisan referendum, and the opposition to the Instant Run-off Voting pilot program, I had many contexts to share and through which to filter what I heard from others.

One of the speakers elaborated on the topic of “messaging — seeing and defining the problem from the eyes of the audience.” This means facing the realities that one group’s advantage is another group’s disadvantage, and reactions to an issue, such as election changes, will indicate a group’s viewpoint — whether changes threaten and repel or energize and promote.

Voter Turnout is a Message

While no doubt there are problems when 78% of registered voters choose not to vote, it is an even bigger problem when 22% of the voters elect leaders for 100% of the population. If we could know the viewpoints of the 78% non-voting voter group, it is likely that some are satisfied with the current make-up of city government, some saw no candidates with whom they identified, and others, weary of being part of the losing side, have decided they will never be represented anyway.

FairVote’s message — “accommodate choice, share power” — is elegantly simple in the abstract. In concrete terms, though, it means open ballot access, citizen’s initiatives, publicly-financed campaigns, voter-owned elections, and proportional representation. It means we, the people, are our own governors, we are responsible for how we get along in this world we have created, and we cannot be discriminated against or shut out of the democratic process for any reason.

Catch-22 Voting System

It is no surprise the two-party political system is antiquated and has too much power. All it allows is an adversarial money-driven jockeying, from one extreme to the other, for control of the driver’s seat; once there, neither side is willing to share power or proportionally accommodate the losing party’s choices. To make matters worse, when the dust clears after election day, it is revealed that the majority of the population did not vote for the winners. Meanwhile, over the next two to four years, population grows, diversity grows, more political parties try to get into the game, and every time they manage to rally the disenfranchised voters and get enough signatures to be allowed to be placed on your ballot, the “spoiler effect” splits the votes, creating a winner by plurality, but not majority. Then the winning party says, “See, it doesn’t work, third parties can’t win, so why bother to add more parties? Either you are for us or against us and if you want to be in control, win the election.”

This Message for You…

If you find yourself in part of that 78% non-voting voter group, take hope. With non-partisan elections, or with more, and more diverse, parties, we can accommodate choice. Ballot access is part of the solution; being able to rank your choices in order of preference is another part.

You can make that happen. We can accept our roles as our own governors. It is not about exercising power over the losers — there are no losers. Instead, it is about taking turns and getting along, much as our driving privileges work. It takes less leadership to govern your own believers. The real tough work, the real leadership is in the spaces between the extremes where, as it turns out, the majority often lives.

Rebecca Manning is a lighting designer

living in Asheville. For the past fifteen years she has been an advocate of proportional representation, the Center for Voting
and Democracy and FairVote.org.
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

---

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed