Darryl W. Perry has recently published a book “Duopoly: How the Republicrats Control the Electoral Process”, which is available on Amazon. Normally this blog doesn’t carry book reviews, although the printed Ballot Access does. However, “Duopoly” is too useful not to be publicized in both places.
The book has five appendices, each containing valuable statistical data that is not easy to find elsewhere. Appendix One is especially useful. It is titled, “Congressional Re-election Rates for U.S. House of Representatives”. It covers the entire period 1789 to the present. It shows, for each regularly-scheduled election, the number of seats, the number of open seats, the number of members seeking re-election, the number being re-elected, and then shows percentages for each of the last two categories. At a glance, once can see that re-election rates have increased in the modern era, relative to the past when elections were less regulated. In 1874, only 58.3% of the incumbents who were running for re-election were re-elected. Other years in which re-election rates were below 70% were 1842, 1854, 1862, 1890, 1894, and 1932. By comparison, starting in 1950, there has never been an election with that percentage being lower than 85%.
The book also has re-election rates for the Canadian House of Commons, 1869 to the present, showing Canadian elections are much more likely to result in a high turnover. Canada has equal and tolerant ballot access laws for all candidates, unlike the U.S.
There is much, much more that is useful in this book, and a future paper edition of B.A.N. will review the book in more detail.
This book’s electronic version is just $2. Its way of getting you to think of the ballot’s purpose is more than worth its trivial price tag. I particularly liked the analogy with hurdles and track runners. It is, of course, ridiculous to start the favored runners farther down the track and to decrease the height of their hurdles. And so it is, of course, ridiculous to take this approach to our political candidates by giving them different standards for ballot access. The author walks you through numerous examples.
The author also delved into voting systems. It was nice to see some mention of Approval Voting and proportional methods. The author also correctly pointed out IRV’s susceptibility to the spoiler effect by appropriately citing the Burlington election.
There was a big mistake though. The author referred to Multi-Member Plurality as Approval Voting. Approval Voting is a single-winner system. Multi-Member Plurality is instead a multi-winner system that has voters cast the number of votes equal to the number of seats being elected. No stacking is allowed. It’s also a bloc system making it not proportional.
If you wanted to go out of a limb without changing the simple Approval Voting process you could let voters in a multi-winner race choose as many candidates as they wanted. I suppose you could call this Multi-Member Approval Voting, which would be a bloc system as well. But this has never been used to my knowledge because voters in US elections are always limited in the number of votes they can cast–even for a multi-winner ballot.
Note, however, that there are proportional versions of Approval Voting. One write-up can be found here (http://www.tobypereira.co.uk/voting.html) which references using a Sainte-Laguë algorithm (fairer in my opinion) unlike the D’Hondt algorithm Forrest Simmons proposed when he first developed the system.
Regardless, mixing Multi-Member Plurality with Approval Voting was a big blunder that misinformed and likely confused readers. But that aside, it’s well worth the read.
@Aaron, I believe you are referring to my reference of Thornburg v Gingles. That case involved the use of approval voting in multi-member districts. The paragraph states:
In multi-member districts, AV has been criticized for
disenfranchising minority voters. The plaintiffs in Thornburg
v. Gingles (1986) argued that they were forced to resort to
bullet voting in order to get their preferred candidate
elected. The plaintiffs also claimed “…that the legislative
decision to employ multi-member, rather than singlemember,
districts in the contested jurisdictions dilutes their
votes by submerging them in a white majority, thus impairing
their ability to elect representatives of their choice.” The
Court decided North Carolina’s multi-member districts were a
violation of the Voting Rights Act, though the court never
directly addressed approval voting. Rather the court focused
on vote dilution of black voters in white districts or what
Justice White called “interest-group politics rather than a
rule hedging against racial discrimination.”
Does the book propose any practicable suggestions to effect real campaign finance reform?
@Bernie, yes I do offer some practical suggestions (Chapter 4).
4 –
I said “practicable,” not “practical.”
@5 – sorry, misread that; I believe the suggestions I offer are both practical AND practicable.
Here’s a link where sample pages can be read. I am definitely putting this on my Christmas list!
http://www.amazon.com/Duopoly-Republicrats-Control-Electoral-Process/dp/098420377X
@Jeff,
I’m asking people that intend to buy the book to make their purchase on “Black Friday” to drive up the rankings. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=290545064307002
The Kindle version is currently 28th in the Elections category
@Darryl
I agree with you that the system the Court described in Thornburg v. Gingles was a multi-member system that disenfranchised minority voters. But that system WAS NOT Approval Voting. That system was Multi-Member Plurality.
There are two big giveaways that the system the Court describes is not Approval Voting:
1. Approval Voting is a single-winner system. But they’re describing a multi-winner system.
2. Approval Voting puts no limitations on the number of candidates you can vote for. But the system the Court describes limits voters so their number of votes equals the number of candidates being elected. The fact that people may vote less than their allotted number of votes does not turn this into Approval Voting.
Just note the description in the case (http://supreme.justia.com/us/478/30/case.html#F5): “Consider [a] town of 600 whites and 400 blacks with an at-large election to choose four council members. Each voter is able to cast four votes.”
Four people are up for election. Each voter can vote at most four votes. That’s the description of Multi-Member Plurality. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality-at-large_voting and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality-at-large_voting
This can be called all kinds of names including block Plurality voting or Multi-Winner Plurality. (Apparently, no one in the voting world can agree on names for anything.) But what it can’t be called is Approval Voting because Approval Voting is a single-winner system that doesn’t limit votes.
A bloc system (which the court describes correctly) is a system where some majority or plurality bloc can elect every candidate it wants to the exclusion of any minority voice. And any system can be turned into a bloc system. But it ceases to have the same features of its original single-winner system.
For example, I could run a Condorcet algorithm, find the winner, remove that winner as elected, and repeat until I have all the seats I want filled. That would make Condorcet a bloc system if it ran that way. But no one ever thinks of criticizing Condorcet on that ground because no one ever runs elections that way. Note that there are proportional multi-winner Condorcet methods that change the algorithm just like there are proportional multi-winner Approval methods that change the algorithm (see original post).
So let’s say you wanted to turn Approval Voting into a bloc system (something that hasn’t been done before though technically considered in recent New Hampshire legislation). You’d just have people vote for UNLIMITED candidates. If you were electing five people, then the top five vote-getters would win. Even this is different than what the Court described because there are no limits on the number of votes (a prime feature of Approval Voting).
This bloc version of Approval Voting would actually be an improvement over what the Court described for some technical reasons which would likely include more Centrist winners. But this unused variation of Approval Voting wouldn’t be proportional so to allow minority voices. Again, no one in the US has ever run elections using this idea as a system.
6 –
Can you give us one example of a significant change to campaign finance law which would:
1) Have the effect of generally increasing the viability of campaigns mounted in opposition to incumbents,
2) Enable third party candidates to make realistic runs for office at the federal level, and
3) Pass Congress (the “practicable” part)
Thanks
Bernie,
The answer to your question #1 is to just eliminate all incumbents. http://cpwv.org/2010/11/13/term-limits-platform-position-adopted
@10
I’m oppose placing more rules and regulations on candidate expenditures, rather I propose reducing or even eliminating these rules.
“Current federal campaign reporting rules require a candidate (or committee) to begin filing with the FEC after collecting or spending $5,000 dollars towards a campaign; an amount virtually unchanged since the 1970’s. In order to assist the minor party candidates, this limit should be raised to $25,000 (minimum) and the amount that an individual can contribute to a campaign should be raised from its current $2,700.” I believe this could actually pass Congress.
I also suggest “A better reform would be to eliminate all laws that require reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures. A more modest proposal would be to prohibit corporations from donating to federal campaigns (exempting non-profits) and only require contributions and expenditures to be reported after the election (as was required under the Tillman Act of 1907).”
@9 – I will re-check my reference for that case, though I’m fairly certain that “Elections A to Z, Third Edition” stated (or implied) that approval voting was used in the mutli-member districts.
Again, it was not my intention to mislead or misstate anything, I actually support the idea of approval voting.
Approval Voting (i.e. YES – default is NO) is for all executive/judicial elections.
i.e. vote for 3 or more sheriffs or judges.
P.R. for legislative elections.
——
Technically limited approval voting is used in many current at large election systems —
i.e. city councils — N to be elected. Vote for not more than N.
@Darryl
I haven’t read “Elections A to Z” before. And it may very well state that the Court in Thornburg was describing Approval Voting. But it would be wrong for the thorough reasoning above. It wouldn’t be the first time a book made a mistake. There’s already a method that uses that procedure and it’s called Multi-Member Plurality (or half a dozen other names).
To be fair, I’ve seen this mistake made before. But calling this an Approval Voting variant is like labeling Limited Voting or Cumulative Voting as Approval Voting variants as well. And we know that would make no sense. These systems have names and we should call them by their rightful names.
Jan Kok, whom you reference, would agree. We’re both directors/officers at The Center for Election Science. We even included your book in our site’s recent Facebook blurb: https://www.facebook.com/electology
Otherwise, I was happy to see you put Approval Voting in rightfully positive light. Praise for PR was also good to see. And that’s the best I’ve read on rethinking the use of ballots. Your research makes this book a great reference, and I’m glad to give it a spot on my electronic book shelf.
@Aaron, thank you for the kind words, a review on Amazon would be much appreciated!
11 –
Term limits do not resolve the myriad problems we have with campaign finance.
An example: Incumbent “A,” a member of the “Potato Party” disallowed from running for reelection. The state or CD in which he resides is heavily “Potato Head.” The other party or parties put a non-incumbent up against the PH candidate, but can’t raise much money because everyone knows they don’t stand a chance. The PH candidate, on the other hand, rakes in the dough, and spends only 30% of what was taken in. 50% is donated to other PH candidates in other races, and the remaining 20% is kept in reserve for the next office that the PH candidate runs for after he is also barred from running for reelection. I believe both of these are currently legal options.
So…what has term limits done to prevent these abuses?
Also term limits create what I regard as a new and serious problem of preventing an electorate from returning to office an officeholder they are pleased to continue having represent them. I’m not inclined to give up that much democratic freedom for any reason, including a dubious “fix” to a flawed system of campaign finance.
#17 Are you really that pleased with the old geezer, or is it that no one of comparable quality will challenge him, so you are stuck with him until he dies.
Term limits aren’t to get rid of incumbents, but to open more opportunities to serve.
The MORONS who love term limits are brain dead ignorant about P.R. for legislative bodies and NON-partisan App.V. for executive/judicial offices.
See the MORONS in CA who enacted the top 2 primary and the revised CA gerrymander commission — USELESS reforms done by election law MORONS — who love doing MORON *reforms*.
18 –
I didn’t say that, Jim. I merely said that term limits limit our ability to keep in office those the electorate collectively determines should be kept in office, and I’m not prepared to do that to fix ANY political problem. An “old geezer” who is not responding to the will of his constituency ought to be turned out of office…at the polls.
I will say however that to the extent that our system of financing campaigns tends to thwart the will of an electorate who, with a more level money playing field, might otherwise turn out of office an officeholder with whom they are dissatisfied…yes I am displeased with that. That’s why I asked the author whether he had some practicable ideas as to how our system of financing campaigns might be reformed.
Do you have some?
I don’t agree that there is a compelling and intrinsic value to “open more opportunities to serve” by term limitation. Is there no value to experience of any kind in government? To what extent do term limits assure that office holders simply move from one office to another, but stay in government (do head coaches and general managers ever really lose their jobs…LOL).
Furthermore, I think many people who support term limitation do not do so for that reason, at least solely for that reason. I think many (not suggesting you do Jeff) do so on the theory that most office holders are attached to the public teat and deserve to be thrown out of office solely on the basis that they hold the office in the first place. I don’t agree with that either.
Eliminating gerrymandering and the creation of “safe districts” are much bigger issues than instituting term limits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation
The U.S.A. is one of the STONE AGE ANTI-Democracy regimes.
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#20 You are assuming that there is one best representative in a population of 700,000 (for Congress) and once the electorate has determined who that person is, they should have the “ability” to continue to keep “choosing” that person.
But what really happens is that he gets re-elected because he is OK, and a district goes decades without actually choosing its representative. The incumbent walks in front of a bus, and suddenly the district has to choose a representative from whoever is available and interested at that instant. But there were likely many capable candidates over the decades, who being pragmatic, said that they can’t be elected until the old geezer walks in front of a bus, and go off in other pursuits.
The military has a system where officers are expected to promote, and if they don’t they are released from service. If there wasn’t this system, you would have 90-year old generals, 70-year old colonels, 55-year old majors, and 40-year old captains. Why would anyone want to become a lieutenant? And why would we want the persons who would want to become lieutenants under such a system, being lieutenants.
Term limits are not to get rid of the incumbents, but to provide opportunity for new blood.
I’ve never heard a congressman say that they were embarrassed to collect their salary for their first 10 years in office, because they did little more than clean the spittoons and carry the briefcase of the more “experienced” senior members, or suggest an introductory salary.
# 24 NO *safe* seats with P.R.
See France May-June 1940 for the seniority military ROT — the officers in 1918 being about 22 years older and more senile in 1940 — i.e. Petain and Gamelin.
24 –
24 –
The military is not a democracy, so I don’t see the point of that analogy.
But back to my original point, do you have any suggestions for campaign finance reform that could actually pass Congress? As I suggested earlier, I believe that it isn’t the complacency of the electorate which enables unqualified officeholders to hold office in near perpetuity, but rather a system of campaign finance which discourages serious opponents from taking on incumbents if at all. If there were as many people anxious to take their turn at public service as you apparently believe, it seems to me there would be no elections held in which the incumbent is unopposed…
…unless of course they know they can’t come up with sufficient funds to pull it off.
24 –
Incidentally, nothing I’ve said would indicate that I think that a person who has been elected to office is the best possible representative from among his/her constituency. Those are your words. Not mine.
#26 The military is an organization. If you prevent advancement within an organization, you drive talented persons into other endeavors, and the organization stagnates. A legislative body is no different.
Let’s say that you want to run for office. You realize that it will take a lot of effort, and a lot of cash. You realize that there is little chance of beating old geezer. If you were a pragmatist, you would decide not to run. If it were an open seat, you would see a reasonable opportunity to be elected, and make the commitment to try.
You said that you wanted to maintain the ability of the electorate to (re)elect a candidate who has shown ability. If there many persons capable of ably serving, then term limits will not deprive the electorate from choosing an able representative. If the incumbent is the most able representative, then term limits would harm the electorate. Without them, the incumbent may come to believe he is indispensable.
28 –
Again, haven’t answered my question about campaign finance reform, yet you admit in your second paragraph that it is financing a campaign which is the problem for people seeking office against an incumbent.
And what is your interest in this site, anyway, since you obviously don’t like the democratic process? Since you think there is no difference between the military and a legislative body, do you advocate for military juntas instead of an elected body?
Your logic escapes me.
#28 If a process results in official that remain in office for life, it is no different than a monarchy. In fact many early monarchs were elected, and then converted their position to an inherited one.
You seem to think that you are going to be able to limit spending on behalf of candidates. But in reality it won’t happen, so your reform would probably involve transferring funds from that could be spent on public things and transferred to political consultants who will work to elect politicians who will ensure the flow of $$$$$ to political consultants.
Bernie –
Give it up. Jim Riley is a technicolor Republican tool. He never answers a direct question, his best arguments are the words that he puts into other people’s mouths, and the rest of his arguments are, as you can see, for the most part pretty lightweight. You’re wasting your time. He’s thick as a brick.
30 –
You imply that I am in favor of public financing of campaigns. I’m not, and I never said that I was. Is that the only idea YOU have for reforming campaign finance?
#32
I was under the impression that you believe that the success of incumbents is due in part to the large amount of money that they had, or alternatively to the small amount of money that challengers had.
I don’t think it feasible to control private spending without being knocked down on first amendment grounds. So that means an increase in the amount of money that challengers have.
But private sources may not be willing to spend large amounts of long shot campaigns (we’ll remortgage the house, send Billy and Susie to trade school, and put off retirement until we are 75, in order to finance a long shot effort).
So that leaves public finance. But look at what happened in San Francisco. Ed Lee did not take public financing and easily outspent his opponents. And the opponents who did accept public financing received anywhere from $15 to $391 per vote. I think that is a waste of public money.
So I am skeptical/cynical about “campaign finance reform”
I favor term limits, for reasons other than removing incumbents, or as a solution to the money issue. Again looking at San Francisco. In 2007, Gavin Newsom was hardly challenged for re-election. He was term-limited in 2011, so decided to run for Lieutenant Governor in 2010. But the fact that he was term-limited encouraged viable candidates to run for mayor. And this would have been true even if he had not been elected Lieutenant Governor, or even not run. You can’t deny that term limits provided an opportunity for Ed Lee, that he would not have had otherwise.
Without term limits, Gavin Newsom might have continued to have been reelected. He appears to have a lot of popular support.
San Francisco’s public financing scheme is flawed, because (as in all public financing systems) a candidate may qualify to receive public funding long before the deadline to file to get on the ballot. In normal public funding schemes, if a candidate who got public funding ultimately doesn’t run for office, there is no requirement that he or she pay back the money that has been spent on campaigning before the candidacy filing deadline. San Francisco perversely says such a candidate must pay back the public funding. That leads candidates who got public funding, who campaigned, but who then realize they can’t win, to remain in the race anyway, leading to a glut of candidates.
33 –
Your first paragraph in 33…you’re correct (on both points). But how does that impression lead you to conclude that I am in favor of public financing of political campaigns (your #30), which I am not.
There is a already a limit to the amount that an individual can contribute to a political campaign. I think that answers your doubts as to whether there is a first amendment objection to “control private spending.”
We do it already.
In fact, I would argue that the amount that individuals are able to contribute to a political campaign ought to be increased…substantially. However, I also believe that there should be no constitutional objection to further curtailments on what campaigns can do with the money they raise.
As one example, campaigns are allowed to transfer enormous sums of money to other campaigns. How does this conduit of obscene amounts of money from campaign of incumbents to other campaigns further free speech? Furthermore, if an incumbent is not favored by his/her constituency, these transfers from cash-rich campaign war chests can artificially support the viability of a campaign that might otherwise not be able to sustain itself against credible opposition, owing to reduced direct contributions by the candidate’s own constituency.
So I disagree that public finance is the “only” solution to making campaign finance rational and fair, I disagree that term limits would solve the problems of our current system of financing campaigns, and as I said above, I’m not willing to trade the voters’ right to return an officeholder to office if they choose to do so as a dubious solution to the problems of campaign finance. We’re a democracy, not an “organization” even remotely similar to a military, as you suggest above. At least for the time being, anyway.
#35 You appear to be using a more limited definition of organization than I am.
organization, organisation [???g?na??ze???n] n
2. an organized structure or whole
3. a business or administrative concern united and constructed for a particular end
4. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a body of administrative officials, as of a political party, a government department, etc.
A legislative body, and the military are both organizations, as opposed to inchoate masses. You seem to have some particular feelings about the military that prevents you from understanding the point I was making.
It is essential to the long term health of an organization to bring new persons into the organization and give them opportunities to participate in a meaningful way.
I did not say that term limits were a solution to campaign finance.
I can spend whatever I want to personally exercise my free speech. If I want to buy 100,000 commercials advocating my viewpoint, I can, as long as the check doesn’t bounce. That point of view might be advocating my election to office, or some other cause such as advocating your election. I may be limited in the amount I contribute directly to your campaign, but if I want to I can independently do so. The $1.5 million for Ed Lee, did not include independent expenditures advocating his election.
What further limits would you put on campaign expenditures?
I can get around your limits on transfers. I can only donate $X000 to you? Would you have any recommendations on other like-minded candidates?
Bernie –
You see what I mean? If you don’t see that a legislative body and the military are “both organizations” then you must have some special problem with the military.
You’re wasting your time.