Congressional Bill to Study Alternate Voting Methods for U.S. House Elections

Posted on by December 22, 2009
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On October 29, Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-Florida) introduced HR 3972, which would set up a commission to study alternatives to the current system by which voters choose members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill suggests that the Commission would study proportional representation and cumulative voting. The Commission would also study whether the size of the U.S. House should be increased, and it would study how U.S. citizens who live in the District of Columbia and U.S. territories may obtain voting representation in the U.S. House.

The bill only has five co-sponsors so far, and they happen to all be from the District of Columbia or from one of the U.S. territories. Thanks to Dave Kadlecek for this news.

Texas Democratic Party Finally Gets Relief Against Vote-Counting Machines

Posted on by December 22, 2009
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On December 21, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Dallas ruled that Dallas County cannot continue to use vote-counting machines that “de-select” votes cast when a voter uses the straight-ticket device and also votes individually for a candidate from the same party. The case is Texas Democratic Party v Dallas County, 08-cv-2117. Here is the 10-page decision.

With eSlate voting machines, the kind of machines used by Dallas County, when a voter uses the straight-ticket device, and then also decides to cast an individual vote for the nominee of the same party, the machine assumes the voter doesn’t want to vote for that particular candidate and subtracts the voter’s vote for that one particular candidate. The machine tries to warn the voter that he or she has therefore not cast a vote in that particular race, but the warning is not clear. See this story.

The ruling does not say these machines violate the Constitution. Rather, it says that when Dallas County started using that type of machine in 1998, that was a voting procedure change and it should have been submitted to the U.S. Justice Department for pre-clearance. Texas is one of the states that cannot change its election laws or practices without permission from the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department. The three judges on the case were Judge Jorge Solis, a Bush Sr. appointee, and Judges Reed O’Connor and Edward Prado, both Bush Jr. appointees.

The Texas Democratic Party has been fighting vote-counting systems with this characteristic since 2007. It filed an earlier lawsuit, Texas Democratic Party v Williams, in federal court in Austin, allleging that use of these machines violates the Constitution. However, U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks had ruled against the party on August 16, 2007, and the 5th circuit had upheld Sparks’ ruling on July 30, 2008. The Democratic Party had then taken that case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which had declined to hear it on January 12, 2009.

It isn’t likely that the Justice Department will approve this type of voting machine. In November 2008, in the Texas State House 105th district election, the vote had been: Republican Linda Harper-Brown 19,857; Democrat Bob Romano 19,838; Libertarian James Baird 1,061. Although election officials had argued that the number of voters who are confused by the machine is a small number of voters, the concrete example of this particular legislative race shows that even a small number of confused voters can be a serious problem.

Perhaps the Texas legislature will solve the problem by simply repealing the straight-ticket device, which is inherently confusing. In recent years, Illinois and Missouri have repealed it.

California Ballot from June 1998 Illustrates a Difficulty with the “Top-Two Open Primary” Measure

Posted on by December 21, 2009
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Here is a picture of the California sample ballot from June 1998, for the office of Governor. At that time, California used a blanket primary. All candidates from all parties appeared on that primary ballot. Then, the top vote-getter from each party advanced to the general election, along with any independent candidates. As one can see, there were 17 candidates for Governor. Each one had a party label, and also an occupation, printed on the ballot in three languages.

If the California “top-two open primary” becomes law, California primary ballots in the future will look like this, except that instead of each candidate’s party label, each candidate would instead have next to his or her name this sentence: “My party preference is the Republican Party” (or whatever qualified party the candidate is registered into). This statement would be printed in three languages in counties that contain most of California’s population. All this verbiage, combined with the long list of candidates for each office, makes for a cumbersome primary ballot.

Because both the blanket primary, and the top-two primary, print all candidates from all parties on the same primary ballot, those systems create very lengthy primary ballots. In June 1998, besides 17 candidates for Governor on that unitary primary ballot, there were 13 for Lieutenant Governor, 9 for Secretary of State, 7 for Controller, 9 for Treasurer, 10 for Attorney General, 8 for Insurance Commissioner, 11 for Board of Equalization (in each of two districts), 13 for U.S. Senator, and as many as 10 for U.S. House and Assembly. Then there were separate primary ballots for party office, distributed to each voter who was a member of a qualified party. The separate ballots for party office eliminate any possibility that the “top-two open primary” would save printing costs for election administrators.

Under a “top-two open primary”, the general election is undercrowded. There would only be two candidates for each congressional and state office, for a very short ballot with few choices. “Top-two open primary” creates a primary ballot that tries to do too many functions all at once, and then a stultifyingly short November ballot. By contrast, the normal system, in which each party has its own primary ballot, provides more balance. Both the primary ballot and the November ballot typically have 4, 5 or 6 choices, in the existing California system.