American Three Winners (AmTW) is a simple yet powerful new election rule.  It is simple because it works just like most US elections (one candidate per party, one vote per voter), except that there would be three winners.  The principle behind the rule for which candidates win the three contested seats is also simple.  We match the parties' percent of seats won with their percent of votes received, as much as possible. 

Now, sometimes simple principles can lead to complicated rules.  But when there are only three seats in an election, there would realistically be two basic outcomes.   The first, and most likely outcome, is that the top three candidates each win a seat.  The second outcome happens if the top vote-getter beats out third place by more than one-third of the total vote.  In that case, her or his party wins two seats.  The second seat would be filled by the winner.   (S)he would get to pick a team-mate to hold it.  The third seat would be won by the second place candidate.

The first and more likely outcome is key for why AmTW would be so powerful.  It would enable smaller third parties to win some seats in local or state elections.  The ability to win some seats would then allow them more voice.  If they are not extreme then they should be better equipped to move the political center on their issues of concern to them.  Thus, our two-party dominated system in the system could better protect minority rights.  It would also level the playing field between the two major parties.  For there would still be two major parties, so long as we continue to use single-seated election rules for other elections.  And, in Am3W elections, the two major parties for a state would each tend to win at least one seat.  Thus, there would be Democratic winners in heavily Republican state-districts, or wards, and vice-versa.  This would subvert the ability of the party in power to gerrymander districts, it would make both major parties more (at least geographically) heterogenous.  Together, these effects would keep either one of them from being able to dominate a state's politics. 

For, tragically, the non-competitive nature of most single-seated state or local elections has made it too easy for a single party to dominate a state's politics, and that much power corrupts.  It is why voters are apathetic about state legislative elections and spend too much time and energy on more competitive gubernatorial or national elections. When we make the third seats in local or state elections become competitive then their time and energy could be better spent on matters closer to home where their activism would be more effective.

The second outcome is more likely if the top vote-getter wins a majority, 50% plus, of the vote.  And so, unlike with our current system, the candidate from the biggest party in a district would have a stronger incentive to try to win as many votes as possible.  In fact, if the top vote-getter were to blow out the competition, there would be an unlikely but possible third outcome.  If the top candidate beat out the second place candidate by more than two-thirds of the total vote, then her or his party would win all three seats and (s)he'd get to pick two team-mates to hold the other two seats.  Both of these less likely outcomes set up stronger incentives for the two major parties to campaign for votes, even though they are both likely to win one seat each due to the strength of their voter base.  An additional incentive for the two major party candidates to campaign harder would be to help their party in other winner-take-all , or single-seated, elections and to hold off the third party insurgencies or to protect the loyalty of their party base. 

All in all, the American Three Winners election rule, which I formerly called "American Proportional Representation", would be the bomb.  It would take the US's democracy up to another level if it were used in state house of representatives elections in all fifty states.  It would only need to be adopted initially in a single state.  This would take a relatively easy and simple change in their state-constitution.  After Am3W succeeded in that state, it would eventually spread to the other states.  Although, in order for Am3@ to succeed, it would also likely be necessary to give the major party in power in the state house of representatives additional controls or power.  This is so they could get things done, despite having only one-third plus of the total number of seats.  But the major party in power could be trusted with more powers, or controls, since they would be in power due to the votes of independent third party state representatives (holding up to 1/3 of the seats).  As such, there would be far less corruption and far more transparency in our state politics, with similar reforms and outcomes possible for more local or city level elections. 


So what do you do when a great idea emerges?  You should share it with others and let concerns of its' "feasibility" just be for a while, as you simply help the idea to spread and get distilled into more of our citizens consciousness.  Then, Am3W will win institutional support and become feasible and eventually make feasible other experiments with the US's and other countries democracies.

dlw

I've been debating folks about whether or not it would be better to (1) restore our ability to trust our state legislators thru strategic election reform that (1a) makes their elections more competitive (1b) prevents either of the two major parties from dominating a state's politics so we can then (2) restore to state assemblies their historical constitutional right (by repealing the 17th amendment) to elect our US senators. 

This would then (1) spare us costly $pin-driven state-wide elections (2)
raise the profile of state legislators, (3) improve the checks and balances between our state and nat'l gov'ts, and (4) let us use a score-voting election rule that permits us to require that state legislators justify the scores they give to the senatorial candidates on the basis of issues of relevance to their constituencies. 

The result would tend to be a tendency to elect "centrist" Democrat or Republican Senators who are commited to push for reform on issues that matter to local third parties (The use of the three-seated AmPR rule to elect state representatives would tend to make it so the two major parties would get about 1/3rd of the seats with the remainder going to local third parties).  But they would be beholden to their state gov'ts, not the moneyed intere$t$ that elected them and that could be a much better arrangement if we renewed our state gov'ts via using the right combination of winner-take-all and winner-doesn't-take-all (or single-seated and multi-seated) election rules.

dlw

I recently suggested that if we restored our trust in our state representatives through the use of three-seated American Proportional Representation elections that we could give them back their historical constitutional right to elect our US senators.  This would spare us costly state-wide elections and ensure that our senators have more accountability from our 50 state legislative bodies. 

Destor commented though that

I don't think I'll ever be willing to cede my vote for Senator to my local representatives. That might just be stubborn thinking on my part but I think it's a recipe for backroom dealings and social elitism.

I replied (slightly edited).

What if the state representatives used a score voting system?  First, the number of candidates for US Senator would be whittled down to 3 or 5 and then each state rep would need to give a candidate an integer score between 0 and 10. The senatorial candidate whose average score from all of the state reps would then be elected.  This would allow us to make the state reps give us a score-card for their vote. They'd have to pick 5 criteria and give each candidate a 0-2 score on each criterion and a short justification. Then, they'd have to report their criteria, scores and reasons for each of the candidates for publication, so that their constituencies can read how and why they voted the way they did.  That is how we could make their votes on our behalf be less elitist and mitigate the backroom dealings.

Hopefully, this would overcome some hesitancy towards the restoration of this important check and balance between our national and state governments.

dlw

I recently suggested that if we restored our trust in our state representatives through the use of three-seated American Proportional Representation elections that we could give them back their historical constitutional right to elect our US senators.  This would spare us costly state-wide elections and ensure that our senators have more accountability from our 50 state legislative bodies. 

Destor commented though that

I don't think I'll ever be willing to cede my vote for Senator to my local representatives. That might just be stubborn thinking on my part but I think it's a recipe for backroom dealings and social elitism.

I replied (slightly edited).

What if the state representatives used a score voting system?  First, the number of candidates for US Senator would be whittled down to 3 or 5 and then each state rep would need to give a candidate an integer score between 0 and 10. The senatorial candidate whose average score from all of the state reps would then be elected.  This would allow us to make the state reps give us a score-card for their vote. They'd have to pick 5 criteria and give each candidate a 0-2 score on each criterion and a short justification. Then, they'd have to report their criteria, scores and reasons for each of the candidates for publication, so that their constituencies can read how and why they voted the way they did.  That is how we could make their votes on our behalf be less elitist and mitigate the backroom dealings.

I got involved with some intensive debates with score or approval vote advocates not long ago.  There are some mathematically sophisticated ways to evaluate election rules and score-voting and approval voting consistently perform the best in these tests.  However, the tests tend to presume that voters have all worked out "utility" scorings of all of the candidates, which unfortunately is at best a heroic simplifying assumption with only some heuristic usefulness.  It doesn't adequately address the messiness of the election process and the difficulties with low-information voters that sometimes decide their vote on a deeply irrational basis.  Thus, I believe the debate over the "best" election rule for election reformers to rally around is still ongoing(or I believe that the "best" rule varies with the type of election) and that Score-Voting is best used by "professionals" who have to give a public accounting for why they voted the way they did. 

Josh has recently pointed out that the overall numbers are not good for the Democratic party and they are trending overall in the wrong direction.  This suggests a strong element of unpredictability in the upcoming election.  It also suggests that voters continue to want more dramatic changes than what the Democratic party has proffered. 

One "less is more" approach is Strategic Election Reform(SER).  The basic form of SER is a system not unlike what prevailed in Illinois from 1870-1980 with its use of a three-seated cumulative voting rule for their state house of representatives.  However, instead of giving voters multiple votes, American Proportional Representation would keep the elections as much like most US elections as possible: one candidate per party and one vote per voter.  The difference is that most of the time the top 3 candidates would win a seat.  But if the top candidate beats out the third place candidate by more than a third of the total vote, then her or his team would win two seats and (s)he would get to pick a team-mate to come with them to the state assembly.  This would tend to happen if the top candidate won a majority of the vote.  As such, it makes what typically are boring elections far more interesting and likely informative. 

And then if we made it so voters could trust their state legislators then we could give them back their constitutional right to elect our US senators.  This would spare us costly state-wide campaigns that make it so one has to be wealthy to become a senator.  It would also impose more checks and balances on US senators to do the right thing once in office.  As they'd have 50 state assemblies monitoring and evaluating their performance.

So maybe it's time for more change?  Change that comes more from the bottom-up than the top-down, after all that's how real change usually flows....
 

Any ideas?  I am always in need of help with communicating this idea for folks, like why it would make a diff and be a better way forward than putting a lot of energy into campaign finance reform, or IRV or pining away for a European system of Proportional Representation...

SER, most importantly the use of three-seated American Proportional Representation in our state house of representative elections, is the most effective and potentially feasible approach to election reform in the US.  I say potentially feasible because it will only be feasible when it gains a following and institutional support.  However, it would pack a significant punch by changing the dynamics between the two major parties(likely to be reincarnated quite differently than they are right now) and by enabling local third parties to be the yeast that makes our democracy rise...  For we need more democracy in the US to protect minority rights and to ensure that further much needed reforms get worked out more quickly( and with fewer bribes to the losing intere$t$) !!!!

dlw

African-American NYC City Council member Charles Barron has started his own all-black party, the Freedom Party  to  lift up the significance of the African-American community in New York.  I called them up to share about American Proportional Representation and emailed the idea to them at "mail at freedompartynys dot com". 

Here's what I wrote them,

Third parties are best at issue advocacy.  So if your issue were the use of AmPR in city council or state assembly elections then it would advance the leverage of not just African-Americans, but all historically-disadvantaged minority groups in the US.   This could work, even if it wasn't successful right away.   This could be the next civil rights movement.  For it's not enough to give "historically discriminated against" (and, as a result, poorer) minorities the right to vote, you gotta also set up a mix of election rules to ensure them a reasonable chance to be decisive in elections with enough frequency to get their needs and wants addressed.

I do not know if they'll listen, but I do believe that Strategic Election Reform would expedite reform in so many areas that it deserves to be at the forefront of the progressive movement, before campaign finance reform (we've been trying and failing at that for the last forty years...) or any specific issue (of which there are too many that badly need reforms).

So we'll see...
dlw

I do.

I also give grace to our president Obama, but I wish progressives would remind him of the positive things he had to say about Illinois' historic use of 3-seated cumulative voting  for state representative elections from 1870-1980 back when he was a US senator.  If we pushed for 3-seated American Proportional Representation then it would have a trickle-up effect on our democracy.  We'd have more competitive local elections and it would be impossible for either of the major parties to dominate our state politics (as is common), and thereby it'd be difficult for them to dominate our national politics. 

Instead, both of our major parties would need to die and be reincarnated as more "progressive" to remain our major parties.  That's the way it ought to be: a contested duopoly, where the same two parties do not dominate each and every state's politics and minority groups feel like their votes count and we get (much) more reforms more often, regardless of which major party is in power. 

dlw

American Proportional Representation (AmPR) is the best thing since Apple pie!  It is a simple election rule that adapts Proportional Representation (PR) for the US.  AmPR works just like most US elections.  Each party has one candidate and voters vote for the one they support the most.  The difference is that three seats are contested and typically the top three candidates win.  The seats are distributed among the candidates based on their percentages of the vote so that if the top candidate did very well then her or his party wins two of the three seats and (s)he picks a team-mate to come with them.  But this happens only if the top candidate gets more than one-third of the total vote more than the third-place candidate, like as if the percentages of the vote among four parties were: 50, 30, 15, 5* (see an algebraic derivation of this rule here). 

Thus, if AmPR were used in state house of representative elections in the US, it would tend to elect one democrat and one republican and a third party candidate.  It would level the playing field between the two major parties and help third parties to win representation and influence.  It would not challenge the fact the US has two major parties. 

For American Proportional Representation's intent is not to ensure that "No party is left behind".  It has a much more simple goals: (1) to make our politics less cut-throat; (1b) to prevent either major party from dominating a state's politics; (2) To protect minority rights better (through enabling third parties to win seats and influence); (3) To help pass more reforms more often (What held up Health Care reform were Republican fears of the Democratic party getting a Permanent Majority.  If neither party can dominate state politics then the same would be true for national politics and both would have more incentive to work out compromises/reforms.).  For it is better to have a two-party dominated system (as soon as possible) than a single-party dominated system, regardless of which party would be in power...

dlw

*And, if a candidate did absurdly well with more than 2/3rds of the vote than the second place candidate, like if the percentages were: 80, 10, 6, 5, then (s)he would get to pick two team-mates and no other candidates would get elected.  A candidate could also specify their possible team-mate(s) in advance. 

I just rewrote my basic write up of American Proportional Representation(AmPR).  AmPR is a simple 3-seated election that has one candidate per party and one vote per voter, just like most US elections.  It was developed as part of Strategic Election Reform for state house of representative elections in the US.  But it could also be used for municipal elections. 

In Minneapolis, MN, we have thirteen wards and thirteen council members.  This past year, we had an election where FairVote's "Instant-Runoff Vote" was first used for all of the municipal elections.  The election was highly publicized, but the turnout was still somewhat disappointing.  Turnout was disappointing due to how the mayoral race was not competitive and habitual non-voters were not turned on by IRV.  And all of the city council incumbents, most of whom are Democrats, got reelected. 

But what if we had four wards with three council seats each and one at-large seat?  Then, if we used AmPR for the ward elections, it would be much easier for non-Democrats to get elected.  The elections would be more likely to be interesting for voters, since the outcome would be less certain.  And yet, the outcome would not be chaotic.  The dominant party in Minneapolis, the Democratic party would only need to win two seats in two of the four precincts and the at-large seat to get a majority of seven seats.  Otherwise, they can rule with an alliance with another party.  As such, the largest party would need to work harder to get a majority or share power with another party.  And that would make for a more robust  democracy, especially for minority groups that often slip through the cracks or get taking for granted by the Democratic party...

American Proportional Representation (AmPR) is a simple 3-seated election rule.  AmPR works just like most US elections: voters vote for their preferred party.  Let A, B and C be the top three parties in an AmPR election, with their respective %s of the vote being a, b and c and 1>a>b>c>0.  There are two possible outcomes: either A, B and C all win one seat each, or A wins two seats and C does not win a seat.  What determines the outcome is a simple rule.  If a-c>1/3 then A wins two seats, otherwise C wins a seat. 

There is a more intuitive way to put the above decision rule.  In order for a third party, C, to win a seat, c > 1/6 + (a - .50).  Or, if a>.50, A gets a majority of the vote, then A would tend to win two out of the three seats.  This is because both of the second and third place parties would need more than one-sixth of the total vote for C to win a seat.  However, because our system overall favors the top two parties, if A got a majority then B would also likely do well enough so that c<1/6 and C would not win a seat. 

The immediate implications of the above are not complicated.  There are two ways AmPR elections can get competitive.  There is the race to be the top third party and there is whether the top party wins a second seat.  And so, unlike in many US elections, the dominant party would have a strong incentive to pick good candidates, champion meaningful issues and pay attention to the concerns of minority groups.  For they would need to do so to get a majority of the vote so they could win two seats.  And that, plus helping third parties win seats, makes AmPR a simple yet potentially very important reform for the US's political system.  It's got definite advantages over the more complicated Cumulative Voting system used for a century in Illinois's state house of representatives which was recently used in Port Chester NY to help ensure minority representation. 

dlw 

Google Strategic Election Reform and you get 4.5 million hits, Campaign Finance Reform(CFR) gets 34.8 million hits.  Go to blogs, google CFR in quotes and you'll get 80 thousand plus hits, repeat the same google with "election reform" and you'll get almost 30 thousand hits.  Google blogs for "Strategic Election Reform" and you get 94 hits. 

The moral of the story: we're certainly giving a lot of attention to campaign finance reform.  We've been giving that issue a lot of attention since the seventies.  To quote Ralph Nader "The main way to shift power, if you had to have one reform, its public funding of public elections. Clean money, clean elections. Clean money and clean elections stop the nullification of your votes by special interest money."  But that's never been true, moneyed intere$t$ will find a way...  For big money has always been in the game.  The only way to subvert the freedom of $peech is to understand first the pragmatic role it plays and second how its influence can be checked. 

The best initial way to check $peech is to have more competitive elections.  Nader notes: "In about 90 percent of the 435 congressional districts, there is one-party rule. So choice is effectively denied to a vast majority of voters.."  This is even more true of state representative elections.  But if we had winner-doesn't-take-all elections, as with SER, then we'd have more competition in state representative elections.  SER would effectively reshuffle our state legislatures so that US congressional districts would be revised to be more competitive.  SER would also increase voter turnout.  It would let Republicans get elected in Democrat-dominated areas and let Democrats get elected in Republican-dominated areas and it would enable third parties get elected period.  And that would spill over to make other elections more competitive. 

So the bottom line is: we've spent a lot of time and energy on campaign finance reform in recent decades and where has it gotten us?  Why not focus that energy instead on multiple autonomous, yet interacting, state-wide campaigns to use American Proportional Representation in our state house of representatives?  The odds of success in at least one state, over the next decade would be very high, much higher than any idea that requires a US Constitutional Amendment.  And Strategic Election Reform would be much harder to subvert than recent attempts at Campaign Finance Reform.

dlw

CA recently passed an initiative that instituted an extensive reform of their voting system, using a rule called "Top Two Primary".  Now, I do not like the idea of using any particular election rule in all elections, and this is definitely true for "top two primary", but I believe there is a silver lining in this reform.  Now, it should be easier for strategically swing-voting advocacy groups to push for additional election reforms.  And there are a number of ways to "fix" the current system...

One idea would be a modified form of "Top Two Primary" that I call a "Top Three IRV".  This approach guarantees that there will be three final "centrist" candidates and that voters will get to pick their first and second picks.  It also makes the primaries more interesting by asking voters to pick which three out of seven candidates ought to be in the final round. 

But, if that idea didn't fly, another simpler change would be to use FairVote's IRV3 system in the non-state-wide primaries that pick the final two candidates.  This would help give minority groups and third parties more voice.  It would ensure that the final two candidates truly are "centrist".  It would also give more people exposure to rank choice voting.  And it would continue to evolve our democracy. 

For I'd rather for us to keep on evolving, gradually if necessary, than insist on either my "personal idea" of strategic election reform, or the status quo "bad system" of only using first-past-the-post winner-take-all elections.  But that sort of dysfunctional stance seems to be not uncommon among election reformers who build their prestige around a specific idea for election reform. 

dlw

I just rewrote my previous entries on Strategic Election Reform to improve their readability and I would very much appreciate feedback.  I anticipate state-level election reform growing in its import in the coming year(s). 

thankyou,

dlw

Cumulative Voting is hot, in part thanks to its use in Port Chester and a strategically inept decision by Fox News to attack the rule change.  Now, as of right now, there are 542,000 hits from googling "Cumulative Voting", 166 results from Google News, and 5,360 results from googling blogs.  In fact, the AP News is already suggesting that the use of Cumulative Voting could expand.  The rationale for the use of cumulative voting is to ensure protection for minorities, like the US's increasing Hispanic population.  Essentially, with cumulative voting in political elections, voters get to vote multiple times for the multiple contested seats.  Typically, they get to vote the same number of times as the number of contested seats.  Then, the candidates who get the most votes win. 

According to Wikipedia,

Advocates of cumulative voting often argue that political and racial minorities deserve better representation. By concentrating their votes on a small number of candidates of their choice, voters in the minority can win some representation - for example, a like-minded grouping of voters that is 20% of a city would be well-positioned to elect one out of five seats.

It is true that cumulative voting would help political and racial minorities get better represenation.  It is also true that the use of Cumulative Voting in Illinois' state house of representatives from 1870 to 1980 was a strong positive that should have been expanded to other US states.  But the reason it helps minorities (ethnic, economic, ideological) has nothing to do with giving them the opportunity to vote more than once.  What is crucial is that more than one seat is contested.  For then it is always much easier for a minority group to have a decisive vote and, thereby, get more attention for their issues.  Moreover, in practice with a cumulative voting system, most voters tend to give all of their votes to just one candidate.

And, as such, it seems it would be simpler to use an American Proportional Representation election system to provide more protections for minorities.  This would not require a change in the voting system.  There would also be no need to expend large amounts of time on voter education, because the system would work just like our current system does.  So, here's to the attention given to Cumulative Voting, and may a majority of it get redirected to American Proportional Representation!!!

dlw