‘Accommodate Choice, Share Power’

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: [email protected]