Category:Electoral System Reform

Election Reform

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform

More election systems info at FairVote

Electoral reform in electoral systems is intended to improve how public desires are expressed in election results...

Popular reforms can include:

Voting systems, such as proportional representation, a two-round system (runoff voting), instant-runoff voting... citizen initiatives and referendums and recall elections...

Improved voting can include:

• Ballot Access (see Ballot Access News for more info re: US fed/state election law news)

• Vote-counting procedures

• Rules about political parties, typically changes to election laws

• Eligibility to vote / Factors which affect the rate of voter participation (and counter to improved electoral reforms, often eligibility rules are employed that reduce participation and voter turnout.

• How candidates and political parties are able to stand (nomination rules) and how they are able to get their names onto ballots (ballot access)

• Electoral constituencies and election district borders ('gerrymandering', i.e. skewing the drawing of district boundaries to fit partisan goals, is often utilized and runs counter to full and fair voter participation and representation)

• Ballot design and voting equipment

• Scrutineering (election monitoring by candidates, political parties, etc.)

• Safety of voters and election workers

• Measures against bribery, coercion, and conflicts of interest

• Financing of candidates' and referendum campaigns (see Money in Politics / Campaign Finance Reform)

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Electoral System / Representation Issues

http://represent.us/TheProblem

http://represent.us/TheSolution

http://anticorruptionact.org/

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Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) / ‘ranking the candidates’ systems are used in California and Minnesota, among many other locations.

Cities that use RCV in California include Oakland (http://www.acgov.org/rov/rcv/), Berkeley, San Leandro and San Francisco (http://www.sfelections.org/demo/). Cities in Minnesota that use RCV include St. Paul (http://votestpaul.org) and Minneapolis (http://vote.minneapolismn.gov/rcv/index.htm0)

A proportional representation form of RCV for multi-candidate elections is used in Cambridge, Massachusetts (https://www.cambridgema.gov/election2015/ccouncil/15CouncFinal%20Round15.htm).

Countries that use the system include Australia (http://www.eca.gov.au/systems/proportional/), Ireland (http://www.environ.ie/sites/default/files/publications/files/guide_to_ireland_pr-stv_system_0.pdf), and Scotland (http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Government/Elections/guidance/VotingSystems2).

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Reforms Needed in Other Voting System

Private and small groups and organizations occasionally employ voting systems like consensus decision-making.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making

Many problems arise within these forms of voting and, as many have realized in the 'process' of utilizing these systems (e.g., the US Green Party) a consensus decision-making has many limitations. (Re the US Green Party, attempts to build participation using a consensus decision-making process have produced many issues, from small cliques blocking progress to loss of interest by participants who are uninterested in interminable 'process'.)

Wikipedia points out a number of these issues:

• Criticism of blocking: Critics of consensus blocking often observe that the option, while potentially effective for small groups of motivated or trained individuals with a sufficiently high degree of affinity, has a number of possible shortcomings, notably --

o Preservation of the status quo: In decision-making bodies that use formal consensus, the ability of individuals or small minorities to block agreement gives an enormous advantage to anyone who supports the existing state of affairs. This can mean that a specific state of affairs can continue to exist in an organization long after a majority of members would like it to change.[40] The incentive to block can however be removed by using a special kind of voting process.

o Susceptibility to widespread disagreement: Giving the right to block proposals to all group members may result in the group becoming hostage to an inflexible minority or individual. When a popular proposal is blocked the group actually experiences widespread disagreement, the opposite of the consensus process's goal. Furthermore, "opposing such obstructive behavior [can be] construed as an attack on freedom of speech and in turn [harden] resolve on the part of the individual to defend his or her position." As a result, consensus decision-making has the potential to reward the least accommodating group members while punishing the most accommodating.

o Stagnation and group dysfunction: When groups cannot make the decisions necessary to function (because they cannot resolve blocks), they may lose effectiveness in accomplishing their mission.

o Susceptibility to splitting and excluding members: When high levels of group member frustration result from blocked decisions or inordinately long meetings, members may leave the group, try to get to others to leave, or limit who has entry to the group.

o Channeling decisions away from an inclusive group process: When group members view the status quo as unjustly difficult to change through a whole group process, they may begin to delegate decision-making to smaller committees or to an executive committee. In some cases members will be begin to act unilaterally because they are frustrated with a stagnated group process.

These issues are not readily soluble at scale, in other words, the consensus decision-making process cannot easily, or readily, grow with an organization in a dynamic ('change over time') manner.

Additional issues with consensus decision-making include "twinkling" (as a well-known journalist points out when discussing the lack of 'seriousness' within the US Green Party)

Other serious consensus decision-making issues noted by Wikipedia include:

Groupthink (Many (including GreenPolicy's siterunner) have pointed out multiple problems with 'group thinking'.)

Cory Doctorow, Ralph Nader and other proponents of deliberative democracy or judicial-like methods view explicit dissent as a symbol of strength. Lawrence Lessig considers it a major strength of working projects like public wikis. Schutt, Starhawk and other practitioners of direct action focus on the hazards of apparent agreement followed by action in which group splits become dangerously obvious.

Unanimous, or apparently unanimous, decisions can have drawbacks. They may be symptoms of a systemic bias, a rigged process (where an agenda is not published in advance or changed when it becomes clear who is present to consent), fear of speaking one's mind, a lack of creativity (to suggest alternatives) or even a lack of courage (to go further along the same road to a more extreme solution that would not achieve unanimous consent).

Unanimity is achieved when the full group apparently consents to a decision. It has disadvantages insofar as further disagreement, improvements or better ideas then remain hidden, but effectively ends the debate moving it to an implementation phase. Some consider all unanimity a form of groupthink, and some experts propose "coding systems...for detecting the illusion of unanimity symptom." Confusion between unanimity and consensus, in other words, usually causes consensus decision-making to fail, and the group then either reverts to majority or supermajority rule or disbands...

Criticism of majority voting processes

Some proponents of consensus decision-making view procedures that use majority rule as undesirable for several reasons. Majority voting is regarded as competitive, rather than cooperative, framing decision-making in a win/lose dichotomy that ignores the possibility of compromise or other mutually beneficial solutions. Carlos Santiago Nino, on the other hand, has argued that majority rule leads to better deliberation practice than the alternatives, because it requires each member of the group to make arguments that appeal to at least half the participants. A. Lijphart reaches the same conclusion about majority rule, noting that majority rule encourages coalition-building. Additionally, opponents of majority rule claim that it can lead to a 'tyranny of the majority', a scenario in which a majority places its interests so far above those of an individual or minority group as to constitute active oppression. Some voting theorists, however, argue that majority rule may actually prevent tyranny of the majority, in part because it maximizes the potential for a minority to form a coalition that can overturn an unsatisfactory decision.

(In the considered opinion, and long experience, of your GreenPolicy siterunner, attempts by the US Green Party (as one example) to use consensus decision-making ensures the ongoing dysfunction of the national party as an serious, effective organization. Electoral system reform is overdue as the organization attempts to become a viable, growing national party.)