The Green Pill Secret: Voting

In the United States of America, on 5 November, 2024, you have your last chance, as a citizen, to vote for your next President. But, did you know there are also down-ballot elections? Do you know who your Congressperson is? Do you know your Governor? Do you know your state Senator and Representative or Delegate? Because, believe me, fixing the flaws in the system starts in the grass roots and all politics is local so please do read up on your county or parish ordinances up for vote, and be mindful of who’s running for School Board or Soil and Water or County Attorney General.

On this site, we won’t tell you how to vote—however, I did suggest you listen to Taylor Swift instead—but for your state and local elections, think about how we can make politics more responsive to the people. For instance, do you know where your state lies on the Swamp Index? If you’re like me, you may be surprised to learn that Virginia ranks 46th of 51 in the Index; my co-host Cat (who couldn’t make this episode) in New York is all the way up at 14th place, by comparison. This is why my special guest Nancy Morgan and I have been fighting to get money out of politics. After all, since Citizens United v. FEC, we’ve seen astronomical growth in dark money political spending under the guise of legitimate businesses. While you’d need a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens, many other reforms are best performed in your local state capitol, from Atlanta to Salt Lake City.

And you know I, personally, have been a big proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s bodily autonomy, for electric vehicle access and support, and for good governance of one person one vote and for every vote to be equal with a National Popular Vote bill. The National Popular Vote is a bill passed in states with a total of 209 electors—only 61 more electors are needed to have the voters choose our President. After all, the system we have now causes both large and small states, both deep red and deep blue states, both rich and poor states to be totally ignored because they aren’t a battleground. And if you are in a battleground, your days are numbered. After all, Ohio and Virginia used to be battlegrounds, but not anymore. That capriciousness just isn’t a good way to select the leader of world’s biggest military. Is your state part of the compact? Great, maybe you can help in some other states! If not, write your state legislators, and consider, if your governor is against it, add those 888 words as an amendment to your state constitution, like Nevada.

Of course, there’s also the issue of Opened Primaries to keep our candidates more centered and weed out the unstable ones. And of course First Past the Post voting is one reason we get such diametrically opposed and out of touch candidates and are so afraid of the Spoiler Effect. I’m glad that Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff Voting is gaining traction, though I feel that it’s not as intuitive as Star Approval Voting, which is what you see in, for instance, your Amazon ratings, and has a much better chance of being Condorcet. And of course there’s the issue of Gerrymandering, which we tried to fix with OneVirginia2021 but failed miserably with obstructive politicians added at the eleventh hour to the “independent” redistricting panel. Gerrymandering allows the politicians to choose their voters, and not the natural other way around.

If any of these non-partisan issues matter to you and you’re in Virginia, please come to our Democracy Day on 21 January in Richmond, on the Quindecennial anniversary of Citizens!

Let the People Pick the President

The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College

Today, my good friend Eileen Reavey hosted a chat with Jesse Wegman, author of the new book Let the People Pick the President on Zoom and the official Facebook page (as opposed to my Grassroots page). Jesse layed out the reasons why we have the Electoral College and how states choosing how to interpret Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 2, as Amended hasn’t always been Winner-Take-All.

Jesse goes on to point out how Compacts only need Congressional Review when they violate Federal Supremacy. This is one of the major arguments we face when defending the NPVIC. Along with the misconception that in most states where are not battlegrounds, your vote doesn’t count now, so under the compact you aren’t decreasing the power of your state, you’re increasing the power of your state’s voters.

Another good point is how non-partisan this issue is. When you put all your eggs in one proverbial basket of battleground states, you end up with a system that more subject to the whim rather than reflecting the will of the nation as a whole. We know, for example, that voter turnout for President is up to 11% higher in battleground states than it is in non-battleground states.

Finally, we touched on the tangential issue of Ranked Choice Voting. The thing that folks don’t understand is any issue with the Spoiler Effect inherent in the NPVIC exists in the Electoral College as well. The NPIC isn’t trying to remedy that issue and that issue is much better approached by promoting Ranked Choice Voting as well as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for the reasons Jesse so eloquently outlines.

Webinar with Jesse Wegman

Webinar with Jesse Wegman and Eileen Reavey

Posted by National Popular Vote on Thursday, April 23, 2020

I greatly admire Jesse for making the effort to write a wonderful book and to take the time to speak with Eileen. He and I may disagree on how best to end Gerrymandering in Virginia, but I’ll save that argument for another day. Right now, let’s work together to ensure One Person, One Vote where Every Vote is Equal. Ask your state governments to pass the NPVIC today.

2020 Presidential Primary: VOTE!

It’s that time of year again. Time for the world’s second largest Democracy by population, and richest Democracy by overall GDP to vote to select who is the best to represent their party on the Presidential stage.

Voting through most of American history has been difficult. Our nation, like almost every Democracy, has political parties and every election it always comes down to just two choices: Conservatism or Progressivism. Progressives believe in progress, a government that is strong and protects its citizens from business. Conservatives believe in small government, state’s rights, and traditional values.

In 2020, Americans call Conservatives Republicans, and call Progressives Democrats. In 1888, Americans called Conservatives Democrats, and Progressives Republicans. In 1860, we called Progressive Abolitionists Republicans and Progressives who weren’t were Whigs, and Conservatives were Democrats. In 1796, Progressives were Federalists and Conservatives were Democratic-Republicans.

While all these elections were interesting, there’s one even more interesting. One more interesting than the 1888 election, where Grover Cleveland the Conservative won the Popular Vote but lost the Electoral College to Progressive Benjamin Harrison. One more interesting than the election of 1860, where Abolitionist Progressive Abraham Lincoln won the election with only 40% of the Popular Vote in a Three-Party Race. One even more interesting than the election of 1796, where the electoral college appointed the highest ballot winner to the Progressive John Adams, thus making him President, while the Conservative Thomas Jefferson had the second most votes, making him Vice President.

That last arrangement was so untenable that the Twelfth Amendment was passed. This amendment entrenching the party ticket system with our nation for the past 220 years. It give us the modern interpretation of Article II, Section 1, which in turn grants sole power to state legislatures to determine how that state’s electors are chosen.

But even that election isn’t the one I want to talk about.

The Election of 1824

The election of 1824 was a cantankerous one. That year, the Federalist Party had dissolved and the nation became a single party state where everyone claimed to be a member of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. Under that backdrop, in the first election for which we have popular voting data, there were a slate of four candidates: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and William H. Cranford.

CandidateElectoral Votes
Andrew Jackson99
John Quincy Adams84
William H. Crawford41
Henry Clay37

With four candidates running, for what was so far the only time in history, no-one received a majority of electoral votes, 131. As such, under the Twelfth Amendment (as amended by the Twentieth Amendment), the election is decided by taking the top three or less candidates and having each state’s Representatives voting on which of the candidates they prefer, with the state going to whomever the most Representative for that state voted for. Each state gets one vote, and whoever gets a majority of states becomes President. If no candidate receives that state majority, then the vote is recast until a majority is decided.

In 1824, this is exactly what happened. Of the twenty-four states at the time, thirteen were needed to decide the election. Fortunately, since Henry Clay, having been eliminated as not being in the top three, backed John Quincy Adams, meaning that only a single ballot was required in the House of Representative to elect John Quincy Adams as President.

CandidateState Votes
John Quincy Adams13
Andrew Jackson7
William H. Crawford4

If this were to happen in 2020 thanks to a third party candidate making it impossible for either the President or the Democratic Challenger to receive at least 270 Electoral Votes, then I personally feel the nation would be aghast. Most Americans don’t know about the Electoral College Voting Majority requirement or the state-based Congressional voting system, and would indeed by shocked to know that’s just what their Constitution says.

There must be a better way.

Ranked Choice Voting

Like the election of 1824, the modern Primary system seeks to choose a winner by strict majority among a list of party-faithful Presidential Candidates. If no candidate receives a majority of votes on the first ballot, SuperDelegates in the Democratic Party (Republicans don’t have SuperDelegates) are used to put their fingers on the scale and the required majority changes to reflect this.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just pic the majority on the first ballot? If people in 1824 could just say without Clay and Crawford they wanted Jackson?

2020 Primary Election
The last day of Early Voting in Virginia, a Super Tuesday state. The TimeHorse votes. © 2020, Jeffrey C. Jacobs

All these problems could be solved with Ranked Choice Voting. With Ranked Choice Voting, or RCV. Under RCV, you can say you prefer Crawford, but if your second choice is Jackson, then Adams, and finally Clay. Or you could say, like me, your first choice is Elizabeth Warren, because, among other things she supports the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but my second, third, fourth, and fifth choices would be among the various other candidates.

What you do with that is a whole other question. Clearly, you could just ignore all but the first choice and see if anyone gets a majority. But that’s what we have now, and clearly a majority isn’t guaranteed.

Another possibility, very possible is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), where, instantaneously, a mock election is conducted with all the first-place candidates, and if no-one receives a majority, the candidate receiving the least amount of votes is eliminated and anyone voting for him or her will instead vote for their next choice. This algorithm is continued until one candidate receives a pure majority.

The problem with IRV is that it doesn’t guarantee a Condorcet Winner. The reason is easy to see if you have a series of ballots where, in aggregate, a majority prefer A over B, a majority B over C, and a third, unique majority C over A. In the vaguest case, this could produce C as winner even though a majority prefer A over C.

Another alternative, one I prefer, is the Schulze method. It is Condorcet and will match IRV when IRV doesn’t contain, for instance cycles like above. However, Schulze is a rather complicated, geometric voting system. Were it up to tabulations by hand of hundreds of millions of RCV Ballots, this would be impossible. But with modern computers, it’s facile.

Whatever voting system we use, it’s better than the system we have now with throwing the election to the House of Representatives or using SuperDelegates to ensure majorities.

And whoever you vote for this coming Super Tuesday or beyond, vote wisely, be informed, and vote with a free hand because the decision is yours. Just make sure you go out and vote!