One of the most fundamental elements of a democracy is voting; elections are the cornerstone of a democratic government. If elections are disproportional or oppressive, that fundamental element of democracy is in jeopardy. In 2016 in the United States, more people voted for Democratic candidates in the House election, but Republicans got to hold their majority. How is this possible? Well, there are two factors involved: electoral rules, which include gerrymandering, that allow the party in power to stay in power, and the electoral system under which the election is held in the first place. Our goal here at LAG is to lobby for statewide electoral reform in California, and later national electoral reform. It is paramount to our democracy that we have a fair, proportional electoral system.
While here in California we do not have a problem with electoral rules, there certainly are some issues we can address in our electoral system. As most other states, we incorporate a First Past the Post system, which means that the candidate with the most votes wins the election. So imagine this scenario, where one conservative candidate gets 40 percent of the vote, a moderate democrat gets 30 percent and a progressive gets 30 percent. In this case, 60 percent of the electorate are voting for liberal candidates, but a conservative gets elected, eve though 60% of people voted against him.
So what’s the solution? A short-term solution might be converting to an alternate-vote or AV system. In an AV system, each voted gets to rank the candidates in order of preference, and when their first choice is terminated, their vote goes to their second choice, and so on. This prevents incidents like the one described earlier.
Of curse, this is not a long-term solution. I is not as proportional as many other systems, and at the end of the day, the outcome is still not kind to small parties. But it is a step in the right direction, one which, if followed by more such steps, can lead to a much more fair and proportional system, such as STV (which was described in the “Electoral Reform – An Overview). But until then, this is what must happen, and we here at LAG will do all in our power to make it happen.
Logikos Advocacy Group 