🚀 go-pugleaf

Don Williams (Don_Williams@earthspirit.org) wrote:
: In message ID <joogleD084tA.KJy@netcom.com> on 12/3/94, James Ogle wrote:

: JO>       As a candidate for both Governor of California in the
: JO> Green Party primary, losing there, then a candidate for Mayor
: JO> of Pacific Grove and losing there too,

: James, there's a message for you in there somewhere.

Don, I did win one election this year, I was elected a director of
Northern California Citizens for Proportional Representation.   So,
I'm batting .333 in elections this year.  :-)

Of course I must also point out that in the Green Party primary,
the California Green Party "Friends of Nobody" PAC spent $14,000.
while I spent less than $10.   Also, in the Pacific Grove Mayor's
race, Sandy Koffman spent $8000. while I spent less than $10.

Are you familiar with proportional representation?   This voting 
reform helps to relieve the financial pressures of campaigns.
I think that the Environmentalist Party will need this reform to
have a fair chance in winning elections.

: - "Speak, speak the truth" - Nirvana
:   Sent via Earth Spirit Online - The Environmental Network - Los Angeles, CA
:           for more information send e-mail to: info@earthspirit.org

--James

cut here
------------------------------------------------------------------------





              The Case for Proportional Representation
                  By James Ogle, after John Cleese
   
      I'm very sorry to bore you this morning, but this is a political
speech and you know how boring those can be.  This one is about (yawn)
proportional representation, so it will be especially boring.

      Proportional representation!  What's it all about?  Let's look
at the 1992 Santa Cruz city council elections.  On the chart below,
you can see the share of the votes cast;

                   | SCAN-51%
                   | 
                   |         | IND-39%
                   |         | 
                   |         |
                   |         |
                   |         |
                   |         |     ENV-10%
                   |         |        |
                   |         |        |
                   --------------------
                   share of votes cast

      The civic group called SCAN (Democrats) received 51% of the vote.
The independents (Republicans) received 39% of the vote.  And the Environ-
mentalist Coaltion (a group of four from four different parties including
the Env Party) received 10% of the vote.

      Now, let's look at the share of the seats they got;

                  | SCAN-100% of the seats
                  |
                  |
                  |
                  |
                  |
                  |
                  |
                  |    .     .
                  ------------
                share of seats won

      Oh?  SCAN got 100% of the seats!?  The independents and
the Environmentalist Coalition got no seats?









      Or, look at it this way;

       | SCAN-48,012          | SCAN-Won ALL seats
       |                      |
       |      | IND-35,966    |
       |      |               | 
       |      |               |
       |      |  ENV-8716     |
       |      |      |        |
       |      |      |        |      .      .
       ---------------        ---------------
         votes cast              seats won

      On the left, the number of votes cast.  On the right, the number of 
seats won.
      This is ludicrous! Or as a child would say, "That's not fair!" It took 
12,003 votes to elect each SCAN member, but with 44,682 votes, the 
independents and the Environmentalist Coalition did not win a single seat! 
This left a lot of people frustrated, unrepresented and wondering what to do 
next.

      Well, proportional representation, or PR, is about making
the representation proportional to the number of votes cast --
if you get twice as many votes, you get twice as many seats.

      Now, I suppose that you'd like to know how it works?  I will
now give you a twenty second explanation:

[Right now, many of the listeners are leaving the room for a Bud]

      Instead of placing an X by your choice, you get to rank several
choices in order of preference.  Your first choice, you put a one.
Second choice, a two.  Third choice, a three -- up to as many choices
(or as few) as you'd like, like this:

                         Perot
                         Dole
                      2  Jackson
                      1  Toler
                      4  Zhirinouski
                      3  Fulani 
                         LaRouche

      That's it!  The rest is up to the computer! *

      I'd like to welcome you all back from your beer!  I've just
completed a political dream for a mean clean voting machine!  OH!!
There'll be singing and dancing in the streets tonight!

      So, if Santa Cruz  had nonpartisan PR elections in 1992,
the results would have looked something like this;

        | SCAN-51%                  | SCAN-5 seats
        |                           |
        |      | IND-39%            |      | IND-3 seats
        |      |                    |      |
        |      |                    |      |
        |      |                    |      |
        |      |      | ENV-10%     |      |     | ENV-1 seat
        |      |      |             |      |     |
        ---------------             -------------
          votes cast                  seats won

      There!  Much fairer.  Not only more fair, but more constructive
too!  Since each candidate wants to win over the other candidates'
support for 2nd choice, there's more discussion, listening, debate,
respect and positive campaigns.  Newspapers sell better, too.

      So, if PR gives you fairer results and positive campaigns,
what are the objections?

--First objection) Some people say "PR is a weird and abnormal idea."
On the contrary, a vast majority of the world's democracies use PR
and most emerging democracies are using it too.  It is our pluralty
elections that are out of the norm.
      There is several forms of PR, from the extreme Israeli example,
in which Israel is like one large district with 120 members, to the
moderate 9-member districts in Scandinavian countries.   The US-style
winner-take-all, single-member district system is considered to be
an extremist example of democracy, when compared to the moderate forms
of PR such as those that exist in the Scandinavian countries. 
      In Italy's case of PR, government-financed elections led to 
corruption, so their elections were replaced by an innovative
new compensatory PR system in which 75% of the seats are elected in
single-member districts and 25% of the seats are allotted in a way
to compensate the national parties for the dispropotionalities of the
single-member district elections.

      Of the democratic countries that use PR, certain correlations
(with no causative connections) exist;

- All democratic countries that use PR, have a lower trade deficit
  than the US.
- All democratic countries that use PR, have a lower national debt
  than the US.
- All democratic countries that use PR, have a lower per capita
  energy consumption than the US.
- All democratic countries that have greater reserve assets than
  the US, use PR.
- All democratic countries that have a greater per capita GNP than
  the US, use PR.

      Within the past year, South Africa, New Zealand,
Russia and Mexico have adopted PR or semi-PR in their national
elected governments.
      In the US,  forms of PR such as preference voting (PrV), cumulative
voting (CV), and limited voting (LV), are used to elect the city councils of
Cambridge MA, Peoria IL, Alamogordo NM, as well as officials for
scores of New York City School Districts, five Texas school districts 
and supervisors in several counties in Alabama.
Most of the world's emerging democracies are adopting it as well.
      In the majority of the world's democracies in which PR is used,
there is a greater voter turn-out, and the election systems
are supported by all parties because PR gives "universal coverage".
And, many corporations also use a form of PR for their boards of
directors.

--Second objection)  Some people say "Why change the old system,
it will lead to instability?"  I disagree.  One of the primary
reasons for advocating PR is that the present system discourages
change and forces you to conform to the two-party system.  You
can only choose between right and left, liberal or conservative,
and when change does occur, it's so severe that it makes long-
range planning difficult.  In addition, the winner-take-all
(or first-past-the-post) US system gives the winning majority
a false mandate, and leaves the minority parties with no 
representation at all.  Perhaps we are too stable, and perhaps
moribund.

--Third objection)  Some say coalition governments are weak
and indecisive.  Oh?  Norway, Switzerland, Japan?  Poor wretched
and weak things!  Sweden, Austria, Portugal?  They make your
heart bleed!  Germany, Australia, Spain?  They're on the scrap
heap too!  If only they could get rid of their weak and indecisive
governments, they too could have a system of gridlock where parties
spend more time bickering than they do running the country.
California!  Thank the Lord!  Where government is effective,
the economy is strong and stable, voters feel good about represen-
tative democracy!  Opportunity and fairness for everyone!  NOT!!!

--Forth objection)  Some people say that PR is too complicated.
They say that Californians won't understand it.  Well, yes,
I'm afraid that if you cannot count up to five, you'll find it
a teeny bit complicated!

--Fifth objection)  Some ask, "What will happen to our local
representative?"  A perfectly good question!  In Santa Cruz
49% of you wasted your vote anyway, because that's the percent
of the vote that went for the independents and the Environmentalist
Coalition, who won no seats in the last election.
      But with PR, everyone will have representation, and
the highest vote recipients in each self-defined interest group
will be the winning candidates.  Very few wasted votes.
      And do you know how unrepresented women are in
all levels of government?  In the nationally elected US bodies
alone, less than 12% are women legislators.  But with PR,
there will be more women in government.  For example, in three
Scandinavian countries which use the Sainte-Lague PR system 
there are more than 26% women legislators in all three
countries' national legislative governments.  Today, 41% of Sweden's
national legislators are women because of PR.  Studies show that PR
is the most important positive factor influencing fair representation
for women.

      In the US Congress, there is only one independent Congressman
out of 435 Congressmen, even though more than 19% of Americans consider 
themselves to be an independent.  The 19% of the voters which
voted for independent presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992
realize that he did not get one single electoral vote!
At the very LEAST, we need proportional electoral votes.
Perhaps we should do away with the electoral college system altogether!

      Years after women were given the right to vote and before PR
was adopted there, Kate Sheppard, leader of New Zealand's suffrage
movement had written; "The crudity and the unfairness of the present
method of election ... our clumsy system of voting, still goes on
sending men to parliament for whom only a small number of their
constituents voted, leaving the majority quite unrepresented.  As a
representative system, it is sham, a delusion, a snare to the 
unthinking."

      In summary;

-- PR is used by a vast majority of the world's democracies and is
   supported by all parties.
-- PR is change, yes, but change for greater stability and a more 
   open government.
-- Coalition governments do better and have better economies with
   PR.
-- More diverse representation will be achieved for all parties,
   so you will more likely have a representative to talk to that you
   like.
-- PR solves the vote-split problem, brings more positive campaigns.
   It's one-person, one-vote -- THAT COUNTS!   Fair taxation with
   FAIR representation!!
-- PR is too complicated for Californians ... Ha .. ha .. ha.

      The greatest advantage is that it will reflect the will
of the people instantly.  It will give greater diversity in 
government.  As a melting pot, we Americans find strength in 
diversity.  Perhaps we can rediscover that strength?

      As Thomas Paine put it, "The right of voting for representation
is the primary right by which other rights are protected."   Without
PR, our rights are not being protected.

      If you find some truth to what I've written, please, join
the movement to bring fairer elections to our government.

      Thank you very much for your time.

                                   Very truly yours,
                                   James Ogle
                                   (408) 644-0448

To become a member in the national movement for PR,  
receive a bi-monthly subscription to _The Voting and Democracy
Review_ and to be a voting member in your state's affiliate CPR or
CV&D group, send $20. to:
 
The Center for Voting and Democracy (CV&D)
6905 5th Street, NW
Suite 200
Washington, DC 20012
(202) 828-3062

To become a voting member in Northern California Citizens for Propor-
tional Representation which includes full membership in the national
CV&D organization, send $20. to:

Northern California Citizens for Proportional Representation (CPR)
2069 Highland Drive
Concord, CA 94520
(510) 527-8025
jlindsay@netcom.com

*For details on how the computer program or the
vote count by hand for PR works, contact:
dfb@cruzio.com

To order an excellent book on PR:
_Real Choices/New Voices - The Case for Proportional Representation
in the United States_ by Douglas Amy, cost $29.50 plus $3. shipping. 
Columbia University Press 
136 South Broadway, Irvington, New York 10533-2599
phone (914) 591-9111, fax (914) 591-9201

-- 
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::VBCnet West::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::  James Ogle <joogle@netcom.com>  ::  Compuserve: 100114,1027  ::
::    California frame relay sales hot line -- (408) 642-0718    ::
:: e-mail vbc-west-hispeed@aiki.demon.co.uk for more information ::
::      e-mail vbc-west-isdn@aiki.demon.co.uk for ISDN info      ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::VBCnet West::::::::::::::::::::::::::::