blahface wrote:It seems that the argument is that the only way you could get a non-racist to win was to get the old Southern Democratic party to fraction off and split the vote. The runoff would provide a more representative candidate of the population – hence a more racist candidate.
There's obviously a big problem when the majority of your population is racist and willing to vote that way. No voting system that is considered good by standard measures is going to produce good results. Ironically, only really bad voting systems can sometimes give such minorities good results. Even STV, which at least tries to produce a proportionate set of victors, will just give the minorities a few reps who get outvoted in the legislature. (Which I guess is better than nothing.)
To the degree that that is the reason that runoffs hurt minorities, I don't really know how to fix the problem. And it is something that concerns be in this state. While Oregon does not have any of the nasty slave history that was present in the south and does have a pretty good contingent of liberal social justice types, it is also very white and had a significant influx of white flight in the past. Dig down, and you still can see that history from not that long ago. (For example, a few blocks from where I live is a restaurant building that up to 1949 looked like
this—
Ghost World did not make that up. Fortunately, the current ownership has nothing to do with that history.)
It should be noted, however, that in the last runoff with Cochran vs McDaniel, Cochran won because black democratic voters decided to show up in the runoff for him. Fortunately they allowed other parties and independents to cross over so you didn't necessarily have one side completely shut out of the election.
Allowing that kind of crossover was pretty rare in these southern states, I believe. I doubt that sort of thing happened much back then.
There may, however, be another reason why the Unified Primary may be bad for minorities and poor people. Those people are less likely to vote in general and are especially less likely to vote in the primary. This may result in the two candidates running off in the general being a bit more right wing than the population as a whole (although I'd say that is the case now). However, they probably wouldn't be as far to the right as the Republican candidate normally would.
Except that at the time it was the left wing Democrats who were the racists. I'm not sure how that affects the analysis when the right wing was the better choice for minorities.
It could be argued though that the Unified Primary would make it much more meaningful and important to vote in the primary so you'd have a higher show up of minorities and poor people.
Hopefully. Although the risk is that if people keep up the current habits of low primary turnout that could make things even worse. Which brings up a different objection I have to runoff elections: They add to the risk of voter fatigue and poor turnouts. If more people turn out to the primaries, that may mean less people turning out to the runoff—even if that is the general election.
Also, Oregon allows vote by mail, so it isn't that much of a hassle to vote.
NB: Actually, Oregon
only does vote by mail, now. You get your ballot in the mail, fill it in, and mail it back or drop it off at a voting place. There are no voting booths anymore.
Darth Holbytlan wrote:
Seems pretty tenuous to me. They are basically saying that because they clarified their intent in an argument to say that the spoiler effect is a problem, and also that approval voting is a way to do that, that the legislature and/or the courts will acknowledge this and use an approval process. At best, it sounds like they realized that it would have been a good idea to specify approval in the bill after the fact.
It is actually a bit more tenuous than that because the fine print of the initiative doesn't even really imply that at all.
Yes, that's my point, in fact. A little information about Oregon elections: Oregon puts out a voter's guide for every election containing a list of all of the issues and candidates running, including complete text of all state initiatives, half page candidate-submitted statements, and numerous arguments for and against each initiative. These are mailed out to all Oregon voters a few weeks before the election. (We just got ours last week.)
In the site you linked, the submitters pointed out judicial precedent that such arguments can be used to clarify the meaning of initiatives to some degree. So they point to their own submitted argument in favor which explicitly claims vote splitting as one of those issues for which the "equal ability" quote applies. Then they claim (not in the submitted argument, but just on the web site) that the easiest way to do that is with approval voting. It's a really big stretch.
That being said, there is no reason the legislature can't implement it with approval voting if they really wanted to. That would make it more “equal” in all respects and not just the way specified by the initiative. I doubt they'll do that though. Why would the implement it in a way that makes it harder for them to win reelection?
No kidding.
