VoteFair commentary about current elections and voting-related events

What's up with American Idol unfairness?

For a detailed analysis of American Idol results, go to the American Idol page.

What's being overlooked in Iraq?

The majority voting method used in the Iraqi parliament allows the Shiite majority to easily outvote the Sunni and Kurdish minorities (when parliament chooses what laws to pass).  The same majority voting method works in European parliaments only because European countries are already divided according to major cultural differences (especially language and religion).  To better understand the issue, imagine France, Germany, and Spain joining together to form a single nation governed by a single parliament.  Obviously that wouldn't work (because any laws about language or religion would oppress large minorities).  In a similar way majority voting in the Iraqi parliament cannot work.

What kind of voting method should be used?  Unfortunately the appropriate voting method ("priority voting") is in its infancy.  A temporary alternative could be designed and implemented, but this is unlikely because political decision-makers have blind faith in the Proportional Representation (PR) parliamentary system that appears to work in European and other nations—whose citizens are homogeneous (such as Germany) or culturally tolerant (such as Canada).

In the meantime Iraqi Shiites have no incentive to cooperate with Sunnis and Kurds.  Keep in mind that outside enforcement was needed to select non-Shiite cabinet ministers, and the need for outside enforcement reveals that the Iraqi parliament is using a poorly designed voting method.

What's going on in the 2008 Presidential elections?

Lots of the money going to Barack Obama (a Democrat) is coming from people who prefer a Republican President—because they know that many Southern Democrats will vote for a Republican rather than Obama.  If Obama wins the Democratic primary, most of his financial support will disappear.  That will prove that most of the money supporting him was coming from people wanting to defeat Hillary Clinton.  If Obama is able to leverage that loss of financial support as evidence that he is a Washington D.C. outsider, he could make the contest with McCain competitive.  Otherwise, as predicted here months ago, the next U.S. President will be a Republican (McCain).

If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic primary, McCain will win easily.  Unlike her husband, Hillary alienates people with lots of money.  In addition, she can't portray herself as a Washington D.C. outsider, and her desire to require everyone to buy health insurance will alienate more people than she now realizes.  (And neither political party has woken up to what's actually going on in Iraq, and how it can be resolved.)

Once again the general-election race will be close because most voters won't like either choice.

If you want to reform Presidential elections, start by insisting that the small and local groups you participate in make use of order-of-preference ballots (or "1-2-3 ballots") whenever there are more than two choices.  Also make sure the pairwise numbers (how many voters prefer choice A over choice B, and how many prefer choice B over choice A) are made available for analysis.  That relatively simple grassroots change will quickly propogate upward, eventually reaching Presidential elections.

Would the Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) voting method that was considered for Ontario, Canada have been an improvement?

No.  In fact the change would have increased the influence of money in Ontario politics.  (This is why money was available to promote the change.)  Why would the change have increased the influence of campaign contributions?

• The recommended method would have continued the use of single-mark ballots instead of order-of-preference (or "ordinal") ballots that also collect secondary preferences.  Single-mark ballots (which are linked to "first-past-the-post" voting) fail to reveal which choice is most popular in situations where none of the candidates earns a majority of (single-mark) votes.
• Using "closed" party lists for Proportional Representation (PR) allows the party leaders—who are very influenced by campaign contributions—to choose which of their party's candidates are elected to the PR seats.
• As explained above regarding the Iraqi parliament, Proportional Representation does not necessarily promote fairness, especially for minorities (including women and indigenous peoples).

If instead, order-of-preference ballots had been chosen for the riding-based seats, and if the "open" party-list form of MMP (which allows voters to rank the candidates in their party's list) had been chosen, the change would have been an improvement.  At a later time further improvements (in terms of how ballot preferences are interpreted) would have been possible.  Instead, due to money-backed influence during the Citizens Assembly's design process, the proposed change would have been a step backward.

Was the 2004 Presidential election result fair?

No, but the unfairness occurred in the 2004 Democratic primary and the 2000 Republican primary.  That's where the use of single-mark ballots and plurality voting allowed the biggest campaign contributors to heavily influence the outcome of both primary elections.  The November election between Bush and Kerry was simply a runoff between two big-money-approved politicians.  Of course this primary-election unfairness goes unnoticed while concern is focused on the use of electronic voting machines (which may have involved some additional, but less significant, unfairness) and the unfair Electoral College system, which brings us to the next commentary.

Should we abandon the Electoral College?

Yes and no.  Yes, we should abandon the practice (used in most states) of assigning all of a state's electoral votes to a single candidate.  However we should not abandon the use of electoral votes because they protect voters in one state from being outvoted by voters in another state that has: easier voter-registration rules, better weather on election day, and easier voting methods (such as in Oregon where everyone votes by mail).  The simple solution is to assign electoral votes proportionally, which means that if 60% of the voters in a state prefer Bush and 40% prefer Kerry and the state has 10 electoral votes, the state would give 6 electoral votes to Bush and 4 electoral votes to Kerry.  Simple.  Well, not simple in the 2000 Presidential election because neither Bush nor Gore would have received a majority of electoral votes, but if the people who voted for Nader had been able to indicate a second choice, the outcome would have been clear, and fair.