Institutions, Australia and the Democrats in ’08

Last weekend Labor trounced John Howard’s conservative government Down Under, and the result continues to reverberate. Even Howard lost his own district (they’re called divisions in Oz). As E.J. Dionne notes in the Washington Post:

For the first time in the country’s history, wrote Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald, a government was tossed out in unambiguously strong economic times.

Americans who care about Australia’s election are divining lessons for the Democratic Party, namely, how to smash the GOP in 2008.

Lesson one: be a Democrat. For Dionne, Labor’s Kevin Rudd reached out to unions and the middle class, constituencies that felt the squeeze of 11 years’ conservative rule. Iraq no doubt played a role. Howard had been in lock-step with Bush there.

Lesson two: galvanize Progressives. Rudd supplemented his old-left flank with a “generational” set of new-left positions: Internet access, education and, above all, the environment.

Writing for Brookings, Justin Vaisse sees both lessons as given features of a completing cycle. Worse yet for conservatives, there was long-term electoral suicide in Bush’s failure to ram immigrant “amnesty” through Congress last summer. “Pour le Parti républicain, les défis s’accumulent.”

Lesson three: take election reform seriously. Rudd campaigned on environmentalism. Greens like environmentalism. Greens accounted for 8% of the vote. Because Australia uses instant runoff voting (IRV) to elect the House, those votes transferred to Rudd’s Labor party.

Without the environment, Green Party and IRV, the Man of Steel still would be running Australia. In her blog at the Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel spells it out:

In Australia, IRV was introduced in 1918, and has historically benefited parties on both the left and the right. Last Saturday, it helped the Australian Labor Party – but not before the Australian Greens were able to run a strong campaign and collect 8 percent of the parliamentary vote, and perhaps push debate further on issues like climate change and the Iraq War than Labor wanted to go. In the initial tabulation Labor won only 44 percent of the vote, but with IRV most of the Green votes ended up being awarded to Labor. The party had worked hard to be the second choice of Green voters, and designated former Midnight Oil lead Singer Peter Garrett – “a-rock-star-environmentalist-turned-politico” – as their likely environment minister. In the end, Labor ended up with 54 percent of the two-party tally.

I would add two other institutional factors to the mix: compulsory voting and a rational election day. Australians vote on the weekend, and they have to pay fines to avoid the polls. Turnout is regularly over 90%.

IRV has worked to Australian conservatives’ advantage in the past. Though my sympathies are evident, the point is not to rig results à la Putin. If a partisan cycle is completing, it would be nice to see our leaders expand democracy as we enter the next. Lonely issue dimensions cry out for it.

Modeling tomorrow’s Australian federal election

This fascinating election is just around the corner. Not only have psephologists modeled how the aggregate “two-party” vote plays out in individual districts; the media actually pay attention! (If your average US newspaper paid attention to district-level margins and two-party votes, people would take presidential and congressional elections for the uninteresting, predictable “contests” they really are.)

What’s more, Australia uses IRV (alternative vote, etc.) to elect the House of Representatives. So the best models have to take into account which of the two major coalitions/parties will receive preference transfers from small party candidates. Malcolm Mackerras – I met him in 2006 while working in electoral reform – developed just such a model, which is the basis for this calculator at the ABC. His “electoral pendulum” doesn’t work so well in the US, where the big challenge is controlling for incumbency, not vote transfers.

Fruits and Votes, who has numerous Australian readers, has been following the election. He reports a tightening projected margin, but Labor is projected to win the “two-party preferred” vote 52-48 over PM Howard’s Coalition.

After he was written off as a ‘has-been’, John Howard’s last week of campaigning will give the Coalition hope of pulling off a miraculous victory tomorrow.

Labor is still in front and favourite to win the 2007 election but the latest Newspoll survey is showing a late surge to the Howard Government, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia.

Newspoll’s two-party preferred figure, based on preference flows at the 2004 election, has the Labor Party in front by 52 per cent to the Coalition’s 48 per cent.

The sample size was larger than average – 2614.

Last week the two-party preferred figure was 54 for Labor and 46 per cent for the Coalition.

Yes, there’s been some tightening of the margin, and I’m a fairly new observer of Australian electoral politics, but this looks like a Labor win. By American standards, 52-48 is a big spread. In fact, that’s how well the Republicans did in 2002, just 14 months after 9/11. (That says something about what the Democrats’ 54% in 2006 meant – and what any GOP nominee faces in 2008.)

Vote like an Australian

Australia is having federal elections in three days. STV for the Senate and IRV (AV) for the House of Representatives.

Here is an interactive demo of the ballot paper. Unlike the earlier two, it doesn’t demonstrate seat allocation. To see one way that’s done, look at the BC-STV demo.

TDP redux: US reform, Russian backslide and some neat elections

Sorry we’ve been so quiet. The end of semester looms, and it’s been a week for catching up, especially after last weekend’s Claim Democracy conference. I attended some sessions, reconnected with old colleagues, met a reader and had dinner with one of Election Day’s IRV victors.

Russia meanwhile has refused visas to OSCE election monitors. Not that being able to announce fraud would matter much. The electoral system – from party registration to seat allocation – is basically rigged.

Denmark last week held an election combining list PR with SMD-style nominations.

Slightly dated but no less important, a report out of York University asks why Ontarians rejected MMP last month. The so-called “bads” (evil list tier, bigger legislature) outweighed the goods (especially the citizens’ assembly process). A model predicts MMP would have won with 63% (well above the mandated threshold) had information been more full.

Big Election Day for STV and IRV

While some jurisdictions had off-year elections yesterday, four others voted on instant runoff voting (aka IRV, alternative vote, single transferable vote applied to a single-winner election). Three others used IRV for public elections, and one other used STV (aka choice voting), crème de la crème of candidate-based, multi-winner methods.

On implementation/retention

In Pierce County, WA, IRV survived a veritable repeal attempt 66% to 34% just one year after its passage. Charter Amendment 4 would have restored the closed primary and delayed implementation until 2010.

Sarasota, FL voters passed IRV 78% to 12%. Implementation is pending compatible equipment at the county level.

In Aspen, CO, 77% approved IRV for mayor and a “multi-seat” variant for two at-large council seats. This was an advisory referendum.

In Clallam County, WA, IRV failed 55% to 45%.

Overall good news for the reform movement, which passed IRV and/or STV in four jurisdictions last November.

In public elections

Hendersonville, NC used “multi-seat” IRV for the first time.

Takoma Park, MD used IRV city-wide for the first time. Some voters had a first exposure last January in a special vacancy election. Takoma Park passed IRV in November 2005.

Once again, San Francisco voters ranked up to three choices on optically scanned IRV ballots. It passed there in 2002.

Finally, Cambridge, MA used STV to elect nine city council members and six school committee members. The quota: Droop. The surplus transfer: Cincinnati method. The count: electronic. (Yes, electronic. And surplus transfer might be fractional if not for politics over voting equipment and the city’s grandfathering post-statewide repeal.)

Cambridge has used STV since 1941. It’s the lone survivor of 24 (some say 22 or 23) Progressive Era municipal implementations, the rest of which faced racially and politically charged repeals through the 1950s. (However the NYC school board lasted until 2002). Cambridge itself survived several repeal attempts.

Providence, RI mulls hybrid PR system

The Providence Journal reports City Council interest in adding some number of at-large seats to its ranks. Currently 15 councilpersons are elected in single-member districts.

Councilman Seth Yurdin, representing Fox Point, has put forth a plan that would dramatically increase the size of the council, to 21 members. It would keep the existing 15 wards, and add 6 at-large seats. The citywide seats would be elected by a method of proportional representation known as the single transferable vote to ensure that council members come from across the city, and not solely from economically powerful areas.

A competing proposal calls for adding just two at-large seats elected under the bloc vote.

Dubbing the PR plan “fifteen and six,” a good letter to the editor by a RI state legislator gets into some of the considerations: citywide accountability, campaign costs, women and minority representation and council size more generally.

Council domination – by a neighborhood, class or some organized interest – usually comes up when people start talking about moving away from wards toward at-large elections. STV is a good way to address those concerns.

Most (but not all) local-level electoral system reform talk happens on the west coast, so it’s fun to see the same in a ‘classic’ northeastern city like Providence.

Breaking: Gov. Arnold vetoes another election reform bill

The People’s Governor tonight reaffirmed his reform credentials by vetoing AB 1294 (PDF), which would have let general law municipalities use proportional representation and instant runoff (also known as STV).
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Australia’s Howard sets election date

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has set November 24 as the date for the next federal election. (Thanks to Electoral Panorama for the tip-off). STV will be used in 3-seat 6-seat districts for Senate elections, and its single-winner variant, IRV or the Alternative Vote, will be used to elect the Commons.

The Man of Steel, as he came to be known in some circles, was an eager participant in the 2003 Iraq venture. If the reactions to the ABC story on the announcement are remotely representative, he’ll probably pay the price in votes.
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The People’s Governor & election reform

CA Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last night vetoed two bills on write-in votes and ballot initiatives. One would have provided for counting of write-ins when voters filled out the name field but did not check the write-in box. Another would have restricted who may collect signatures for a ballot measure.

Still on Schwarzenegger’s desk is the AB 1294 local options bill. It would legalize the single transferable vote for use in general law municipalities.

The word is that he also vetoed two others: one letting new citizens register on election day if their naturalization wasn’t complete by the registration deadline, another letting absentee voters drop ballots off at any polling station.

If you’re into the dynamic underbelly of American election administration, Richard Winger’s Ballot Access News would be a great addition to your newsreader.

Bullet voting in Beantown

The Boston Globe has an interesting article on the role of bullet voting in Boston local elections.

Four of 13 city council seats are elected at-large. Seeking bullet votes to at-large seats is a semi-effective way for political minorities to marshal citywide support and win seats. As a strategy, bullet voting involves using less than one’s full voting strength. In other words, the voter ‘withholds’ votes from all but the most preferred candidate. Bullet votes seem to be the norm in Boston:

In the last election for Boston City Council, each ballot contained an average of 2.9 votes for at-large seats.

Parts of the article suggest that some view the practice in a negative light. At any rate, there’s a hint of how STV could preserve the benefits of and eliminate many of the problems with bullet voting.

The danger is when voters don’t use one of their votes for a popular candidate they support, gambling that that candidate will win anyway. If enough voters make that same calculation, the candidate could lose.

(In Cambridge’s more complex electoral system, however, mathematicians say there is no value to bullet voting. Voters rank the order of their votes, so their first-choice candidate automatically receives a boost over others they may choose but give lower ranks.)

From 1938 to 1967, Massachusetts cities could adopt proportional representation for local elections. Plan E was one of six state-sanctioned charter formats, this one mandating council-manager government with PR elections and no party primaries.

For the Globe, effective bullet voting has high search and info costs:

But deciding whether you should cast a single ballot for your first-choice candidate, mathematicians say, you have to make strategic judgments about the race and how others will vote. And that requires a sophisticated view of the election.

With PR-STV and Plan E, everybody basically bullet votes. Surplus transfers and eliminations increase one’s likelihood of casting an effective vote absent tortuous calculation about whom to rank first.