[Marxism] Texas and California--demagoguery about one man one vote

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"The judges who heard the Texas case in January were particularly
interested in the one-person, one-vote argument. The issue received
only cursory attention in the previous challenges." --Sacramento Bee,
April 7, 2005

[It is too bad that the Left is not in a position to exploit this
argument. Schwarzenegger is trying to apply the Texas solution in order
to gain votes for the Republican party. Of course, the political
climate is not the same in California as in Texas; he is less likely to
succeed.

[However the only way to grant equal representation is by a
proportional system of voting, used throughout the world as the fairest
way to allow minority parties and ethnic groups at least a voice in
nominally democratic societies.

[The second article below summarizes how proportional voting works. The
third article describes Instant Run-off Voting as argued for by Peter
Camejo and others.]
__________________

After the 2000 census, Texas was awarded two additional congressional
seats, but Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a new map.

A federal court then ordered the state's Republican attorney general to
carve out the two new districts without harming incumbents.

In the 2002 elections, Republicans took control of the statehouse.

Democrats allege the seats were won with illegal political
contributions.

A Texas grand jury has issued indictments charging three former aides
of DeLay with raising money from corporations in violation of state
law.

The new Republican majority completely redrew the congressional
districts, allowing the GOP to pick up six seats in and solidify its
majority in Washington.

Texas state Rep. Phil King, co-author of the redistricting legislation,
said the new districts reflected the dominance of Republicans in Texas.

The party holds all 27 statewide offices and both U.S. Senate seats.
. . .

"Nor have we torn up communities of interest the way they did,"
Barrientos said. "That's what's different about this."

In the pending court case, the plaintiffs allege the redistricting
illegally maximized GOP voting and diluted the clout of minorities in
violation of federal law.

"The game that was played was one of stacking and packing minorities
into as many districts as possible," said state Sen. Royce West, a
Dallas Democrat.

Last year, the three-judge panel in Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court and
the U.S. Justice Department rejected these arguments.

But in October, the Supreme Court ordered the Texas panel to reconsider
the case in light of a ruling by the court involving a Pennsylvania
redistricting case.

In that case, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge by Democrats to
the congressional redistricting. But Justice Anthony Kennedy, who cast
the deciding vote, said that if partisan gerrymandering was
sufficiently "invidious," it could violate the Constitution.

The judges who heard the Texas case in January were particularly
interested in the one-person, one-vote argument. The issue received
only cursory attention in the previous challenges.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?N151227DA

____________

HOW PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION ELECTIONS WORK
Douglas J. Amy

We in the United States are very used to our single-member district,
winner-take-all style of elections. We've all grown up with a system
where we elect members of our legislatures one at a time in small
districts, with the winner being the candidate with the most votes.
This system seems so "natural" that proportional representation (PR)
elections may at first appear a bit strange to us. Adding to the
potential confusion is the fact that there are several different kinds
of PR systems in use around the world. But in reality, the principles
underlying proportional representation systems are very straightforward
and all of the systems are easy to use.

The basic principles underlying proportional representation elections
are that all voters deserve representation and that all political
groups in society deserve to be represented in our legislatures in
proportion to their strength in the electorate. In other words,
everyone should have the right to fair representation.

In order to achieve this fair representation, all PR systems have
certain basic characteristics -- characteristics that set them apart
from our current election system. First, they all use multi-member
districts. Instead of electing one person in each district, as we do
here in the U.S., several people are elected. These multi-member
districts may be relatively small, with only three or four members, or
they may be larger, with ten or more members. (The figures below
illustrate districting maps for a hypothetical 50-person state senate.
Figure 1 shows 50 single-seat districts, as is common with
plurality-majority systems. Figure 2 depicts 10 five-seat PR districts,
and Figure 3 shows 5 ten-seat PR districts.)

The second characteristic of all PR systems is that they divide up the
seats in these multi-member districts according to the proportion of
votes received by the various parties or groups running candidates.
Thus if the candidates of a party win 40% of the vote in a 10 member
district, they receive four of the ten seats -- or 40% of the seats. If
another party wins 20% of the vote, they get two seats, and so on.

That, in a nutshell, is how proportional representation works. But
while all PR systems have the same goals of ensuring that all voters
receive some representation and that all groups are represented fairly,
various systems do have different ways of achieving these goals. So it
is helpful to see how different kinds of PR systems work in practice.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?H231627DA
________________

Instant Run-off Voting

Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) is an approach that needs to be tested at
the local level and, if successful, applied to state and national
elections as well. The US electoral system is in crisis; less than half
the potential voters vote - the lowest in the western, industrialized
world. The winner-take-all election system often pushes voters to vote
their fears and not their beliefs. We have not had a President win an
election with majority support of voters since the first President
Bush. It undermines the perceived voter mandate of the government to
have a president with less than majority support of actual votes. IRV
may help fix both of these problems and allow more voters to vote for
the candidates they support. Nobody knows how IRV will actually work in
the United States - no matter what its fervent supporters may hope for.
It has to be tested and also clarified within the context of local,
state and national campaign funding laws.
. . .
Instant Run-off Voting allows voters to rank their vote -- voters
indicate a one for a first choice, two for a second choice, and three
for a third choice. This simple but ground-breaking advance in
elections ensures that in an election with more than two candidates,
your vote can count for your second choice if your first choice can't
win. Here's how it works: if a candidate receives a majority of first
choices, that candidate wins. If not, the candidate with the fewest
votes is eliminated, and a second round of counting occurs wherein the
eliminated candidate's votes go to each voter's next choice. Rounds of
counting continue until there is a majority winner.

http://www.votenader.org/issues/index.php?cid=40

from Brian Shannon


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