What’s Wrong with Our City Elections Now?

By John Gear

This year, since we don't have the choice to use IRV if we want, we will have three primaries in September, to eliminate 5 of the 13 candidates for City Council member. Then in November we'll have the general election to get rid of four of the remaining candidates, leaving us with four winners. What's wrong with that? How about the following:

1) Paying for two elections to do the job of one

With two elections – a primary and a general – running for office is twice as expensive as with one election. (It's really only twice as expensive for the taxpayer. It's lots more than twice as expensive for the candidates, since more have to spend money to promote their candidacies in a primary.)

2) Increasing the role of money – and reducing the power of average citizens

And as things become more expensive, the power of money goes up. While it's good that candidates have to raise some money to demonstrate public support, the more money is needed, the less likely it is that the money can be raised in small donations – and the more likely it is that the money will be provided by a few, wealthy donors, most of whom are intensely interested in who gets elected.

3) Increasing the advantages incumbents already enjoy

Incumbents also like two-round systems (primary and general) because, thanks to their name recognition and fundraising advantages, they rarely, if ever, lose in the primary – but all of their opponents except for one will, no matter what! In fact, because of "Vote Splitting," incumbents often get a huge benefit from the primary -- the defeat of the candidate who would have been most difficult for the incumbent to beat!

"Vote Splitting" is what happens when Incumbent A faces challengers B and C (… and D, …). Even if a majority opposes Incumbent A, it often happens that the stronger challenger loses – let's say it's Challenger B in this case – in the three-way race. Instead of facing strong Challenger B in the general election, the incumbent enjoys facing the weaker candidate, Challenger C. The Anti-A vote was "split" and the weaker candidate emerged – not at all uncommon.

In theory, this shouldn't affect the result because, if a majority opposes Incumbent A in the primary, a majority will also be opposed in the general election, and Challenger C will win. Except that, that is often not the way it works. We know that the voters who vote in primaries are far different from the ones who vote in the general election, so it's not surprising that, when the general election rolls around, even a weak incumbent has a huge advantage, as the people who are not as involved as primary voters weigh in. The challengers who survive primaries are often not the strongest candidates in the general election (for a number of factors, including money and name recognition, and also the hurt feelings of the defeated challenger's supporters.)

4) Increased negativity in campaigning

Of course, Challengers B and C can't just campaign against Incumbent A in the primary. Each one also must tell voters why they are the better than the other one -- and it's often a pretty easy slide from there to negative campaigning between challengers, as they both jockey to be the challenger in the general election.

But this negativity factor applies WHENEVER voters don't have the chance to rank their choices. If they must "vote for one only" (which is how we vote in our two-round system), then the candidates have to fight (as hard as they think they can get away with) to BE that one choice – and there's no second place for "nice guys."

And the vote splitting problems mentioned above create an even worse one: the lesser of evils dilemma. This is where voters who really prefer Challenger C or Challenger D decide to vote for Challenger B because they think Challenger B is the "lesser of two evils" compared to Incumbent A and they are concerned that their sincere vote for their true favorite might split the vote against the incumbent and wind up advancing a challenger less likely to win in November. This is why support for third-party candidates collapses right around election day: voters are so averse to helping elect the candidate they like least that they are usually willing to vote for someone other than their real preference if that's what it takes to avoid it. Although our elections are nonpartisan, the dynamic is the same: the primary voter must be concerned with not only his or her choice, but how his or vote could backfire and help the wrong candidate. This is another reason for the negative aspect of our political campaigns; with a "vote for one only" ballot, there is often a negative consequence to voting for the "wrong" candidate, no matter how much you prefer that candidate.

5) Loss of candidates before they've had a chance to state their case – again increasing the incumbent's advantage and the role of money in elections.

With a two-round system such as we use in Vancouver, we get rid of candidates so early that most voters simply aren't paying attention. The ballots in this primary will be mailed in late August, with an "election day" of September 14th – well before most people in Vancouver have tuned in or are paying attention to politics. The better financed candidates and the better-known (including the incumbent) ones always have a big advantage over other challengers, who need more time to reach the voters and raise issues.

Oddly, the newspaper and television press rarely devote much effort to covering primaries ­ even though it's when most of the decision is made about who will be on the city council next January. For example, in this year's race, we will lose 5 out of 13 candidates in September, and only 4 in November. But the November election, because it is "for the seat" gets far more press coverage and popular attention. So, no matter how much voters might have liked a candidate's message, it doesn't matter when they were eliminated in September.

6) Less attention to issues, more to personality

Sometimes though, rather than sharply polarized candidates who spend the election season attacking each other, you can get the reverse – which, while it is more pleasant, is also not very informative in terms of helping citizens make a choice.

With a "vote for one only" ballot such as Vancouver uses, candidates don't run FOR the office as much as they run AGAINST each other. Once the primary culls the field down to two candidates, those two candidates must appeal to a majority of the voters in the general election. What happens then is that candidates can become allergic to taking "unnecessary risks" – like taking strong positions that might displease some voters. Even though some other voters might be pleased, candidates have long-since learned that angry voters seem to have longer memories and more friends than do happy ones.

7) Reduced turnout

Experience worldwide shows that the most important factor in improving voter turnout is the number of candidates considered to have a realistic chance of winning the election. Essentially, the rule is, more candidates there are, the greater voter interest there will be. Here in the U.S., we need only look at the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. In 1992, with a strong third party candidate making a serious run for the presidency, voter turnout increased for the first time in 50 years. But in 1996, when the third party challenge was not considered a serious one, turnout again declined -- this time to a record low of under 50 percent.

The Minnesota experience is also instructive. In 1998, Jesse Ventura won the governorship in a stunning surprise victory -- and Minnesota had a nearly 10% INCREASE in voter turnout. (Part of the explanation for this lies in Minnesota's same-day registration laws, which make it possible for newly-motivated voters to participate. However, three other states also have same-day registration, but none of them experienced an increase in voter turnout.)

These are just a few of the many examples that show that the best tonic for a weak democracy is more democracy. Citizens want choices at the ballot box as well as at the supermarket.

8) Exaggerated importance of primary voters

This fall the county auditor promoted using all-mail balloting for the primary election, principally because the turnout in primaries is so low. It was not considered worth the cost of staffing polling places, given how few people bother to use them. Of course this says again that it would make more sense to choose our officials in the general election, but it also points out how distorting primary elections are. The people who vote in primary elections are not the same -- politically, socially, or demographically -- as the people who vote in the general election.

Since primary voters are not the same as the general populace, it is reasonable to ask why their choices are given so much more weight than everyone else's. Some will say that their failure to vote in primaries is reason enough to justify giving some voters less power than others. But this doesn't answer the question, it just blames people who don't vote in primaries. What we should be asking is why, when we can make the primary unnecessary, we cling to it.

Worse, this exaggerated power is of a negative nature only. Primary voters can end candidacies but cannot elect anyone. It is not surprising that candidates respond with negative campaigns to a system that essentially never lets voters reward positive, issue-based campaigns. Our "vote for one only" ballot doesn't let us say the order in which we prefer the candidates... which means that, except for the one candidate we vote for, all the rest are the same.

9) Lack of information available to primary voters

Despite their exaggerated importance, primary election voters tend to have much less access to information than do voters in the general election. So, even though they have to choose among more candidates, they have less ability to do so an informed way, as the press does not provide sufficient opportunity to candidates to make their views known.

So again, citizens are robbed of the full benefit of the candidates' campaigns. Many candidates run for office not just to advance themselves, but also to advance their views into bring issues of importance to the attention of the public. But instead of enjoying the benefits of many candidates and their ideas, citizens find themselves in the position of eliminating candidates before they even have much chance to know what those ideas are. This is maddening because it is so unnecessary. By allowing all candidates to reach the general election, we would have many more candidates working many more weeks to involve citizens in the process of choosing the people who run their government, not to mention giving all voters much better opportunity to weigh and compare the various hopefuls.

10) Wasted votes

Given how much power primary voters have, it is odd that we throw away so many of the votes. Today, voting is one of the few activities in the world where you're not allowed to express your second choice. It's like going to a buffet, paying to get in, and then finding out whether or not your favorite food is available -- after being told that, if it's not, you're out of luck. With four candidates in a primary, nearly half the votes can be wasted, which is to say that they do not helped elect anyone to office. With five or more candidates, more than half the votes can be wasted, as the two top finishers can advance with only a few percent of the vote. To rectify this, we use a runoff election, which creates an artificial majority rather than a real one. It's artificial because it is created by restricting the voters' choices to two candidates rather than allowing the voters to choose among all the candidates and finding the one that has majority support.

All of these factors (and more) produce a bizarre outcome. Instead of many candidates being a sign of a robust, healthy democracy, our "vote for one only" ballot turns multiple candidacies into a negative, as even a majority of voters can find that their votes are discarded and their views ignored. Not only can your vote be wasted but, as we have seen above, it can actually help elect candidates you strongly oppose. No wonder citizens sit on their hands during primary elections. They have a hard time getting information, risk having their votes wasted or, even worse, turned against them and used to help elect someone they really oppose.

The bottom line is that, this year, we will hold ­ and pay for -- a primary simply to eliminate 55% (5 out of 9) of the candidates who will eventually be eliminated, and then we will hold a separate election to eliminate the remaining 45%. We could do it all in one election, without the wasted votes, at a lower cost, and in a way that is more fair to both the candidates and the voters.