There are certain thoughts that are de rigueur in every State of the Union Address. Honor is paid to our men and women in uniform. American values, particularly those of the middle class and of entrepreneurs are praised. Our founding fathers, and sometimes our mothers as well, are recognized for their outstanding ideas and hard work.

On February 12, President Barack Obama will deliver his fifth State of the Union Address. He will have more political capital to spend than will remain in any of his final three. How should he allocate this precious capital?

Current conversation focuses on four areas. While he is certainly free to pass on any of the topics listed below, chances are that he will directly or indirectly address each.

1. Gun control. The reason why this will be included is the answer to the simple question: “if not now, then when?” The scope of the proposals will likely be modest, defined in large part by Vice-President Joe Biden who has spent the past several weeks soliciting ideas from and negotiating with various interest groups involved in gun-related issues.
2. Election reform. Once again, the reason is that the timing couldn’t be better. The images of Americans standing in lines to vote for over seven hours are still indelibly imprinted in our minds. The arbitrary and capricious regulations that many Republicans, particularly in Ohio and Florida, imposed upon the least enfranchised of our voters offended most Americans, including a majority of the GOP. The federal government has always been the true enforcer of democratic values. The federal government can and must act on those rare occasions when the American people actually feel that their civil liberties are at risk. Now is such a time.
3. Making education affordable. In recent years most education reform has focused on establishing so-called achievement standards and implementing a system of measuring students and teachers against these standards. The finances of education have become increasingly important to President Obama; it may be one of those rare issues where a politician develops a refined sense of the “mood of the country” while on the campaign trail. The costs of college tuition and associated expenses have continued to rise while Republicans have tried to cut funding for Pell Grants. In a move unparalleled in recent times, a number of colleges, both private and public, have scaled back tuition increases. The value of a college education is being questioned in an unprecedented way in the post-World War II era. President Obama does not want to preside over a decrease in the number of high school graduates who go on to college. He will seek more aid to collegiate education. With many states and localities scaling back their funding of elementary and secondary education, he may well advocate increased federal funding for pre-collegiate education.
4. Entitlement reform. The president succeeded in keeping the country from going over the “fiscal cliff.” Republicans wisely agreed to rescind a good portion of the Bush tax cuts. Democrats recognize that they need to cut spending and meaningful reduction cannot occur without reforming entitlements. As much as Republicans embrace the general idea of reducing entitlement spending, they are reluctant to advocate specifics which will alienate some of their constituents. It will behoove President Obama to take the lead in this reform and force the Republicans to have to play defense. In all likelihood he will work to develop a consensus for fundamental reform with Congressional Democrats and introduce it to the American people in the State of the Union.

House Speaker John Boehner and Congress in general have given President Obama a special gift. By operating in a fashion that garners only a 17% positive rating from the American people, they have given the president the moral and the tactical high ground. President Obama cannot count on that lasting forever. In recent months he has indicated that he is comfortable “seizing the moment.” It is more than a hope; indeed it is a likelihood that he will set a clear national agenda in his State of the Union Address.

The post Putting a special stamp on the State of the Union appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Rob Richie is executive director of Fair Vote, a Washington-DC-based non-profit focused on “reforming our elections to respect every vote and every voice through bold approaches to increase voter turnout, meaningful ballot choices and fair representation.” In a recent interview, Richie [RR] shared his views with Occasional Planet [OP].

[OP] Why is it so difficult to change our election system?

[RR] Hyper-partisanship makes every electoral reform harder. What’s best for voters is not the first calculation that politicians make. Political parties look at reforms and evaluate them in the light of, “Will this hurt us more than the other party?” That view is trans-party. Most Democratic and Republican leaders tend to elevate party interests over the interests of the voter.

[OP] Is there any hope for election reform in the US?

[RR] Yes. There’s been a sea change in how people perceive what can happen, a different degree of hope. One example is Electoral College reform – -the National Popular Vote plan for president. The movement started in 2006, and there already have been bills introduced in 50 states and passed at least one chamber in 20 of them. [Editor’s note: National Popular Vote is a state-based plan to guarantee election of the candidate who wins the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. New York’s state senate recently passed a national popular vote measure by a 52-7 vote, and Massachusetts’ recent passage of NPV makes it the sixth state to enact the law.] I think there’s a real chance that we’ll get meaningful change by 2016, and perhaps even 2012.

[OP] What progress has been made toward Instant Runoff Voting?

[RR] Instant runoff voting is one of the good ideas that speak directly to problems people have with our politics: It upholds majority rule and makes it possible to have third party and independents to run without being attacked as spoilers. It’s in an entirely different place from when we started. More than a dozen cities have instituted instant runoff voting, and it’s gaining traction in several states.

A good example of how IRV could benefit voters is in Missouri. In 2000, one candidate won the Republican primary for a US Congressional seat with only 26% of the vote, because Missouri does not require a majority to win the primary. In this case, as in others around the country, a relatively small minority of voters chose the candidate. Instant Runoff Voting would assure that a candidate would reflect the preferences of a majority of voters in the primary election.

[OP] What misconceptions about our election system do you have to overcome in your work?

[RR] People often say that Congress does its job poorly, at the same time that they say that our Constitution is “great.” They don’t see that the system creates the rules that prevent it from working well. But when change is suggested, they don’t want to change what they think the Founding Fathers created.  In fact, the Founding Fathers were a lot more courageous than we’re willing to be. They would be appalled at how timid we are at reviewing our procedures and rules. They were bold, innovative thinkers who didn’t stick with the way things had always been done before. Their role is being misinterpreted.

[OP] What’s your view of the Top 2 election structure recently implemented in California?

[RR] “Open primaries” have the advantage of creating a majority winner in the final round and giving more voters a chance to help elect their representatives, but we’re recommending some changes in the system. Under Top 2, you could end up with an unrepresentative race between two candidates from the same party. The 2008 presidential primary in New Hampshire is an example: The top two finishers there were Obama and Clinton. If that had been the presidential election, the voters would have had to make a choice between two relatively similar candidates, and no Republican.  One of our suggestions is to change it to Top 3 and use instant runoff voting in the final round.

[OP]How does the US stack up against other countries regarding the fairness of elections?

[RR] Among other, well-established, long-term democracies, we rank near the bottom. Other countries have voter rolls that are more accurate and complete. The international norm for voter-roll accuracy is more than 90 percent of eligible voters. We’re at about 70 percent. Also, most other countries’ elections require candidates to get a 50% majority to win executive office, and they use proportional representation for legislative elections rather than a winner-take-all system.

Our democracy is stronger in other areas than elections. We have a lot of media coverage and openness; we have a lot of non-profits watch-dogging and working on improvements. As to elections, it probably is one saving grace that we elect so many people. Most everyone typically can help someone do something, and our elected representatives kind of check each other and recharge the system frequently. But it’s far from ideal.

[OP] What impacts have evolving technologies had on our election system?

The question we need to be asking is, “Who should own the process?” The outsourcing of election technology to private, profit-driven companies is very problematic. One company, ES&S controls a huge portion of our voting equipment and administration of elections: While they no longer own 70% of the voting equipment, because the Department of Justice forced them to divest, they still play a key role administering most elections. Plus, regulating and certifying technologies is all done haphazardly, state by state. Our whole model needs to be rethought.

Fair Vote is proposing a public option for voting equipment. We’d like to see technologies and equipment developed by groups that are not driven by profit, with open-source software. In a public option, the states would own the equipment. We’d have a national system, developed and run by a nonpartisan consortium, using open source software and responsive to public needs.

[OP] How well-informed are Americans about our election system?

[RR] There’s a lot that people don’t know. For example, there’s no affirmative right to vote in the US Constitution. Because of that omission, there are some 9 million US citizens who can’t vote where they live, but who could vote if they lived somewhere else. Examples are the citizens of District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and other US territories. If you move to France, you can vote as an American citizen abroad, but if you move to Puerto Rico, you can’t vote for president. Also, because states determine who can vote, 4 million citizens lose their right to vote because of current state laws that limit voting rights for people with felony convictions.  One of our goals is to put a right to vote into the US Constitution.

Here’s an example of how our patchwork of 13,000 different voting jurisdictions works. Earlier this year [June 2010] in an election in Riverside, California, about twelve thousand absentee votes were filed at the local post office. But the local election authority forgot to pick them up. They realized their mistake, but by the time they did, it was already 8 pm, and the deadline for absentee ballots had passed, so they weren’t going to be counted. It took a lawsuit, using state laws, to get them into the tally. Voters should have had a constitutional right to uphold their voting rights in that situation – and many more.

[OP] What needs to be done to increase voter participation in US elections?

[RR] First, get everyone registered, and do it once. [One of Fair Vote’s projects is universal voter registration.] Also, we need to make Election Day work better, by paying election workers better, training them better and considering making Election Day for big elections a national holiday.

But beyond those things, we need to look at the basic motivation to vote. We need a system in which there are candidates that voters can believe in. Most races for Congress aren’t competitive: We need to embrace competitiveness in our elections, with a greater range of candidates and a wider range of issues being discussed. For us, that means replacing winner-take-all elections with systems of proportional representation – of which there are many variations, some of which are working quite well at a local level in the United States.We need to create an atmosphere of more positive politics, where it’s not all about fighting one another. We need voters to believe that voting is a positive aspect of government. Nothing else can improve our system as well as that change in attitude would.

The post Resuscitating democracy: Q & A with Fair Vote’s Rob Richie appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Dismally low voter turnout among eligible citizens between the ages of 18 and 24 is a perpetual cause for despair. The numbers are particularly disturbing, say voting-rights organizations, “because people under 30 constitute the most progressive generation in memory. So, it stands to reason that encouraging younger voters to become politically active is a major part of advancing progressive reform.”

One solution is to engage youthful voters early,by giving them a path to voting and by eliminating obstacles–such as  citizen inertia–to registration. And by “early,” election-reform advocates mean 16.

FairVote, a non-profit that bills itself as “the center for voting and democracy,” proposes that:

states establish a uniform initial voter registration age of no older than 16. These advance-registered voters would be automatically added to the voting rolls when they reach voting age. Ideally, they would also be sent information about the mechanics of voting and the timing of the first election for which they are eligible. Evidence collected from different states suggests this change will usually have no fiscal impact.

Fair Vote’s website includes a fact sheet explaining the rationale for youth pre-registration:

• A significant disparity exists between the percentage of young people registered to vote and the percentage of the general population.
  • 71% of eligible voters are registered; 59% of eligible voters age 18-24 are registered

• A uniform voter registration age often does not exist.
  • In some states, all 17-year-olds and some 16-year-olds can register. In other states, some 17-year-olds and no 16-year-olds can register. In many states it changes year to year based on the date of the next election.
  • The lack of uniformity creates confusion and makes it harder to run effective voter registration and education programs in schools and at the Division of Motor Vehicles.

• A uniform advance-registration age does not require a new registration database system.
  • In many states, advance-registered voters already are inputted into the voter registration database as “pending.” A State’s Board of Elections transfers “pending” voters to “active” status when they become eligible to vote.

• Lowering the advance-registration age does NOT change the voting age.
  • The 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution sets the voting age at 18-years-old.
  • Local and state jurisdictions can lower the voting age if they so choose, but it is a separate question from voter registration.

• Why is 16-years-old a sensible age for advance-registration?
  • When applying for a driver’s license, a 16-year-old can register to vote at the DMV.
  • 16-years-old is the compulsory school attendance age in most states.
  • Many states already allow 16-year-olds to register during parts of the election cycle.

• Why aren’t the current registration programs in high schools good enough?
  • Registration drives typically do not focus on anyone other than seniors.
  • Registration drives have much higher registration rates in presidential election years.
  • No statutory requirement for voter registration in schools exists.
  • A standardized voting curriculum would encourage students to learn about the mechanics of participation (i.e. requesting absentee ballots).

• Does registering to vote at a younger age have long-term benefits?
  • Some states have already recognized the importance of early participation by allowing 17-year-olds to serve as full-time election judges.
  • Registration boosts turnout: in 2008, 83% of registered 18-24-year-olds voted.
  • Academic studies and electoral analyses show that voting behavior is habit-forming. If you vote, you will likely keep voting. If you don’t vote, you probably won’t start.

Another rationale for youth pre-registration comes from participation numbers for the 2008 presidential election. According to Progessive States Network:

After two presidential election cycles where we saw steady increases in youth voter participation, 2008 was the year that young voters really roared.  The primary season saw increases in youth voter participation outstrip the large increases in general participation with turnout tripling or even quadrupling among young people in some states. In the general election youth voted at a rate not seen since 1992 and have increased their turnout 11 points since 2000.

To date, five states have implemented a policy enabling pre-registration for voters under the age of 18. They are Maryland, North Carolina, Hawaii, Florida and Rhode Island.

A further step in modernizing the US electoral system would be to have universal voter registration, in which all citizens are automatically registered to vote. More on this idea in a future post…

The post To get young people to vote, let them pre-register at 16 appeared first on Occasional Planet.