Numbers Rule: Mathematics of Democracy

I just finished a book "NUMBERS RULE: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present" by George G. Szpiro, PhD. Since the birth of democracy in ancient Greece, the simple act of voting has given rise to mathematical paradoxes that have puzzled some of the greatest philosophers, statesman, and mathematicians. It traces the quest by thinkers to create a more perfect democracy and adapt to the ever changing demands that each new generation places on our democratic institutions.

In New York, we are a closed primary state were over 2 million non-party voters can not take part in the most important first phase of the candidate selection process. In New York City there is 1 million minor and non-party voters who also can not take part in their municipal primary candidate selection process that counts.

In New York City we are fighting to have Non Partisan Municipal Elections or Top Two as some call it. If you read my blog you know the details of this voting method. So this part of the book was so interesting.

The mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace was born in 1749 in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy. First studying in a Benedictine school and the University of Caen he soon discovered his love for mathematics. Finally in 1773 he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences. In 1784 Laplace was an examiner in the Artillery Corps and passed a sixteen year old cadet by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1796 the Academy had to decide how to vote for new members after reopening from the 1793 French Revolution. The voting method of the time had a shortcoming brought to every ones attention by now a general, Napoleon Bonaparte. What Laplace and Napoleon found unsavory was the method of "voting by merit" which was open to a subtle sort of manipulation that is now called "strategic voting". The ability to put forward unelectable candidates to make sure your candidate wins.

In 1812 Laplace put in writing what he talked about in his classes. He advocated the majority vote with a twist. An issue or leader would not be elected by a simple majority but by an absolute majority; the candidate would have to garner at least half the votes plus one. But there still was a problem. You could not leave a country without a leader for a very long time. And this is where Laplace really exhibited his more pragmatic side. If there is no winner in the first round of voting, the top two would go to a run off two weeks later.

Another interesting fact: The problem of apportioning seats in Congress after a census. It took the rhetorical skills of Senator Daniel Webster to convince Congress to adopt the course of action that reasonable people would have found most sensible had they not been caught up in looking out for themselves so their state would not lose any seats. It consisted of finding a divisor for the populations of the states, such as the result, when rounded up or down to the nearest whole number, gave the desired amount of seats. The "method of major fractions", as it came to be known was an unbiased way to even out the results each ten years. In 1842, Congress adopted Webster's method.

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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U.S. Civil Rights Commission New Black Panther Case

Christopher, Coates, the former head of the Justice Department’s Civil Right’s Voting Division, testified on 9/24/2010 about charges that the New Black Panther Party intimidated Philadelphia voters in the 2008 election. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating allegations that the Obama Justice Department dropped charges against members of the New Black Panther Party for political reasons.

As part of his testimony, he claims the Obama Administration told his department it wanted the department to stop using race neutrality when taking cases. They were only to take cases affecting racial and language minority votes. He also was instructed to no longer ask in the hiring process whether the applicant would adhere to the concept of taking race neutral cases.

Use the above link to view the testimony and read more about the investigation.

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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No child born with HIV by 2015

We now know how to stop the HIV virus from passing from a mother to her child -- and we can prevent any baby from being born with HIV -- We have the medicine and we have the knowledge, but in order to get President Obama's full support, he needs to know that enough American's care. But only if we get President Obama's full support.

Use the above link to add your name. It won't happen without your help.



Over 1,000 babies are born every day with HIV. But the plain truth is this can all be prevented. We can reach the goal of no child born with HIV by 2015, but it won't happen without you. Go to ONE.org and join the movement.

Add your voice to the 2 million ONE members around the world. Together we can stop the spread of HIV from mother to child, so no mother ever has to worry about this again. We're not asking for your money, we're asking for your voice.

Our petition to President Obama reads:

Please commit $6 billion to the Global Fund over the next 3 years.
We can make sure that no child is born with HIV by 2015—but your help is critical. Thanks for lending your voice to such an important cause.

Michael H. Drucker
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NYS General Election Ballot

Thanks to Ballot Access News for this post.

The New York State Board of Elections met and determined whether various petitions for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, should be determined valid. In New York, the Board disqualifies such petitions even if no one challenges, if the petitions on their face lack any possibility of containing enough valid signatures.

These parties will be on the ballot for statewide office: the five qualified parties (Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative, Working Families), followed by these parties: Anti-Prohibition, Freedom, Green, Libertarian, Rent is 2 Damn High, Tea, and Taxpayers. Although the Taxpayers Party is on the ballot now, a lawsuit is pending on whether that petition is valid. The Taxpayers nominee for Governor is Carl Paladino, who is also the Republican nominee.

The Tea Party gubernatorial nominee is Steven Cohn, an attorney from Long Island. His petition had been challenged by allies of Carl Paladino, but the Tea Party petition survived. Cohn is supported by Bobby Kumar, who has been active in the Independence Party and who briefly held himself out last year as national chair of the Reform Party.

The Freedom Party gubernatorial nominee is Charles Barron, who is angry with the Democratic Party because all six of the Democratic Party’s statewide nominees this year are non-Hispanic whites.

We had our New York County Independence Party reorganization meeting yesterday and I was reelected to the Executive Committee. I also was elected for my 4th term as the representative from the 73 A.D. (Eastside of Manhattan) on the NY State Committee of the Independence Party. I was uncontested in the Primary.

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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The Independent Movement

As a independent activist, I have been writing about our movement since my letter to the editor in the first issue of the The NEO - INDEPENDENT magazine, 2004. I discussed the growing number of blank voters, voters registered to no party. I said:

The job of the independent movement is to attract these feet to the process of structural political reform. The independent movement needs to contain both quantity and quality feet to be heard. First, you need to get local political process issues moving - through adding non-voters and non-participating independents to the cause - to make local changes. Second, you need to get local candidates to include these issues in their platforms and in their bills. Third, you need to put up independent candidates. Last, you have the feet to place an independent in the White House, and enough in Congress to make things happen without the corruption we have now. Slowly, state by state, the independent political issues get heard. Some issues are so important; you need to start at a national level to make the change.

I also took part in this video:


In 2010, the opportunities are even better for the start of this change in our political process.

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NYC New Voting System and Fusion Voting

New York City will use new optical scanners with marked paper ballots, much like inking in the bubbles in a multiple-choice test and then inserting the paper ballots into the computerized scanners that count them, for the first time in the September primaries and the November General Election. New York uses Fusion voting in the General Election were a candidate can appear on more than one parties ballot line and all the votes for a candidate are added together. This year is also the vote for Governor and also the year a party needs a minimum of 50,000 votes on their line to get or keep their ballot line for the next four years.

The voters, though they’re instructed not to, can fill in more than one oval for the same candidate in the same race, if that candidate is the nominee of more than one party. For example, Andrew Cuomo has the Democratic gubernatorial line in November, along with the Independence Party line. And he may yet get the Working Families Party’s ballot line. A voter, theoretically, could ink in the little oval under Cuomo’s name under each of those parties.

Oh no! you say. That would be considered an “overvote,” and the new electronic scanning machines would flag that on the computer screen, giving the voter the option to get a new ballot and start over again. WRONG!

“It won’t be considered an ‘overvote’ in that case, “ says Marjorie Kelleher Shea of the Women’s City Club of New York. And she’s absolutely right, according to both city and state election officials.

A decision was made to accept overcounted ballots for races in which candidates have more than one party line. However, the minor parties won’t get any of those votes credited to them. They’ll be credited to either the Democratic or Republican parties, as the case might be. Taking Cuomo again as an example: any “overvote” ballot cast for him would be credited to the Democratic Party, not the Independence or WFP.

Conceivably, if that happened in enough cases, it could cost the minor parties votes toward their 50,000-vote threshold to remain recognized political parties with automatic ballot access (otherwise, they’d have to go the arduous signature route).

Douglas Kellner, a Manhattan Democrat on the state Board of Elections, acknowledged the ballot quirk has raised some concern among the minor parties, but he said that few voters would mark up more than one oval for a candidate in the same race. “Just don’t do it!” he admonished.

But suppose, enough voters were to mark up ballots for Cuomo on all his lines and all those votes credited to the Democratic line and leave the minor parties just shy of their needed 50,000 gubernatorial votes.

At a demo at our New York City Independence Party Executive meeting, we were not told of this but was told "overvotes" would be flagged and the voter could reject their ballot, have it marked as "VOID", and get a new one. The voter could do this three times before they would have to vote on a "Provisional" ballot to be counted later.

UPDATE
On September 14, 200 the New York Conservative Party, and the New York Working Families Party, jointly filed a lawsuit in federal court over how votes are counted. The problem, which is a new problem in New York state this year with the new optical scanning system, is that some voters could inevitably vote for the same candidate twice when that voter sees the name of a preferred candidate who is listed multiple times on the ballot, once under each party label. The case is Conservative Party of New York et al v New York State Board of Elections, 10cv-6923, southern district. It was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, a Clinton appointee. The lawsuit is being handled by the Brennan Center.

I viewed the 2/18/2010 archived New York State Board of Elections meeting. Anna Svizzero of Election Operations on the Board explained to the Board members that in the General Election with Fusion voting, if a voter filled in the oval for the same candidate on multiple party lines it would count as a valid vote and not give the voter a chance to eject the ballot and re-vote. The other issue was which oval would count and it is the first selected oval either top to bottom or left to right depending on the county's ballot format. They did not explain the reason just the process.

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Polls do not tell the whole story

Thanks to Ballot Access News for this post.

Recently, Hill Research Consultants released a poll of the Texas Gubernatorial race. Question 3 asked respondents who they favor in that race. The pollster is instructed to ask the respondent if he or she favors Rick Perry, Republican, or Bill White, Democrat. The instructions say “DO NOT READ” any other choices, but if the respondent nevertheless mentions the Libertarian Party nominee, or the Green Party nominee (both of whom are on the ballot), that unsolicited information is then recorded, but only into a single category.

Some way to run a poll!

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Open and/or Non Partisan Primaries

With a large number of registered voters no longer registering into a party, last time I checked it was over 40%, it is time to move to open and/or non partisan primaries.

These voters are looking for candidates that will represent them, their city, their state, and the country, in that order. The current political party duopoly has had their appeal slowly reduced to where the old methods of picking candidates no longer functions.

Closed primaries, convention, caucus, where a smaller number of voters decide the candidates in the General Election is ready to be replaced with Open Primaries at the state level and Non Partisan or Top Two at the municipal level.

What do you think is the future of how we vote?

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Add your thoughts about the new NYC ballot questions

Would you like to tell New York City voters what you think about the Charter Revision Committee’s ballot proposals by writing a “pro” or “con” statement for the official New York City Voter Guide?

The nonpartisan Voter Guide produced by the Campaign Finance Board (CFB) will include in-depth information about the questions that will appear on the ballot this November. The Guide is mailed to all households in New York City with a registered voter and published online on there website.

To submit a statement advocating for or against either ballot question (or both), use the above link and follow their instructions.

You must submit your statement(s) by 5 p.m. on Thursday, September 2, 2010.

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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The case of the missing data

New York City's Charter Revision Commission hired a consultant this summer to analyze whether nonpartisan elections would be legal, but the city and the state never provided her with the data she needed. “The data I needed was never delivered,” says the elections consultant, Lisa Handley. Handley says that prior to that vote, she tried but failed several times to get the requested data from the state's Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. The task force is controlled by Democrats, and they have opposed nonpartisan elections.

The study was intended to address an important legal issue: Any change to the City Charter must not violate federal voting rights laws that ensure minority voters the right to cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice.

But as I reported in a prior blog, the legal question was answered in a similar study conducted in 2003 that showed that nonpartisan elections in New York City would not violate the voting rights of minorities. That is why the non-partisan question was on the ballot. Advocates say they've already made the case that nonpartisan elections are legal and that they increase voter turnout. The Bloomberg administration says that of the 18 special elections that took place in the city between 1995 and 2002, the partisan elections had more instances of low voter turnout.

Commissioner Steve Fiala said: “As sad as it is that the data was not provided to the research analyst, the report wouldn't have made a difference,” he says. “The majority of these commissioners did not want to take this up.”

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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