I read an article in the New York Daily News by Francis Barry, Mayor Bloomberg’s Director of Public Affairs and the author of “The Scandal of Reform.” He contends New York City is not a real democracy and explains how the voters can have a serious competition and real choice.
He explains that the voter will find when they get their ballot that nearly all of the races for offices have already been decided. Their only choice will be whether to rubber stamp the inevitable winners or cast protest votes for fringe candidates.
Voters are stuck in this predicament in part because the local Republican Party has been on life support since the 1970s. This year, the GOP is contesting a record low number of offices. For the City Council’s 51 seats, for instance, Republicans have nominated only 29 candidates, leaving nearly half the council uncontested. And most of those 29 nominees are merely sacrificial lambs who have raised little or no money and will lose in huge landslides.
The GOP is not even bothering to field a candidate for the office of Public Advocate, second-in-line to the mayor. The last time Republicans won that office was in 1941, when the office was called the City Council President. Nor has the GOP nominated a candidate for Brooklyn Borough President. A Republican hasn’t won Brooklyn Borough Hall since 1913.
The lack of electoral competition except on low-turnout primary day may be good for Democratic Party leaders, but not it’s not good for voters. Only 22% of Democrats voted in the September primary. When a significantly larger number of Democrats arrive at the polls tomorrow, joined by hundreds of thousands of independents and others who were prohibited from participating in the September primary, they will find they have few viable choices.
Many of tomorrow’s inevitable winners were actually opposed by a majority of primary voters. In one City Council race, the Democratic primary winner, Helen Rosenthal, received only 26% of the vote. Three of four Democrats supported someone else. But in the general election, she will face a token Republican candidate who has not raised a dime. Like most other Democratic nominees, she effectively stopped campaigning after the primary. The general election is only a formality.
Election law should be built to benefit voters, not parties. The existing system benefits parties at the expense of voters.
Mr. Barry's solution is to allow all voters and all candidates equal access to the primary and general elections. Under such a system, all parties’ candidates would compete in a single primary open to all voters. The top two vote getters would then advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.
Many cities around the country, along with several states, have moved to this more inclusive form of elections, often called a nonpartisan or “top two” system. Voters in California recently adopted such a system.
Here in New York City, more competition at the polls would mean higher voter turnout. Expanding access to the polls to independents (about one in five voters) would make it harder for party bosses to control election outcomes. And that would help make it easier for new immigrant groups, which party organizations are traditionally slow to embrace, to elect representatives of their communities.
But there are other options to Top-Two. There is the option of a Blanket Primary. A primary in which the ballot is not restricted to candidates from one party. My version would have each party’s candidate with the most votes move to the General Election. To overcome the party association issue, some states allows parties to opt-out of this process and run their closed primary.
Today many voters have declared their independence and say they want to vote for the candidates and not the party. In many states where they can not take part in the primary voting process, they ask “why are my taxes paying for the candidate selection process of private entities called political parties?”
In New York City, we could create a primary ballot for independents, or as some are called: no party preference or blanks, and include all the candidates running in the primary process for each position. The candidates with the most votes for each position would then appear on the Independent ballot line in the General Election.
In New York, where we use Fusion voting, the candidate’s vote on the Independent ballot line would be added to the total vote the candidate gets on the other ballot lines they appear on.
The absence of serious competition and real voter choice that will define tomorrow’s election should not be shrugged off as if nothing can be done. Practical solutions exists, and voters in New York City whose diversity of ethnicity and opinion embodies the best traditions of American democracy, deserve a better election process.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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2 comments:
The statement that 80% of U.S. cities use a top-two system is not true. Most cities use non-partisan elections, and there is only one round. Among the minority of cities that ever have two-round elections, the first round is the election. A run-off is held if no one gets 50%.
That is entirely different from the top-two system, in which there is a preliminary event called a "primary" which cannot possibly elect anyone. All the so-called "primary" does in a top-two system is eliminate all but two candidates from the election itself.
Thanks, I changed the sentence.
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