The only effective ballot reform is one that puts politicians in their place. The current crop of proposed citizen initiatives tampers with the voting process but keeps political egos inflated.
The time has come to enact the negative ballot.
Petitions are circulating in an attempt to get a referendum that would have the voters select office holders on a rank-and-reallocate basis. Basically, one would vote for the candidate of choice but be asked to mark a second choice among the other candidates.
In theory, if no candidate wins a clear majority (50 percent plus one) then the lowest candidate is eliminated and the second choice votes under that candidate are allocated to produce a majority vote winner.
Former legislator Dick Woodbury naively calls it “a system not degraded by spoiler effects or negativity.” Apparently, he never had to deal with delinquents like me who have managed political campaigns. Some strategies could easily “degrade” the system.
The obvious is to urge hard-core supporters to bullet vote for their candidate only and leave the second and third choice blank. The more cynical option would be to urge that the weakest candidate get the second place vote to deprive the more serious opponent of the votes to knock off one’s preferred candidate.
Post-mortem analysis provides delicious entertainment for political junkies. In serious review, this scenario could actually happen if coordinated by a crafty consultant.
No, ranked choice voting is not good electoral reform. Despite the well-intentioned protestations of supporters, it lends itself to considerable mischief manipulated by partisan strategists. It has unintended consequences.
The negative ballot is a better alternative. I believe it would meet the same goals sought by the reformers circulating the petitions.
The late humorist Art Hoppe first proposed it during the Nixon Administration. He opined that few people vote proactively for a candidate. Usually, he said, people vote against the other candidate, or they vote for the lesser evil.
That premise was proven the election night a few years ago when my little town still used paper ballots, and I assisted the tally after the polls closed. The tedium was broken by reading the voter comments in the margins. On one ballot, instead of selecting from among the candidates for a particular office, the voter wrote, “Anybody but these clowns.” On another ballot, the voter wrote plaintively, “Must we?”
Seeing those comments jogged my memory to Hoppe’s idea of the negative ballot. It is the perfect system to allow voters to editorialize without defacing the ballot.
The solution would be to change the ballot so that, instead of running against each other, candidates are listed alphabetically with “yes” and “no” after their names like referenda questions. Voters would mark each candidate.
Subtract the very few yes votes from all of the no votes, Hoppe said, and declare the candidate with the fewest no votes the winner.
Facetiously intended, the negative ballot has potential to improve government if seriously adopted.
The major advantage to this system is to strip politicians of their egos. The loss of self-esteem by merely getting into office with fewer negative votes would surely force humility over the current sense of entitlement displayed by most incumbents in the halls of power.
Too many politicians assume office proclaiming that they won “a mandate” from the voters, based on the egotistical premise that the electorate loved them and wanted them to serve. The negative ballot recognizes the “none of the above” factor to many electoral choices.
Perhaps election under that circumstance would produce more empathy for the voters who sent them to Augusta or Washington. Who knows? It might even force elected officials to listen to constituents instead of talking down to them.
Those seeking ballot reform should stand up for the negative ballot and put politicians in their place.
Vic Berardelli is the author of “The Politics Guy Campaign Tips – How to Win a Local Election” and a retired campaign consultant. Now an unenrolled independent, he is a former member of the Maine Republican State Committee and the Republican Liberty Caucus National Board.
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