Politics & Other Mistakes: Nothing was delivered

There are plenty of ideas for reforming the electoral process in Maine, nearly all of them confusing, expensive or stupid.

Also, none of them produces a fairer result.

Ranked-choice voting? It’s complicated (lots of people mark their ballots in ways they didn’t intend), costly (it requires new voting machines) and – in spite of proponents’ claims of some sort of feel-good effect from not having to throw their support to bad candidates in order to block worse ones – it often results in the same outcome as the current winner-take-all system. As for the promise it will produce a majority victor, it’s false. Ballots that don’t include votes for one of the top two finishers aren’t included in the final tally, so it’s possible to win with less than 50 percent of the total vote.

Run-off elections? They double the expense, a not inconsiderable factor in a state that can’t find enough money for roads, schools and health care. It’s also a useful method for suppressing minorities (African-Americans in Louisiana, rural residents in Maine), who might otherwise boost their candidates to plurality victories.

Proportional representation? There aren’t enough kooky voters in Maine to elect many fringe candidates (except in Portland), which deprives us of oddball political philosophies. This plan mandates that if the Green Independent Party gains 5 percent of the statewide tally for legislative candidates, the Greenies get 5 percent of the seats in the House and Senate – even if they don’t win a single race. Likewise, the libertarians, the communists and the Whigs.

Actually, that might be kind of interesting. The first time. After which it would just be annoying.

The reality is that voting reforms don’t improve the results or the way government functions. Term limits didn’t. Public financing didn’t. And the proposed referendum to revise public financing to make it sort of constitutional (and more expensive) won’t, either.

Representative democracy is messy, relying on inept politicians currying favor with special interests to convince clueless citizens to support untenable solutions to imaginary problems. This abomination survives only because no one has ever invented anything better.

Given that, I wouldn’t presume to propose something masquerading as an improvement. But if we can’t upgrade the system, we can make it more satisfying. That’s why we should amend Maine’s constitution to require all elections for public office include the option of voting for “None of the Above.”

If you don’t like the choices, there’s no reason you should feel obligated to pick any of them. Instead, you could send a message that no one at all would be preferable.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say there was a gubernatorial race with three candidates. We’ll call the Republican “Paul,” the Democrat “Mike” and the independent “Eliot.” After carefully examining each option, a reasonable person might conclude that “Paul” was a bloviating incompetent, that “Mike” was an ineffective nonentity and that “Eliot” was an egomaniacal elitist.

What’s a voter to do?

Under the current system, there are only two choices, and neither of them leads to an acceptable result. You can cast your ballot for the least objectionable of the trio, or you can refuse to vote. Either way, you end up with a crappy governor.

But if your ballot included a box labeled “None of the Above,” you’d have the opportunity to choose to have no governor at all, which might be a distinct improvement.

We could opt to leave the office vacant for four years, but that could result in some essential gubernatorial functions going unperformed. Although, come to think of it, the office was more or less unfilled during the second terms of Republican John McKernan and Democrat John Baldacci, and nothing all that bad happened.

“None of the Above” is actually an option in Nevada elections, although the result is merely symbolic. In the event NOTA wins (it’s happened a couple of times in primaries), the next highest voter-getter is declared the winner.
That seems pointless. At a minimum, there should be a new election with a different slate of candidates, including a fresh chance to vote for none of them. After three unsuccessful attempts to fill the office, it should be declared inconsequential and eliminated.

Think of the money we’d save.

Actually, Maine already has a form of NOTA. If petitioners gather enough signatures to put a referendum question on the ballot, the Legislature has the authority to pass a competing measure that goes before voters at the same time. When that happens, the law requires offering a third option of rejecting both questions and maintaining the status quo.

That choice was on the ballot in the 1996 vote to restrict clear-cutting of forests. The original referendum went too far. The legislative alternative didn’t go far enough. So I voted NOTA.

It felt like I’d given the system a giant extended middle finger.

Reject all of the above by emailing me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.