Election Reform
Dear Electors:
After nearly every election in the District, there is another round
of proposals for election reforms, and there are more proposals in today’s
issue of themail. It’s not like election reforms haven’t been tried
in the District before, but they have always been defeated. The chief
impediment to election reform is, of course, incumbent politicians, who
do not want anything done that would diminish their substantial
advantage over challengers. District voters have passed two important,
substantive election reforms by initiative: one limited elected
officials to two consecutive terms in the same office, and the other
substantially reduced the limits on campaign contributions. The city
council overturned term limits before they ever went into effect on any
incumbent, and councilmembers responded to the reduction in campaign
contributions by challenging them in court (disingenuously claiming they
were protecting the interests of challengers, who would need to raise
more money than incumbents in order to be successful), and then, when
those caps were overturned, by raising the caps on contributions to
essentially double what they had been before the initiative cut them.
Public financing for District elections has been discussed for many
years but, because it could lead to a somewhat more even playing field
between incumbents and challengers, it has not had any serious political
support. It also does not seem to have much actual public support; while
public financing of elections usually gets overwhelming support in
polls, in practice only a small minority of people use the voluntary tax
check-off to finance presidential campaigns, and that percentage has
been falling steadily for three decades.
One reform that hasn’t been taken to an initiative is to have
run-off elections when no candidate gets a majority of the vote, so that
no one would be elected without a majority. Incumbents are unlikely to
support the idea of run-off elections because they have seen too many of
their less popular colleagues saved by winning a bare plurality of the
vote in a large field of challengers (and sometimes by encouraging more
challengers to join in the race in order to split the opposition vote).
However, councilmembers may hesitate to overturn a successful initiative
that required run-off elections when no candidate gets a majority —
majority vote is a hard principle to oppose. A variant of this proposal
is “instant run-off voting,” which the Statehood-Green Party and
others have often advocated.
What true election reforms can the citizens pass without having the
politicians undermine and undo them? Anybody have an idea? Anybody want
to volunteer to submit another initiative?
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
The End of an Era
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
For American University Park and Spring Valley residents it is the
end of a thirty-eight-year era. The kind “veggie” man who vended his
wares from his roadside stand on the side road of Massachusetts Avenue
right next to Crate and Barrel died on 27 April. He and his family
members have been setting up their stand most days each week beginning
in the early spring and wrapping up in the fall. It was like a sign of
the real spring when he set up and sad when he left in the fall. His
produce and fruits were always fresh and sumptuous. Lines formed each
day, and especially on weekends. His whole family was a part of the
scene in setting up and serving the customers. Children and
grandchildren were put through school from the sales of the little
stand. We watched those youngsters grow up over the years. We say
goodbye to Jorge Zilvetti and can only hope that his offspring will
reopen the stand again.
###############
Where Are the Public Schools’ Cheerleaders?
Sylvia Brown, Deanwood, Ward 7, sylviabrown1@verizon.net
DC public school teacher Angela Sims was honored this week as the
Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award for the District (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050200880.html).
With all the hullabaloo about horrendous DC schools, teachers that don’t
care, and the school takeover, where is the similar emotion surrounding
the great accomplishments that are happening in our public school
system? The public school system doesn’t have a patent on failing
students, just as the public charter system and private schools don’t
have patents on high-performing students. The mayor, the council, and
DCPS must publicly champion, promote, pay, and celebrate teachers like
Ms. Sims who chose to work in a challenging urban environment instead of
cashing it in for the suburbs. Promoting the good and really dealing
with the bad (i.e., higher expectations, outcomes, and experience-based
learning, etc.) could begin to stem the tide on parent defections and
the perception that everything is wrong with DCPS.
###############
Wilson High School Students Versus Pedestrians
Lyla Winter, mrscalabash@att.net
Thursday afternoon, I was on Wisconsin Avenue. I came out of American
Valet Cleaners and was surrounded by a mob of Wilson High School
students. They were having a water fight, using their plastic water
bottles. I was soaked. The melee was scary. A younger woman took my arm
and guided me to the nearest store.
There should be a police officer patrolling between Albemarle and
Brandywine Streets, when Wilson High is dismissed. These young people
are not bad kids, just rowdy and overwhelming in numbers. However,
pedestrians need someone to see to it that they’re not injured while
trying to walk on the sidewalk outside the many shops on Wisconsin.
There are many of us who live in a nearby apartment building for seniors
and disabled. We need protection, along with other able-bodied
pedestrians, to ensure our safety while shopping in our neighborhood. We
would appreciate the cooperation of both the Wilson High School
principal and the DC Police Department.
###############
Loosening the Purse Strings Again
P. Walters, konetidy@gmail.com
On the heels of the bloated spending estimates for Eastern Market
renovations, we have the $20 million estimate to restore the Georgetown
branch library (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050301536.html?hpid=topnews).
If, according to the mayor’s proposed 2007 capital plan, it would cost
$16 million to build a new library at, say, Tenleytown, then why would
it cost $20 million to restore Georgetown’s library? This, on top of
the $3 million already budgeted for renovations that were in progress
when, allegedly, a worker accidentally started the fire. (Will the
District recover those costs by claiming contractor negligence?)
How can we explain these highly inflated estimates? Fenty says he
will use “budget surpluses” to pay for the Eastern Market and
Georgetown library fire-recovery projects. By laying claim to over $50
million of these surpluses, Fenty would control yet another large bucket
of funds. Will the council continue to fill the mayor’s wallet? Will
the council and local press start asking questions about where all this
money is going and how it is being managed before large chunks of it are
spent?
###############
Anyone watching the DC council on TV or online in the last six years
knows one thing for sure by now: most officials at the DC council
hearings don’t really hear us. The three or five minutes most of us
are allowed to speak amount to nothing more than a rushed moment to vent
our frustration — or beg for resources, respect, and rights already
entitled to us. We manage, despite some council members who purposely
patronize, talk over, badger, or speak to us with condescension. Do we
really need to have hearings to remind the same District officials we
elect and pay that they are doing a lousy job? How much more citizen
control will we give up or forget for a watered-down teaspoon of good
governance and real results?
How many more voters will quit the election process because they know
it is rigged against genuine accountability, truly open government, and
actual citizen control of our public officials and resources? Despite
the efforts of some DC news media to hype the actual low voter turnouts
with phony headlines, any District citizen with an ounce of brains knows
the real deal. The charade of widespread support for repackaged business
as usual, and the special interests that benefit from it, only stokes
the fires of disgust smoldering in diverse District citizens. So what’s
the bottom line solution? Citizen control, a term and power that strikes
genuine fear in bureaucrats with their own agenda and special interest
financing, is the solution. Ask DC officials how they truly feel about
citizens in control of the government we elect and finance — not
citizen “involvement.” Their response will speak volumes. Watch
their reaction when reminded this is the foundation and intent of our
Bill of Rights and US Constitution.
Why citizen control? Simply, if you hired and paid a staff of people
to repair your house or clean up your neighborhood, you want to see
effective and accountable results. Excuses, self-serving speeches, and
feel-good media events are not substitutes for competent governance,
real action and measurable outcomes. Once we see through all the smoke,
mirrors, and pretense of power, we as District citizens will realize
that the true authority over our officials and government actually rests
with us. Our hoping, pleading and waiting for DC officials to simply do
the right thing -- before the next election cycle — will end when we
enforce citizen control on and before election day, and through
effective community activism. Currently, District officials are asking
US Representatives to give us a Congressional vote, while trying to
bamboozle Capitol Hill into blocking our right to citizen referendums.
Where are the headlines about DC autocrats rearranging and redefining
democracy? Perhaps our local autocrats hear the hum for citizen control.
Next time you testify at a hearing, remember your hard-earned tax
dollars paid for their salaries, budgets, the building and dais they sit
up high upon during those many pretentious proceedings. At the end of
their day, they sense and know what’s coming. Taxation without
expectation will end when we enforce citizen control over the power our
elected and publicly paid DC officials choose to abuse. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I
know what it means to me.
###############
Like a Ripe Watermelon
Ed T Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
John Kelly, in a recent Post column, was extolling the virtues
of the replacement curbs, which are made of marble and last much longer
than the poured concrete curbs. He noted that the edges are so sharp you
can cut paper on them. I’ve never tried to cut paper on them, but I
warned DC via a note to Bill Rice that these curbs, with their sharp
edges, were a real hazard to young folks and old folks who fall a lot.
Those managing to hit their heads in a fall against one of those curbs
would split their head open like a ripe watermelon. That note, with a
follow-up from Bill Rice, was almost two years ago, and the District is
still installing curbs without rounded edges. Watch out, Mayor Fenty,
when running the streets of DC.
###############
I think your election piece [themail, May 2] would be a sound
starting point to fight for automatic run-off elections among the top
two or three vote getters.
###############
It ought to be clear now that council seats are valuable in a rather
peculiar way, not “peculiar” peculiar, but straightforwardly
“normal” in the ways in which important public assets and interests
are sold to the highest bidder, and actual involvement of citizens and
voters is bypassed. If we are to have elections, then their cost would
be cheaper in the long run if we all paid for them through taxes, and
did not leave their outcomes to the accidents of voting totals (very,
very low) and access to funding sources (now frequently very high) --
which is merely a way of corrupting the outcome (at $74.00 per vote)
before the vote is taken. Time was, elections were bought at a price per
head and a chicken, with voting of the cemeteries as a useful sideline.
But we move with the times.
If we are condemned to free-enterprise fundraising, then we must
install real limits. I would be ashamed myself to owe my election to
spending which is so disproportionate. What is the weight of ethics
against this kind of expenditure? It used to be a simple measure --
candidates were running on their own steam, and their own incomes. They
took modest salaries as legislators, and the whole thing was a genuine
responsibility undertaken by public-spirited persons for the sake of
what they could do for that strange entity, the public. If we are to pay
legislators as though they were, in truth, simply another form of
businessmen, and paid accordingly, then we certainly deserve school
superintendents who demand returns in the hundreds of thousands.
Simplify, simplify, simplify, but make sure that you get the actual
incentives correct, otherwise we all end up sadder and only wiser in
retrospect.
###############
It takes money to run a campaign and to win an election. However,
money doesn’t translate into a win. Certainly, turnout is key. More
important is the message of the candidate and the trust voters put in
the candidate’s supporters, specifically your neighbors. We all
expected turnout to be low in a special election. We lament about low
turnout even during the “major” elections. Instead of complaining
about “money in politics,” how about asking ourselves, whether we
would support public campaign financing in DC elections; have we
registered at least three people to vote, engaged them in the civic life
of the neighborhood and city, and pledged to take them to the poll next
Election Day?
###############
Is anyone else tired of re-ploughing the same old rhetorical ground
about how campaign contributions, and those with enough money to corrupt
the process, are adulterating both our electoral process and the
candidates who can find the money to participate in it? I know I am. We
need to get real about money and electoral politics. If the residents of
this city really want to reduce (I would hope, eliminate) the undue
influence of campaign donations and donors on local elections, then we
need to do a couple of no-brainer things. (And they’re no-brainers
only because of the institutionally unitary nature of DC electoral
politics and the fact that there is little genuine citizen opposition to
electoral reform.)
First, reinstitute the campaign contribution limit. We did this once
through an initiative, and the council overrode the results. We need to
make it clear that any council or councilmember who does that again is
electoral toast in the next election. These people work for us, not the
other way ’round. If they don’t do what we expect, we fire them. As
I said, a no-brainer. A $100 limit, period. I became a “person of
interest” by marching and lobbying for one-man (sic)/one-vote in
Rhodesia and South Africa. How about having a one-person/one-check rule
in our local campaigns? Like democracy in general, it hasn’t been
tried yet, especially here in Colony Central, so let’s give her a
whirl, shall we?
Second, we strengthen and simplify the campaign contribution
disclosure laws. Once you formally declare your candidacy for elective
office in this town, you report every single red cent anyone has
contributed to you either individually or via some organizational device
such as a PAC, exploratory committee, or outright campaign committee.
End of line. No exceptions, no grandfather clauses, no large, open
windows next to the legal back door. Third, we establish a public
campaign fund for independent candidates who want to run for mayor or
city council. We — well, the council — have been extraordinarily
imaginative in devising revenue-raising devices to pay for things that
are a lot less consequential than making it possible for promising,
talented, but underfunded or downright poor, citizens to stand a fair
chance of getting their messages out to us voters.
I mean, if we really, truly, honest-to-Jefferson want a level playing
field, then we, the taxpayers, have to rent the bulldozer. I, for
example, have no problem with an income tax check-off of, say, $10 or so
to start such a fund. We could raise every single license and
professional fee in the city by $1 each and generate roughly $855,000
for such a fund. And, here’s an idea: let’s require that this fund
must match the total amount of money contributed directly to the
individual candidates’ campaign. This probably would provoke a court
test. But so what? The proposal to “give” (sic) DC a vote in
the House is almost certain to go to the Supreme Court (assuming Bush
doesn’t veto it), and no one is quailing at the idea of taking that
one before the Big Nine, right? Again, another no-brainer here.
Finally, we need to institute instant run-off (or so-called
preferential) voting to give independent and third and fourth party
candidates an electoral (as opposed to financial) incentive to run for
office in the first place, but that is another story for another post.
And, anyway, I am sure you will crop me somewhere above this line, so I
will stop here. Like Christianity, the only problem with true electoral
democracy is that is has never been tried.
###############
Yea, all the street mail boxes have disappeared around the New York
Avenue/North Capitol Street corridor, too. I was told it was because of
“homeland security.”
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
DC Public Library Events, May 7-9
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov
Monday, May 7, 1:00 p.m., Capitol View Neighborhood Library, 5001
Central Avenue, SE. Book discussion and Video Presentation, Their
Eyes Were Watching God. For more information, call 645-0755.
Monday, May 7, 3:00 p.m., Petworth Neighborhood Library, 4200 Kansas
Avenue, NW. Book discussion, Their Eyes Were Watching God. For
more information, call 541-6300.
Monday, May 7, 6;30 p.m., Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Library, 3160
16th Street, NW. “Why We Love Their Eyes Were Watching God”
Jennifer James and Gayle Wald, George Washington University professors
and authors, explain their Hurston devotion. The discussion is hosted by
the Literary Friends Group. For more information, call 671-0200.
Monday, May 7, 6:30 p.m., Northeast Neighborhood Library, 330 7th
Street, NE. Capitol Hill Mystery Book Club. We will discuss Skinwalker
by Nunzio Defilippis, Christina Weir, Brian Hurtt, and Arthur Dela Cruz.
Call 698-3320 for more information.
Tuesday, May 8, 12:00 p.m., West End Neighborhood Library, 1101 24th
Street, NW. West End Library Film Club. Bring your lunch and enjoy
watching The Joy Luck Club. For more information, call 724-8707.
Tuesday, May 8, 7:00 p.m., Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library, 3310
Connecticut Avenue, NW. Cleveland Park Book Club. We will discuss The
Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. For more information, call 282-3080.
Wednesday, May 9, 1:00 p.m., Juanita E. Thornton/Shepherd Park
Neighborhood Library, 7420 Georgia Avenue, NW. Shepherd Park Wednesday
Afternoon Book Club. Enjoy a lively book discussion of The Beach
House, by James Patterson and Peter DeJonge. For more information,
call 541-6100.
Wednesday, May 9, 11:00 a.m., Washington Highlands Neighborhood
Library, 115 Atlantic Avenue, SW. Book discussion, Their Eyes Were
Watching God. Young adults and seniors discuss the novel. For more
information, call 645-5880.
Wednesday, May 9, 6:00 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial
Library, 901 G Street, NW, Enhanced Business Information Center (e-BIC),
A-level, e-BIC Conference Center. Get Business Credit Fast. Join us for
a practical how-to session on obtaining business credit. Topics include
an introduction to business credit, getting your Dun and Bradstreet
number and establishing trade accounts. For more information, call
727-2241.
Wednesday, May 9, 7:00 p.m., Francis A. Gregory Neighborhood Library,
3660 Alabama Avenue, SE. American Red Cross CPR. Certified instructor
Officer Arthur Lawson will teach beginners to administer CPR. This
program is supported by the Elizabeth Holden Bequest. For more
information, call 645-4297.
Wednesday, May 9, 7:30 p.m., Georgetown Neighborhood Library, 3260 R
Street, NW. “Why We Love Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
Jennifer James and Gayle Wald, George Washington University professors
and authors, explain their Hurston devotion. They will also give tips on
starting and sustaining reading groups. For more information, call
282-0220.
###############
Shakespeare Family Day, May 12
Lauren Searl, lsearl@nbm.org
Saturday, May 12, 1:00-4:00 p.m. Shakespeare Family Day with the
Folger Shakespeare Library. Have Shakespearean fun with
mini-performances of the Bard’s works by kids, for kids! Enjoy
performances by Folger Theater students on sets designed by the Museum’s
spring 2007 Design Apprenticeship Program (DAP) participants. DAP
students will also talk about their design processes. Be a part of the
stage action with impromptu Shakespeare scenes, juggling, and
“swordplay,” and create your own “shoebox set design” to take
home. Free. All ages. Drop-in program. At the National Building Museum,
401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line. Visit http://www.nbm.org
or http://www.folger.edu for more
details.
###############
themail@dcwatch is an E-mail discussion forum that is published every
Wednesday and Sunday. To subscribe, to change E-mail addresses, or to
switch between HTML and plain text versions of themail, use the
subscription form at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/subscribe.htm.
To unsubscribe, send an E-mail message to themail@dcwatch.com
with “unsubscribe” in the subject line. Archives of past messages
are available at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail.
All postings should also be submitted to themail@dcwatch.com,
and should be about life, government, or politics in the District of
Columbia in one way or another. All postings must be signed in order to
be printed, and messages should be reasonably short — one or two brief
paragraphs would be ideal — so that as many messages as possible can
be put into each mailing.