Ineffective Elections

Dear Electors:

Why are DC elections so ineffective at bringing about real change? Yesterday’s election is a good example. With as much dissatisfaction as most voters have expressed about our elected officials and our current city council, only one incumbent was actually defeated. In the special election to fill out the unexpired term of Kwame Brown as chairman, Phil Mendelson, who had been the acting chairman, was elected by a comfortable margin The surprise in that race was that Calvin Gurley, who ran practically no campaign, got over a quarter of the votes — 27.25 percent. In the other races in the general election, for delegate to the US House of Representatives and for councilmembers for wards 2, 4, 7, and 8, the incumbents all got a little above or below 90 percent of the votes.

What happens in Democratic primaries is usually that the field of candidates is crowded, so the challengers split the votes of those who are dissatisfied with the incumbent, and the incumbent wins. Then in the general election the Democratic candidate wins with only token opposition. The only way anyone from another party wins is to be elected to be one of the at-large members of the city council. This is usually misrepresented by saying that the Home Rule Charter requires two at-large seats to be filled by members of non-majority parties. That isn’t exactly true. What the charter requires is that two at-large seats are elected in every biannual election, but that any party can nominate only one candidate to the seats. For the first few years of home rule elections, this actually worked, and allowed the Republican party and the Statehood party to get candidates elected to be city council. Then Bill Lightfoot realized that a Democrat could declare himself to be an independent, and run a false-flag campaign to get elected to the second at-large seat every two years. Now Republicans, Statehood-Greens, and Libertarians are effectively excluded from any representation in city government, and so-called independents who are really Democrats fill every seat.

Since voters can actually vote for two people for the two seats, the person who got the Democratic nomination will automatically win one of the seats, but will get a lower percentage of the votes than any other Democrat on the ticket. In this election, Vincent Orange won the Democratic spot and got 37.35 percent of the total votes. The other six candidates split the remaining votes. Michael Brown, the incumbent, is a liberal Democrat who ran as a independent but who actually attended the Democratic national convention this year. He got 15.31 percent of the vote but lost to David Grosso, a liberal Democrat who was a former staffer for Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and Councilmember Sharon Ambrose. Grosso ran as an independent and got 20.80 percent. This will result in a change without a difference — the personalities will be different (and that’s important), but the politics won’t be.

Part of the problem, of course, rests with the DC Republican party itself, which makes a halfhearted effort at best to field candidates and which tries hard to distinguish itself from the national party. This year’s local ballot had only three Republican candidates in total. Mary Brooks Beatty ran as the Republican candidate for at-large city council, but refused to say whether she would vote for the Republican candidate for president. In Ward 7, Ron Moten ran against Yvette Alexander, but called himself a "civil rights Republican" and said he would definitely not support the national Republican party. The third Republican was Nelson Rimensnyder, who ran for the powerless position of shadow senator. If you don’t even try to present an alternative political position, you can’t blame the voters for not voting for it.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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DC Statehood
Thomas Hedges, thedges@colgate.edu

A survey of DC voters standing outside of the precinct on 16th and M streets showed that 85 percent support DC statehood. Many answered with hints of blatancy, sounding off "of course" over simply saying "yes." Those who opposed the effort for statehood cited complications. One voter said that the DC government is too corrupt to have representation. Others said that Maryland should incorporate the district into its own state borders. And yet others declared that DC should have a different sort of representation, with perhaps one member in the House and none in the Senate. In the end, they said, the move to statehood is too complicated and not worth the effort. About twenty percent said that they were not well-enough informed.

The movement for statehood began in 1980, when a group of DC residents passed the District of Columbia Statehood Constitutional Convention of 1979 law. This was the first step to a constitutional convention for a new state. In 1982 the law was ratified. The move for statehood froze at that point, and although all that’s needed is legislation to pass through Congress nothing has since advanced. Recent opponents have said that the city of DC would find the transition from a federal system to a state system onerous, especially because the US federal government would then rely on one state to provide all of its security and operations. Republicans oppose the measure because DC leans Democratic. Statehood would most likely guarantee the addition of two Democrats to the Senate and one to the House. Beyond that, many argue that the District, a city, is too small and would have an unfair advantage if given its own representation in the Senate and in the House.

James Jones, the Director of Communications at DCVote, rejects these arguments and says that opponents seek to invalidate the movement by citing complications that come with any effort at reform. Denial of statehood is "inconsistent with the tradition in this country of allowing people to send whom they want to Congress" he said. "By saying that the District of Columbia should simply be incorporated into Maryland does not mean that statehood is useless." The people of Maryland have to be involved in incorporation and there has to be support on both sides, he said, which there isn’t. As for size, he asks "what about Wyoming? Population has never been a factor. [DC] has gained 50,000 residents in the last ten years. Does that make us large enough?" Much of the opposition, he says, is unfortunately "petty partisan politics." "Does this mean we deny fundamental rights to Americans because you want to play a partisan game?" he said.

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Vincent Orange
Wenzell Taylor, wink12@juno.com 

Can anyone produce an intelligent explanation as to how and why Orange was reelected to an at-large council seat?

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The Other Side of Electoral Vote Math
Michael Bindner, mikeybdc@yahoo.com

Current winner take all strategies are about raw politics. However, the alternative is to permanently lock one party or another in power. If we continue to gerrymander districts for partisan advantage it is likely that districts leaning Republican would always vote Republican and districts leaning Democratic would always vote Democratic. That would essentially have the swing districts decide who is president or lock one party into a permanent electoral advantage. While it may have some parties change their views to be more competitive, the likely result is a one-party state. That would be like instituting DC style government on the USA permanently. Do you really want that?

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Charter Amendments
Erica Nash, nashe@starpower.net

Proposed Charter Amendment V: even though it will not likely be used, it is a step in the correct direction, it sets a precedent for intention, and it can therefore be easily amended in future.

Proposed Charter Amendment VI, VII: [Gary wrote] "Because of the confusion that was caused by the way in which these proposed amendments were written, they’re likely to cause more harm than good." I disagree. If confusion arises, the issues are more likely to be addressed by the media and public. A subsequent revision would be more clear.

Steps forward are needed. Sitting around waiting for legislation to be perfect is useless and does not promote progress.

[All three charter amendments passed in the election, by huge margins — 77.69 percent for Amendment VI, 78.34 percent for Amendment VII, and 86.98 percent for Amendment V. — Gary Imhoff]