The day following Election 2004, retiring NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw indicated the need for strong national standards in how we count the votes. In an unusually serious interview with David Letterman, Brokaw said point blank, "We've gotta fix the election system in this country."

In a message to supporters, former presidential candidate John Kerry echoed this sentiment, calling for new "national standards" for elections and saying "It's unacceptable that people still don't have full confidence in the integrity of the voting process." In Ohio, Reverend Jesse Jackson also called for reform, emphasizing the need for a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote, a right guaranteed by most established democracies. Every returning member of the Congressional Black Caucus has signed onto Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr's HJR 28 to provide a constitutional right to vote.

The 2004 elections underscore the urgent demand to modernize our elections and bring them in line with international norms. Without such modernization, we will fail to establish a vital democracy and remain vulnerable to electoral breakdowns.

Consider these reforms:

1) Non-partisan election officials. At the top of the list must be nonpartisan election officials. It hardly matters whether the method of voting is with paper and pen or open-source computerized equipment if election administrators are not trustworthy. The secretaries of state overseeing elections in three battleground states – Ohio, Missouri, and Michigan – were co-chairs of their state's George Bush reelection campaigns. In Missouri, that Secretary of State was running for governor – he oversaw elections for his own race! A highly partisan Republican Secretary of State ran elections in Florida, as did a partisan Democrat in New Mexico. A Mexican observer of the 2004 election commented, "That looks an awful lot like the old Mexican PRI to me." Election administrators should be civil servants who have a demonstrated proficiency with technology, running elections, and making the electoral process transparent and secure.

2) National elections commission. The U.S. leaves election administration to administrators in over 3000 counties scattered across the nation with too few standards or uniformity. This is a formula for unfair elections. Most established democracies use national elections commissions to establish minimum national standards and uniformity, and to partner with state and local election officials to ensure pre-election and post-election accountability for their election plans. The Elections Assistance Commission established recently by the Help America Vote Act is a pale version of this and should be strengthened greatly.

3) Universal voter registration. We lack a system of universal voter registration in which citizens who turn 18 years of age automatically are registered to vote by election authorities. This is the practice used by most established democracies, giving them voter rolls far more complete and clean than ours – in fact, a higher percentage of Iraqi adults are registered to vote than American adults. Universal voter registration in the U.S. is now possible as result of the Help America Vote Act which mandated that all states must establish statewide voter databases by 2006. It would add 50 million voters to the rolls, a disproportionate share being young people and people of color.

4) "Public Interest" voting equipment. Currently voting equipment is suspect, undermining confidence in our elections. The proprietary software and hardware are created by shadowy companies with partisan ties who sell equipment by wining and dining election administrators with little knowledge of voting technology. The government should oversee the development of publicly-owned software and hardware, contracting with the sharpest minds in the private sector. And then that open-source voting equipment should be deployed throughout the nation to ensure that every county – and every voter – is using the best equipment. Other nations already do this with positive results.

5) Holiday/weekend elections. We vote on a busy workday instead of on a national holiday or weekend (like most other nations do), creating a barrier for 9 to 5 workers and also leading to a shortage of poll workers and polling places. Puerto Rico typically has the highest voter turnout in the United States, and makes Election Day a holiday.

6) Ending redistricting shenanigans by adopting full representation. Most legislators choose their voters during the redistricting process, long before those voters get to choose them. 98% of U.S. House incumbents again won re-election, and 95% of all races were won by noncompetitive margins. The driving factor is not campaign finance inequities but winner-take-all elections compounded by rigged legislative district lines. As a start, redistricting must be non-partisan, driven by nonpolitical criteria. But by far the best solution is full representation electoral systems which make voters far more important than district lines.

7) Abolish the Electoral College. The Electoral College enables presidential campaigns to almost completely ignore most states. It allows a shift of a handful of votes in one or two states to decide the presidency, inviting corruption and partisan election administration. It can deny the presidency to the candidate with the most votes. We need to support Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr's HR 109, to institute direct election of the president with a majority victory threshold.

8) Pry open our democracy. Our "highest vote-getter wins" method of electing executive offices creates incentives to keep third-party candidates off the ballot as potential spoilers. Battles over Ralph Nader's ballot access demonstrated that our system is not designed to accommodate three or more choices, yet important policy areas can be completely ignored by major party candidates. Most modern democracies accommodate voter choice through two-round runoff or instant runoff elections for executive offices, and full representation electoral systems for legislatures. Instant runoff voting had a great first election in San Francisco this November and passed in other places like Burlington, Vermont and Ferndale, Michigan.

A number of organizations are highlighting reform packages, among them Progressive Democrats of America and Common Cause. We can't win all these reforms at once, but we can make advances if we keep our eye on the prize and pursue opportunities that emerge. We urge people to visit FairVote's website at fairvote.org to find out how to get involved. Whether you're a Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian or independent, you can be part of one big party: the "Better Democracy" party.

In their recently acclaimed book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira make the case that long-term demographic trends favor the Democratic Party. Given the electoral letdown suffered by the Democratic Party in the 2002 and 2000 elections, and also throughout the 1990s as the Democrats lost control of the Congress and the presidency, Judis and Teixeira's themes have offered a ray of hope in a dismal political landscape.

But a stable Democratic majority in the Congress or the Presidency is not likely to emerge anytime soon, and here's why: Because even if Judis and Teixeira are correct that the demographics are shifting toward the Democratic side, structurally our 18th century winner-take-all political system will continue to favor conservatives and the Republican Party. Unless confronted by reformers, that structural bias trumps the shifting demographics.

Electoral battles for the House, the Senate and the presidency are fought out district by district and state by state in winner-take-all contests -- not on a national basis. So the national polls on which Judis and Teixeira rely for their analysis are less and less meaningful.

The problem is where Democrats and Republicans live. Democrats tend to live heavily concentrated in the Blue America urban areas, with Republicans more evenly dispersed in the Red America rural areas as well as suburban areas. The fact is, when the national vote is tied, Republicans still win a healthy majority of Congressional seats.

Indeed in 2000, even as Al Gore beat George Bush by a half-million votes, and the combined center-left Gore-Nader vote had an even bigger lead, Bush beat Gore in 227 out of 435 U.S. House districts and in 30 out of 50 states. New U.S. House districts are even more lopsided, with Bush's advantage now rising to 237 to 198. It's no coincidence that Republicans currently hold 229 U.S. House seats.

An issue like gun control is a great example. National polls have shown for some time that, nationally, the public wants gun control. But that doesn't make a bit of difference, because most of those people who want gun control live in states and congressional districts that already are locked up for the Democratic Party, particularly in the urban areas of Blue America. What matters are the battleground states (for the presidency and Senate) and battleground congressional districts (for the Congress), and those electorates either don't care as much about gun control or actively oppose it. In the aftermath of Election 2000, many Democrats now believe that Gore's pre-campaign support for gun control may have cost him such rural states as West Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Arkansas and his own state, Tennessee.

Even if there are more Democratic voters, to make a difference they need to be moving into areas now held by Republicans, not into current Democratic strongholds. If the "Democratic majority" emerges mostly in states and districts where Democrats already are strong, it just increases their winning majorities in those areas -- without changing the outcome of presidential winners or congressional majorities. If it occurs in states and districts where it's not enough to overcome safe Republican majorities, again no electoral results will change. Ultimately it will take a supermajority of Democratic voters to win a bare majority of Democratic seats -- particularly progressive Democratic seats.

Also, the distortions resulting from the redrawing of legislative district lines can turn a statewide partisan majority into a minority of legislative seats, and Republicans seem more conniving and successful at this backroom dealing. For instance, Virginia Democrats in 2001 won their first gubernatorial race since 1989, but Republicans went from barely controlling the statehouse to a two-thirds majority. How? Republicans drew the district lines. In Florida, Democrats were strong enough to hold both U.S. Senate seats and gain a virtual tie in the presidential race, but with full control over redistricting Republicans went from a 15-8 edge in U.S. House seats to an overwhelming 18 to 7 advantage. Republicans also have won lopsided shares of seats in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania due to control over redistricting, and now the Tom DeLay-led GOP in Texas is seeking to re-redistrict their House districts to pick up another 5 to 7 seats.

Moreover, the Democrats did not leave themselves very many opportunities for retaking House seats. In states like California, where the Democrats controlled redistricting, they opted to protect their incumbents rather than try to gobble up more seats as the GOP has done in other states.

Teixeira and Judis try to account for these factors to some degree on pages 69-72 of their book, but their analysis of this is brief, overly optimistic, and unconvincing. Also, they and others point to the increasing migration of Latinos to the heartland, as well as states like California, Florida, and Texas, as a trend that will overturn the Republican applecart. Certainly, the Latinization of the U.S. is one of the "hopeful" scenarios, but the horizon for that is more like 20 years, not ten.

Similar arguments also can be made for the presidential election, which is won or lost in a handful of battleground states, and the U.S. Senate. Both of these have a structural bias that awards more per capita representation to low-population states, which in turn favors the Republican Party and its candidates, and will tend to frustrate any emerging Democratic majority.

Thus, due to the distortions, peculiarities, and the lack of proportionality built into our 18th-century winner take all, geographic-based, political system, winning a majority of votes does NOT necessarily mean you end up with a majority of seats. Winner-take-all means "if I win, you lose," and in that zero sum game the Democrats will continue to come out on the short end of the stick. The Republican Party and its think tanks seem to understand this much better than the Democrats.

Relying on our analysis, one can make a strong case that the hope for the Democratic Party lies in enacting full representation electoral systems. With full representation (also known as proportional representation), the Democrats as well as the Republicans will win their fair share of legislative seats that matches their proportion of the popular vote. Redistricting and demographic trends will not distort outcomes and produce such exaggerated results. Only with full representation systems will the types of demographic shifts identified by Judis and Teixeira, that perhaps over time should favor an emerging Democratic majority, ever have a chance to win at the ballot box.

Steven Hill is a senior analyst at the Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org) and author of "Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics," which is out in paperback this month (www.FixingElections.com). Rob Richie is executive director of the Center.

For more information about CVD's upcoming national conference, "Claim Democracy," November 22-23 in Washington, D.C., backed by a broad range of pro-democracy groups, visit www.democracyusa.org/events/conference.html.

The co-authors of this article, Steven Hill and Rob Richie, are both with the Center for Voting and Democracy. Steve is the author of "Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics" (Routledge Press, www.FixingElections.com), and Rob and Steve are co-authors of Whose Vote Counts (Beacon Press, 2001).

Spurred by the memory of Ralph Nader spoiling Al Gore's election, by other third party threats to major party incumbents and by expensive runoff contests, instant runoff voting (IRV) has moved to the top of major parties' reform agenda in several states. At the same time, a growing number of social change activists are supporting IRV as a means to bring new ideas and energy into electoral politics resulting in its adoption in cities like San Francisco and on campuses like the Universities of Maryland and Illinois.

States could implement this win-win reform right now for all federal elections, including the presidential race, without changing federal law or the Constitution. The Northeast is leading the way in promoting IRV, and momentum is rapidly growing. In Vermont, a bill to institute IRV for all statewide elections, including those for president, has a real chance in the next year. The supporters of this bill show the strength of the movement: former governor Howard Dean, civic groups like the League of Women Voters, Grange and the AFL-CIO, and a grassroots surge of activism have all lent their energy to this campaign.

In Maine, the president of the state senate recently declared instant runoff voting as one of her top priorities, saying that she wants it in place by 2004. With a nascent Green Party boosted by Maine's public financing of elections, Democrats are worried about losing control of the Senate due to split votes with third party candidates even as the Greens are excited by their new opportunities. The Maine People's Alliance, Maine Citizen Leadership Fund and other organizations which worked to pass clean elections in 1996 are now spearheading the IRV effort, seeing instant runoff voting as a natural complement to public financing.

Public financing allows more candidates to run, raise issues, debate and get information into the hands of voters without becoming beholden to special interest donors. IRV accommodates these new candidates by allowing voters to rank their candidates -- first choice, second choice, third choice -- without worrying about spoilers or unintended consequences such as helping to elect your least favorite candidate.

In Massachusetts, another "Clean Elections" state, grassroots activists are joining with statewide organizations like Common Cause, Commonwealth Coalition and Mass Vote to push instant runoff voting. They organized a one-day conference in Boston that turned out a packed audience despite a blizzard raging outside. Last fall FairVote Massachusetts sponsored two non-binding referendums in the Amherst/Northampton area, polling local voters about their support for IRV. Both of those referendums passed with over 70 percent of the vote. Currently, activists are working with Democratic legislators who have introduced three IRV-related legislative bills.

But it's not just the northeast that is catching on to instant runoff voting. Other statewide IRV efforts include Utah, Hawaii, California, Washington, Florida, and New Mexico, where state senate leader Richard Romero has introduced IRV legislation. In the wake of the growth of Jesse Ventura's party in Minnesota and the Green Party threat to the Paul Wellstone candidacy, Minnesota has seen real interest in IRV, with the state's governor and largest newspaper endorsing IRV.

Avoiding Another Election 2000 Debacle

Why does this movement matter? The very fact of the acrimonious debate in 2000 over Ralph Nader's campaign between Green Party voters and Democrats reveals a serious flaw in our antiquated 18th century electoral rules. Unfortunately, with our current method, voting for your favorite candidate can lead to the election of your least favorite candidate. Providing the means to express one's real views and ensuring majority rule are basic requirements of democracy, but our current system badly fails these tests.

The British, Australians, and Irish have turned to a simple solution: IRV. They shared our tradition of electing candidates by plurality -- a system whereby voters have one vote, and the top vote-getter wins -- but have adopted IRV for most important elections. Irish presidents like Mary Robinson are elected by IRV. Labor Party maverick Ken Livingstone was elected mayor of London by IRV in 2000. The Australian House of Representatives has been elected by IRV for decades.

IRV simulates a series of runoff elections, but in a single round of voting that corrects the flaws of runoffs and plurality voting. At the polls, people vote for their favorite candidate, but they also indicate their "runoff" choices. They do this by ranking candidates on their ballot. If a candidate receives a majority of first choices, she or he wins. If not, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and a runoff round of counting occurs. In this round your ballot counts for your top-ranked candidate still in the runoff. The eliminated candidate is no longer a "spoiler" because the votes of that candidate's supporters go to their runoff choice. Rounds of counting continue until there is a majority winner.

Think back to the 2000 presidential race. Without Nader, Al Gore likely would won more than 50 percent of the vote in both Florida and the nation and now be President. But with Nader, that majority vote was divided just enough to elect Bush. With IRV in 2000, Nader supporters worried about George Bush could rank Nader first and the Democratic Party candidate second.

In 2004, for example, suppose Bush won 47 percent of first choices in a key state like Florida and the Democrat 46 percent, Nader 6 percent and the rest 1 percent. Under current rules, Bush wins. But with IRV, after Nader loses in the instant runoff, his supporters would have the power to propel the Democrat above 50 percent and defeat Bush. Rather than contribute to a Democrat's defeat, Nader could help stop Bush, while delivering a message to the Democrats: Watch your step on trade, political reform, and the environment.

Freed from the spoiler stigma, Nader could more easily gain access to the presidential debates, inform and mobilize a progressive constituency, and win more votes. Higher turnout and increased attention to progressive issues could move the political center and help Democrats retake Capitol Hill -- a very long shot in the current pool of voters -- while allowing the Green Party to gain a real foothold. In other words, a Green campaign would be a win-win, rewarding the energy of activists, whose belief in electoral politics is put at risk by the ongoing bitterness between Green supporters and Democrats.

Some, including Ralph Nader himself, have suggested that they like the ability to spoil the Democrats, and so they are afraid that IRV will cause them to lose their sting. But they fail to understand that the ability to sting is a short-term lever. Much like a bumblebee loses its weapon after stinging, another Nader candidacy surely will win fewer votes than the 2.7 percent attained in 2000 without IRV. Already Nader supporters like Ronnie Dugger and others are calling for Nader to bow out in 2004.

But with IRV, Nader might have hit double digits in 2000, and the Green Party would have achieved the five percent threshold for federal matching funds. Also, with IRV a Democratic candidate desiring to be named as the second/runoff ranking on Green Party ballots has incentive to court those voters by bending toward their issues instead of ignoring them. Evidence from Australia, London and elsewhere shows that with IRV, progressive voters would enjoy a level of influence and leverage both inside and outside the Democratic Party that currently does not exist.

Moving Forward on the Local Level

To advance IRV, cities are good targets for IRV campaigns. San Francisco achieved a major victory in March 2002 when its voters passed IRV for most major local races despite more than $100,000 spent by downtown business interests who were worried IRV would strengthen the city's progressive majority. The first election for mayor and other offices will be in November 2003, and that will be a tremendous watershed in the history of voting system reform. City charter commissions in Austin (TX), Kalamazoo (MI) and Albuquerque (NM) have all recommended using IRV. Voters in Santa Clara County, San Leandro, and Oakland (all in California), and Vancouver (WA) have approved ballot measures to make IRV an explicit option in their charters. In an exciting new branch of the movement, students in a number of major colleges have adopted IRV for student government elections.

To achieve truly fair representation, full (or "proportional") representation remains the Holy Grail for electing legislators. But IRV is the quickest way to eliminate the spoiler dynamic that suppresses candidacies -- and the debate and participation they could generate. If progressives learn one lesson from Election 2000, let it be that all of our elections should be conducted under fairer rules. Real democracy needs a rainbow of choices, not the dull gray that results in one of the lowest voter turnouts in the democratic world.

Steven Hill is senior analyst for the Center for Voting and Democracy and author of "Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics" (Routledge Press). Rob Richie is the Center's executive director. To keep update with developments on IRV or join with local supporters, see the "get involved" section of the Center's website.

The first Tuesday in March marked the starting gun for this year's critical off-year congressional elections. In California, Democratic and Republican primaries ended the political careers of scandal-ridden Congressman Gary Condit, who was running for re-election, and former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, running for Governor.

But the biggest bang may have been ground-breaking votes on instant runoff voting in hip, urban San Francisco and more than four dozen towns across rural, independent-minded Vermont. Instant runoff voting has the potential to crack open electoral politics to new voices and better choices.

San Franciscans voted 56 to 44 percent to pass their city's "Proposition A" and become the first major city in the United States to use instant runoff voting (IRV) to elect its local officials. The comfortable margin caught city observers by surprise, given editorial opposition from the paper's dailies and a slick, well-funded opposition campaign from political consultants and downtown business leaders fighting for traditional "delayed" runoffs.

In Vermont, more than 50 town meetings debated adoption of IRV for statewide offices. Of the 51 reporting results, 49 towns gave a big thumbs up, most by overwhelming margins. Several bigger towns like Burlington supported the issue by two-to-one margins. The Vermont League of Women Voters led the campaign, but backers include a range of supporters, from Governor Howard Dean and Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz to 2000 Republican gubernatorial nominee Ruth Dwyer, Progressive Party leaders and the Grange.

The San Francisco campaign, a grassroots effort that garnered endorsements from a range of civic players, was spearheaded by the Center for Voting and Democracy. Supporters included California House Assembly Leader Kevin Shelley -- an upset winner in the race for the Democratic Party nomination for Secretary of State -- 1999 mayoral candidate Tom Ammiano, Democratic Party, Common Cause, NOW, California PIRG, the Sierra Club, Green Party, Libertarian Party, Reform Party, San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO, Congress of California Seniors, Asian Week, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Harvey Milk Democratic Club, United Farm Workers and over three dozen others.

Why did all of these groups -- often political enemies -- come together behind IRV? Consider our current electoral laws. When several candidates run for a particular office, the winner often receives less than majority support. A quick flashback to the presidential election of 2000 recalls not only that George W. Bush won with less than a majority of the popular vote, but the center-left majority split itself in states like Florida and New Hampshire between Al Gore and Ralph Nader. Allowing the "plurality" winner to take office can deny the majority its right to decide single-seat elections, and at the same time stifle support for underdog candidates who are too easily pigeon-holed as "spoilers."

Delayed runoff elections are a flawed alternative used in many cities and southern primaries. If no candidate receives an initial majority, voters must return weeks later to choose between the top two vote-getters. Supporters of the two advancing candidates must show up again to reconfirm their initial vote, while backers of eliminated candidates must generate enough enthusiasm to vote for their preference among the top two.

Not surprisingly, voter turnout in runoffs often drops precipitously, particularly once the candidates start battering one another in negative campaigns. This allows special interest contributors who fund those negative ad blitzes to gain more leverage over winners.

Instant runoff voting, also called "same-day" runoffs, provides an effective alternative. Used for major elections in Australia, Ireland and Great Britain, IRV ensures that candidates win single-seat offices with majority support in one efficient election. Voters indicate both their favorite and their runoff choices on the same ballot. If no candidate receives a winning majority of first choices, the weak candidates are eliminated. As in a traditional delayed runoff, their supporters choose among the runoff finalists according to the preferences marked on their ballots. Voters who ranked one of the finalists first continue to have their votes count for their favorite choice.

Imagine if instant runoff voting had been in place in 2000 when Ralph Nader and Al Gore together won a clear majority of the presidential vote, both in Florida and nationally. Many voters for Gore or even for Bush might have supported Nader if they had not been worried about the "spoiler effect." Not only would Nader's vote have been a truer reflection of his level of support, but ultimately the Nader vote would have pushed Gore to clear wins in Florida and the national electoral count.

Among its benefits, IRV could be particularly helpful in cities with racially diverse populations. Last year, runoff elections between white and non-white mayoral candidates exacerbated racial division in cities like Houston, Los Angeles and New York. Instant runoff voting would have promoted coalition-building in a single round of voting, rather than the charged politics of a one-on-one runoff election.

The March 5 wins for instant runoff voting could start a national trend. California is developing into a hotbed of enthusiasm for instant runoff voting, with strong interest in Oakland, Pasadena, Santa Clara County and San Leandro. Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg last year introduced legislation to implement IRV for special elections to fill congressional and legislative vacancies.

Vermont's grassroots success promises to boost state legislation already backed by the governor and secretary of state. Instant runoff voting advocates in states like Alaska, Florida, New Mexico and Washington are poised to capitalize on the San Francisco victory and the clear message from Vermont's towns.

Even as Congress moves toward apparent passage of bills to ban soft money in campaigns and modernize the way we run elections, the thirst for more responsive, open, and accountable democracy will not cease. In cities and states around the nation, democracy advocates are ready to push beyond their current efforts to lessen the impact of money in politics and improve electoral mechanics. As so often in our history, we can count on dedicated reformers at the grassroots to keep pushing us toward a stronger, fully realized democracy.

Rob Richie, Eric Olson and Steven Hill work for the Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org), a national nonprofit organization. Steven Hill was the campaign manager for San Francisco's Proposition A.

Voters, beware. Redistricting is back. Every 10 years it revisits us like a recurring plague. This year's shenanigans show just why the renewed civic pride in the wake of September's terrorist attacks won't bring many disenchanted Americans back to the polls.

After the release of new census numbers, all legislative districts in the nation must be redrawn to make sure that they are closely equal in population. In a large state, that means about 640,000 residents for each U.S. House district.

Whichever political party controls the line-drawing process has the God-like powers to guarantee themselves majority control and make or break individual political careers. They rely on "packing" and "cracking": packing as many opponents into as few districts as possible, and "cracking" an opponent's natural base into different districts. Powerful computers and software have made this process of unnatural selection ever more sophisticated and precise.

Does it make a difference? You bet it does. In Virginia, the Democrats in 2001 won their first statewide race for governor since 1989. But Republicans went from barely controlling the statehouse to a two-thirds' majority. How? That's right -- Republicans drew the district lines.

One of the best examples of partisan gerrymandering was California's congressional plan in the 1980s. The late Congressman Phil Burton, its chief architect, called it his "contribution to modern art." One district was a ghastly looking, insect-like polygon with 385 sides.

The result? In the 1984 elections the Democrats increased their share of California's house seats to 60 percent even as Ronald Reagan's landslide win helped Republican congressional candidates win more votes than Democrats in the state.

This year in various states one party indeed has stuck it to the other -- just ask a Republican who was mugged in Georgia or Maryland or a Democrat roughed up in Michigan or Pennsylvania. In all those states and more, one party or the other used their redistricting advantage to wipe out seats of the opposition.

But this year the real story is that both parties have often colluded to take on their real enemy: the voters. This year will go down in political history for the crass way it has raised "incumbent protection" to a whole new level. With half the states finished with redistricting, the current round may be the most anti-democratic ever.

Take California. The California Democratic Party controlled redistricting, and its leaders decided to cement their advantage rather then expand it. Incumbents took no chances. Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez acknowledged to the Orange County Register that she and most of her Democratic U.S. House colleagues each forked over $20,000 to Michael Berman, the powerful Democratic Party consultant in charge of redistricting.

The money was classic "protection money." Sanchez stated "$20,000 is nothing to keep your seat. I spend $2 million (campaigning) every election. If my colleagues are smart, they'll pay their $20,000, and Michael will draw the district they can win in."

California's Republican Party, which has vociferously opposed past Democratic redistricting plans, was largely mute. That's because their pliant incumbents also were bought off with the promise of safe seats. The one incumbent facing a tough re-election battle promptly announced his retirement; the rest are likely free from serious competition for the next ten years.

The story has been the same in state after state. The Wall Street Journal in a November editorial on "The Gerrymander Scandal" estimated that as few as 30 of the 435 U.S. House seats will be competitive next year. Already fewer than one in 10 House seats were won by competitive margins in 1998 and 2000.

The ones hurt by these back-room deals are the voters. For most voters, their only real choice in the next decade will be to ratify the candidate of the party that was handed that district in redistricting. One-party fiefdoms will be the rule no matter what changes are made in campaign financing and term limits until we reform the redistricting process or turn to more innovative voting methods like proportional representation.

There once was a time when voters went to the polls on the first Tuesday in November and picked their representatives. But that's changed. Now, the representatives pick us first. Following on the heels of Florida's election debacle, this only further undermines confidence in our already shaky political system.

Rob Richie and Steven Hill are, respectively, the executive director and the western regional director of the Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org) and co-authors of "Whose Vote Counts?" (Beacon Press 2001).

The partisan struggle over the use of statistically adjusted data from the U.S. Census to avoid "undercounts" was just a warmup for the real game: the redistricting of thousands of legislative districts across the country.

Once the census data is provided to states this month, legislative districts must be redrawn to ensure they are equal in population. With few public interest checks on their near God-like power in drawing state legislative and congressional districts, incumbents use increasingly sophisticated computer software and demographic data to literally choose the voters before the voters have a chance to choose them.

Moreover, political parties with full control of the process in a state -- such as Democrats in California and Republicans in Pennsylvania and Ohio -- can seek to cement their power. By using techniques like "packing," whereby lines are drawn to concentrate many supporters of political opponents into a few districts, and "cracking," where opponents' supporters are split among several districts, they can dramatically heighten their chances for the next decade.

Jim Nicholson, former chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), stated last year, "The winners [of the state legislatures] are going to determine the political landscape in at least the first decade of the next millennium, because they are the people who are going to preside over the process of reapportionment and redistricting of their respective states as a result of the 2000 census."

With so much at stake, Democrats and Republicans are preparing to claw like cats and dogs -- especially in the courts. "There's going to be a race to the courthouse," says Stanford law professor Pam Karlan. "The redistricting process following 2000 is going to be more of a litigation-driven process than it was in the past." Caltech professor J. Morgan Kousser says, "Redistricting in 2001 is going to be the greatest bonanza for lawyers since the founding of the New Deal."

More hearings, more lawsuits, more investigations. Sound familiar? The fragile "bipartisanship" of the past month is sure to evaporate under the torrid heat of redistricting.

Who gets ripped off by this process? The voters, of course. As a result of the redistricting process, most voters become locked down into noncompetitive one-party districts where their only real choice at election time is to ratify the incumbent or heir apparent of the party controlling that district.

In 2000, for example, 78% of U.S. House seats -- nearly four out of five -- were won by landslide margins greater than 20 percentage points. Only 38 seats - less than 9 percent -- were won by competitive margins of less than 10 percentage points, the lowest figure since 1988. Most big wins were in districts where one party has a lopsided partisan advantage.

Like a Soviet-type Politburo, nearly 99 percent of House incumbents won re-election. A whopping 41% of state legislative races were contested by only one major party. Is this any way to run a democracy?

Redistricting -- or shall we say the "incumbent protection process" -- is the leading cause of uninspiring, choice-less elections. If you are a Democrat in a solidly Republican district, or a Republican in a solidly Democratic district, or a supporter of a minor party everywhere, you don't have a chance of electing your candidate. Demography is destiny, it turns out.

What can be done? Redistricting will happen over the next year, and the partisan technocrats already are drawing their maps, but there are several options to consider:

1) At the least, redistricting should be a public process, with full media coverage and citizen input.

2) Redistricting should be taken out of the hands of the incumbents and given to independent commissions guided by non-political criteria. Arizonans recently voted to implement such a citizen review procedure.

3) Replace single-seat districts with multi-seat legislative districts and adopt a proportional voting system. This would give all voters better choices, better representation and foster more competition. Nearly every multi-seat district would have full representation, instead of the safe, one-party districts we have now.

With re-gerrymandering nearly underway, a movement for reform has a natural rallying cry that fits with our nation' s democratic impulse: "This time, let the voters decide."

Rob Richie and Steven Hill are, respectively, the executive director and the western regional director of the Center for Voting and Democracy.

The 2000 presidential election presented two dramatic, but competing lessons to the American people. On the one hand, George Bush's victory in Florida by less than one vote for every 10,000 cast was a graphic lesson in how an individual vote clearly can count. On the other, your vote may not be counted.

The bizarre series of events in the weeks of recounting Florida's ballots sparked disbelief about how the world's dominant superpower can choose its leaders with outdated voting machines, inconsistent standards for design, irregular poll hours, limited number of polling sites that led to absurdly long lines, absentee voting rules that undercut the votes of those in the armed forces and often zealously partisan administrators. Several Members of Congress quickly responded with legislation to set clear standards and assist states in efforts to modernize voting equipment and procedures.

But most of these bills have been inadequate. The level of proposed funding for most has been minuscule when compared to the significance of presidential elections. Both major parties have reached consensus that military spending should rise by billions to improve morale in our armed forces and that we need tens of billions for improvements in our transportation infrastructure, but they have not committed to firm action to restore faith in our electoral process.

We estimate that it would cost some $3 billion to have every voter in America be able to vote on state-of-the-art voting equipment by the next presidential election, with more money necessary to train pollworkers and improve registration procedures. That's not small change, but it's significantly smaller than some wildly inflated estimates. Surely a democracy we can trust is worth a one-time cost equal to barely one percent of what we spend annually on defense.

Furthermore, most new voting equipment would likely be purchased anyway, but on a haphazard, county-by county basis. Punchcards, the most common voting method, have been completely discredited, and already several states are entertaining proposals to purchase new machines. Indeed, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore and class action suits filed against unequal election administration in states like Florida, Georgia and Illinois, some states easily could face federal court orders to upgrade their equipment before the year is out.

States and counties are right to take the initiative to ensure all voters in their state are treated equally at the polls, but only the federal government can make it likely that all states and all voters will benefit before the 2004 elections from modern voting equipment and procedures. To ensure that it's not just wealthy states that get the best voting process, President Bush and Congress should appropriate funds to make it possible for every state to purchase new voting equipment -- a federal commitment of $5 for every $1 from a state should do it.

Developing sensible standards is not rocket science. Machines should make it impossible to overvote (cast more than one vote in a race, as happened in more than one in ten ballots in one Florida county with a particularly confusing ballot design) and unlikely to undervote by accident (consigning dimpled chads to history's ashbin), prevent corruption and be as easy as possible for people with a range of educational backgrounds, voting experience and physical capacities. The best bet is some form of ATM-style electronic voting machine, but states could choose among vendors as long as they met the criteria.

This is no time for timid, inside-the-Beltway thinking. Anything less than a full commitment to creating the best electoral process in the world is intolerable in the wake of last year's electoral fiasco. Modern voting machines and sensible voting procedures are only one step in that quest, but an essential step for which we should achieve wide agreement.

Forty years ago, John Kennedy pledged that by the end of the decade, we would place a man upon the moon. We succeeded. Let us restore Americans' faith in our elections and the power of their individual vote by pledging that everyone who wants to vote will have a vote that counts by the next presidential race in 2004.

Rob Richie is executive director of The Center for Voting and Democracy and a co-author of "Reflecting All of Us" (Beacon Press 1999). For more information, go to www.fairvote.org, call 301-270-4616 or write to: PO Box 60037, Washington, DC 20039.

Raising campaign funds today is done with religious fervor, as politicians shake down everyone from corporate CEOs and movie moguls to Christian PACs and Buddhist monks. But Congressional leaders recently set a whole new standard -- now they are shaking down their fellow House members.

The Republican House leadership announced recently that they are hinging the reward of leadership positions and chairmanships of powerful committees to those incumbents who raise the most money for the party. Since committee chairs have near-dictatorial powers to set committee dockets, dole out pork and establish the national agenda, this plan debases government to a whole new level of crassness and political patronage.

But beyond that, this sordid episode reveals something more fundamental about the role money plays in politics. The situation is so much more complicated than many campaign finance reformers make it out to be, and in some ways so much worse.

The typical campaign finance reformer rant is that "money buys elections." But if that were true, the Republican leadership would not be able to shake down their fellow Republicans. Nor would they want to, because these incumbents would need that money for their own re-elections. They would be robbing Peter to re-elect Paul.

But the fact is that most incumbents don't need the money for their own re-election. That's because they live in safe, non-competitive districts where incumbents have about as much chance of losing as a snowball melting at the North Pole. The respected Cook Political Report lists a whopping 87 percent of House Republicans as easily winning re-election in 2000.

Most of these safe seats were carved out of conservative areas of the country during the last redistricting. The decennial redistricting process, which is about to revisit us in 2001, is when all legislative lines are gerrymandered to make most congressional districts lopsided, either for Republicans or Democrats (90 percent of House Democrats also are safe). No matter how much money opponents raise in these carefully crafted districts, their chances of winning are about as good as that snowball's melting.

So Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert can twist the arms of these safe-seat Republicans to raise money they don't need -- and then hand over the money to party leaders. The leadership then will target this soft money like a laser to the two dozen competitive races that will decide control of the U.S. House. The Democrats do this too, but House Republicans have raised the bar by hinging these efforts to the awarding of leadership positions and committee chairs.

This creates a fund-raising pecking order, where the "Captains of Cash" are rewarded. This is how political machines and fiefdoms are created and maintained, with all its progenies of patronage, logrolling and pork-doling. The Captains of Cash sit atop the pile, dispensing favors and collecting fealty, both within their own personal districts and within the House of Representatives.

The corruptive effects on our democracy are obvious. But that's not the same as money buying elections. The fact of the matter is, most elections can't be bought. They already are too lopsided and non-competitive to even need to be bought. This allows safe-seat politicians to raise money far beyond their own needs, and then sprinkle it around to their colleagues needing a hand.

Such a pyramidal shape to our political landscape is much more distorting of our democracy than simply money buying elections. It means that political leaders can create their own political machines. It means that donors are giving money to candidates they know will win, because the district has been drawn to produce that result. Donors usually are buying access and influence, not elections.

If we don't understand the full complexity of how our system is malfunctioning, we will miss the mark when we try to reform it.

On Mother's Day, several hundred thousand people gathered in Washington, DC for the "Million Mom March" to support gun control. Nearby, several thousand gathered to oppose gun control. Which side do you think has a better chance in the November elections?

Al Gore and most Democrats are betting that gun control is an issue whose time has come. Yet the National Rifle Association is working hard to mobilize its several million members. November promises to be a potentially historic shootout for both supporters and opponents of gun control.

Paradoxically, it just may be that both Al Gore and congressional allies of the NRA will gain in the process.

Gore's highlighting of gun control is based on a shift in the politics of guns in recent years. After tragedies like the shootings at Columbine High School, a widely recognized tool in voter mobilization -- fear -- was available to Bill Clinton and other gun control advocates. To the NRA's dismay, Clinton paid no price in 1996 for advocating gun control; Republican nominee Bob Dole avoided defense of gun rights as a political loser.

In presidential elections, gun control indeed may now be a winning issue. Gore stands to pick up swing votes from "soccer moms" and other independent voters in cities and suburbs in key states who respond positively to sensible-sounding efforts to protect children and curb violence.

Yet Al Gore's gain may be his party's loss in its other major electoral goal: retaking the U.S. House of Representatives.

The simple fact is that the NRA has power because there is a critical mass of voters out there who intensely support gun rights. What's more, these voters are disproportionately "swing voters" -- among that 10 to 15 percent of voters up for grabs in a close election. They often are classic Reagan Democrats, who fear infringement on gun ownership. They form a potent single-issue voting bloc, particularly in rural areas.

The combination of their passion for gun rights and willingness to "swing" between Democrats and Republicans traditionally has outweighed their minority status. Although big majorities tend to support gun control measures, their support has been broad rather than deep.

The NRA's influence has come from its capacity to move its supporters in key swing districts and states -- with its message more than its money, contrary to what some campaign finance reformers say, who focus on the NRA's hefty budget.

As NRA board member Grover Norquist said recently, "The question is intensity versus preference. You can always get a certain percentage to say they are in favor of some gun controls. But are you going to vote on your control position?"

An analysis of House Democrats who voted against gun control measures in June 1999 reveals that most represent competitive, blue-collar districts, where constituents are more likely to embrace gun rights. For these Democrats, support for gun control traditionally has caused them to lose their seats, no matter how broad the national support for gun control.

Control of the House this year will be decided in some 35 close races -- the other 400 essentially are being conceded by one of the major parties because of incumbency or lopsided partisan splits that make the district safe, no matter how much money challengers spend.

The power of the NRA comes from its power to influence these relatively few close elections. There, a change in 5 percent of the vote can make all the difference -- both for winning those races and control of Congress.

Democrats hope that some of those "million moms" and their families have become equally passionate about gun control, but that hope has yet to be tested. Given this delicate balance, both Democrats and Republicans are trying to position themselves between the swings of the polls. Unfortunately, sound policy and civil debate get caught in the crossfire.

Rob Richie is executive director of The Center for Voting and Democracy and Steven Hill is the Center's western regional director.

It has been eight years since the "Year of the Woman" nearly doubled the number of women in Congress. But it has been slim pickings ever since.A recent study found that the United States ranks 43rd in the world in its percentage of women elected to its national legislature. Currently, women hold only 12 percent of Congress, a lower percentage than such nations as Mexico, South Africa or Seychelles. In 1998, fewer than half of our states elected women to the House of Representatives.The study, conducted by the nonpartisan Inter-Parliamentary Union, shows Sweden leading the pack with 43 percent women in its legislature, followed by Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, all at least three times higher than Congress. Women also fare poorly in executive offices. 47 of 50 states have male governors, and 24 of our largest 25 cities have male mayors.Given American women's success in many areas, why has politics proven such hostile terrain? Some propose that it's women's own reluctance to sacrifice their traditional home lives. Swanee Hunt, director of Harvard University's Women and Public Policy Program, suggests that many women don't think politics is a reasonable option because they don't want to give up being mothers and wives.Women also don't necessarily vote for other women. One recent survey revealed that both male and female voters still prefer a man over a woman for powerful offices such as governor, attorney general and president.While discriminatory attitudes certainly play a large role, they certainly don't explain why women do so much better in some nations than others. The key lies in the rules for how elections are conducted.A virtual laboratory is provided by nations that use both proportional representation voting systems and U.S.-style "winner take all" voting systems. Proportional representation systems use multi-seat districts where a political party or grouping of voters may need only 5 percent of the popular vote to win representation.For example, in Germany, Italy and New Zealand, women are three times more likely to be elected in seats chosen by proportional representation than in those chosen by winner-take-all. Sweden, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, the world's leaders, all use proportional representation. In their first proportional representation elections last year elected 39 percent women.In fact, comparative research has shown that the leading predictor of women's success in national elections, when tested against all other variables, is use of proportional representation. When a majority of votes is needed, as in the U.S.-style single seat "winner take all" legislative districts, a small number of discriminatory voters can deny women candidates the margin they need for election. Women also are less likely to run when there is only one representative.Electing more women to legislatures is not only a matter of fairness. Practically speaking, the presence of women in legislatures makes a measurable difference in the types of legislation that are proposed and passed into law. Although outnumbered 8-1, women in Congress have been successful in gaining legislation long overlooked by men, including gender equity in the workplace and in education, child support legislation, and laws for prevention of violence against women. It was Congresswomen who ensured that the offensive behavior of U.S. Senators Bob Packwood and Brock Adams were not swept under the "good old boy" carpet.Most established democracies have rejected our "winner take all" system in favor of proportional representation because of the underrepresentation of women and other problems resulting from giving 100 percent of the power to candidates that win only 51 percent of the vote. Implementation of proportional systems in the United States at local, state and national levels does not require revising the Constitution. Changes in applicable local, state and federal laws will do. It is high time to seriously address why 52 percent of the population only has 13 percent of the representation.Rob Richie is executive director of The Center for Voting and Democracy and Steven Hill is the Center's west coast director.