Mark Frohnmayer: Toward a more equal vote

Mark Frohn­may­er has set up a for­mi­da­ble task for him­self as a TEDx speak­er, he’s going to make math and pol­i­tics inter­est­ing.

How­ev­er, he’s more than ready for the chal­lenge.

Frohn­may­er is one of the faces of recent peti­tion dri­ves seek­ing sup­port for equal­iz­ing the vote in Ore­gon through an open pri­ma­ry sys­tem. Such a sys­tem would lead to vot­ers cast­ing final bal­lots for one of two favored can­di­dates, regard­less of par­ti­san affil­i­a­tion, in any elec­tion.

“The eas­i­est way to trans­form our elec­tions is to change the pri­ma­ry from a rank­ing sys­tem to a rat­ing sys­tem and an open field of can­di­dates with a yes/no option on each one,” Frohn­may­er said.

Frohn­may­er’s back­ground includes sev­er­al years cod­ing video games and, more recent­ly, lead­ing the devel­op­ment of elec­tric-based vehi­cle com­pa­ny Arci­mo­to in Eugene. He said his pas­sion for democ­ra­cy comes from watch­ing his father, Dave Frohn­may­er, lose a guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign in 1990 when a far-right can­di­date siphoned off more than 10 per­cent of the vote.

“I’ve been in this mix of math­e­mat­ics and com­put­er sci­ence and immersed in pol­i­tics. It drove me to do a lot of think­ing about vot­ing equal­i­ty and the spoil­er effect,” he said.

Frohn­may­er said equal­iz­ing the vote comes down to coun­ter­act­ing two fun­da­men­tal inequal­i­ties. The first is the rank­ing sys­tem we cur­rent­ly use, which lim­its most elec­tions to two can­di­dates, amounts to one vote divid­ed by the total num­ber of can­di­dates the vot­er likes. The more can­di­dates one prefers, the more that sin­gle vote gets divid­ed. The sec­ond inequity relates more to the closed pri­ma­ry sys­tem in which any can­di­date must pass a “puri­ty test” from the par­ty faith­ful to ascend beyond the open­ing stages of the race.

“When you add up those two inequal­i­ties, the sys­tem is heav­i­ly biased toward mon­ey. Vot­ers become incen­tivized toward the can­di­date in the strongest finan­cial posi­tion on their side,” he said.

In a pri­ma­ry sys­tem with more equi­ty, a bal­lot would include a list of can­di­date names with the option to vote “yes” or “no” on each one, he said. The top two would face each oth­er in the run-off dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion. Frohn­may­er said it would be akin to choos­ing whether to like a post on face­book or not, or decid­ing what num­ber of stars to give a prod­uct on amazon.com.

“Even that very sim­ple ‘like’ is more pow­er­ful that our cur­rent rank­ing sys­tem because it com­mu­ni­cates which choic­es you approve. Every sin­gle rat­ing sys­tem affords the chance to cast a bal­anc­ing rat­ing or vote,” Frohn­may­er said. “It removes the lim­i­ta­tion of a sin­gle choice.”

To find out how to become more involved in chang­ing the process, you’ll have to come lis­ten to his talk on Sept. 16.

Get your tick­ets at the His­toric Elsi­nore The­atre or online: http://goo.gl/pI3UJ2.

You can view Frohn­mey­er’s TEDx­Con­cor­dia talk on sus­tain­able trans­porta­tion here.