In Praise of Ray Guillory
Fixing Our Elections to Encourage Honest People to Run
If you’re not from Escambia County Florida you’re probably wondering who the heck is Ray Guillory. If you are from Escambia County you’re probably thinking, isn't that the guy who keeps running for office and losing? It is, but Ray is a lot more important than that. Ray is the glue holding our democracy together. To be clear it’s not just Ray, but people like him who make sure that people have a choice when they go to vote on election day.
In America we have the U.S. Constitution and a series of state constitutions that call for certain elections on a regular basis, but having elections doesn’t mean you have a democracy. China, Iran and Russia all hold elections, but I don’t think many would call them democracies. Elections have to have meaning. When you have one-party-rule, and the results are a foregone conclusion it doesn't say much for the state of your democracy. More and more that’s the world many Americans are living in.
Uncompetitive Elections by Design
Decades of gerrymandering by both parties has resulted in the vast majority of districts being predetermined as either a D or R district. That’s true whether we’re talking about a city council district or the U.S. Congress. Only the relatively small number of statewide races are immune from this. In fact, typically a third or more of state legislative elections go uncontested in the general election. Even many Congressional seats end up going unchallenged from the opposing party. Ballotpedia typically lists only 10% or fewer of Congressional districts as battleground races where both parties have a realistic chance of winning the race.
Given this reality it’s not surprising that so many races go unchallenged. That’s why people like Ray Guillory are so important. Without candidates democracy dies, and without competitive districts, why go to the effort to run. Ray has run four times, once for county commissioner, once for state representative, and twice for school board. In his closest race, he lost the school board election in 2018 by a little over 10%, not exactly a nail biter. It’s not like he’s a bad candidate either, he actually outperformed pretty much every other Democratic candidate in that race. But in Escambia County Florida there are four Republican districts and one Democratic district. Trying to win a district when you’re in the wrong party is a long shot at best.
Why Bother Running for Office
So why do it? Why run in a race you know it’s highly unlikely you’re going to win. It’s not like most places make getting on the ballot easy. Elected officials have an implicit motivation to make it difficult to get on the ballot in order to avoid competition. Typically, a candidate is going to have to pay some significant fees and/or collect hundreds or thousands of petitions from registered voters in their district just to get on the ballot. In addition to that, the campaign is likely to cost thousands of dollars even for a small down ballot race, and the sky’s the limit for a large race. And pro-tip, if people think you’re going to lose, you’re not going to get many donations. A lot of these expenses are coming out of your pocket if you want to make a serious run.
So again, why do it? I can’t answer for Ray Guillory, although I happen to know he is dedicated to making our community better. However, I do have some insight into this because I also made an aspirational run for an office I knew I was unlikely to win. In 2018, I ran for county commissioner, the same seat Ray had run for four years earlier. In my case, having spent my career frequently relocating in the military, I never paid much attention to local politics. However, by 2018, several years into my retirement, I became aware of just how truly horrible my county commissioner was. I also realized we were coming up on the filing deadline and no Democrat had filed to run against him. The thought of him walking right into another term unchallenged was just unacceptable. So, after doing some research into the requirements and talking to party officials, I made the decision to jump into the race.
There are other reasons to run as well. Perhaps the most obvious, you could win. Even in heavily gerrymandered races, the designated majority candidate still has to go out and get people to vote for them. Maybe they’re overconfident or have made enough enemies along the way to open the door for a challenger that wasn’t initially obvious. You can also make a name for yourself if you manage to impress people with your campaign. Even a losing candidate may get thousands of votes. Before I ran, I had applied for numerous teaching positions without much luck. After running I was almost immediately hired as a history teacher. Was that just a coincidence? Maybe, but it seems likely running a campaign that was well received probably improved my prospects. Finally, just participating in the process was pretty eye-opening and rewarding, even if ultimately unsuccessful.
Regular people like Ray Guillory and myself running for office is exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind for this country. However, unfortunately the idea of running for office seems too daunting of an undertaking for most people to contemplate today. Yet the only way our democracy will survive is with competitive elections and candidates who are willing to put themselves out there. This shouldn’t be partisan, we all have a stake in this. Rule by one party, regardless of the party, is rarely a good thing.
Ranked Choice Elections
I have a couple proposals to address some of the problems with the way we elect our representatives. Ranked choice voting is my first proposal. This election system has gained increased support in recent years and several states now use it. The exact rules can vary, but generally, rather than simply voting for one candidate, the voters will rank each of the candidates from most to least desirable. When they count the votes, in the first round of counting they only count the first-place votes. If one candidate has a majority, they are declared the winner and it’s over. If no candidate has a majority, they will eliminate the candidate with the fewest first place votes. The ballots cast for that candidate will have their second choice counted in the second round of counting. They’ll continue eliminating one candidate each round until one candidate gets the majority of votes.
This system ensures the winning candidate has the support of most of the voters, even if they weren’t their first pick. It also tends to result in consensus candidates getting elected over radicals in either party. Recently we’ve seen some far right-wing candidates in the lead after the first round but sink in subsequent rounds of counting. However, it could just as likely reign in far left-wing candidates. When Bernie Sanders was first elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont he only received 43.8% of the vote, a lower percentage than Ray Guillory received in his school board race. But Bernie won the election because he had the most votes due to there being multiple candidates. In a ranked choice election it’s likely he would have lost in the second round of counting and conservatives wouldn’t have had “the Burn” haunting their nightmares all these years.
Shorter Election Seasons
My next proposal fits in nicely with ranked choice voting, shorten the length of the election season. We all know that running for President starts at least a year and a half before the election, but even for down ballot races it often requires starting a campaign nine to ten months before the election to get on the ballot. For example, here in Escambia County a candidate must turn in all their qualifying petitions by late April, over five months before the election. The time needed to fill out all the required documentation and gather the petitions means you need to start the process at least by February if you hope to run for office. Ranked choice voting can eliminate the primary which should shorten the process by at least two and a half months. They could make the qualifying date 60 days before the election and have enough time to carry out the election.
This is important because your average person who might consider running for office likely has a job and other normal day to day responsibilities. Requiring them to run a campaign for close to a year to run for a seat on the local utility board is asking a lot and is really intended to discourage people from running in the first place. Making it a process that only takes a couple of months both reduces the administrative hurdle to new candidates and reduces the financial cost. Maintaining a campaign website and bank account and producing the required monthly financial statements are all hidden costs of running for office and the longer the campaign, the greater the cost.
Nonpartisan Elections
My next proposal also fits in nicely with ranked choice voting, make all elections non-partisan. Of course, we have freedom of association and it’s likely political parties will persist, but end all official recognition of parties in the voting process. When voting just list the candidates and let people pick who they like. Many voters just show up and vote for either the D or the R. This blind party voting allows candidates that haven’t done anything to earn people’s support to get votes.
Keep in mind there are no meaningful requirements to join a party. Candidates often pick the party that best increases their chances of getting elected. Here in Escambia County there are many centrist candidates that run as Republicans, but I’d be willing to bet if this was Massachusetts they’d run as a Democrat without changing many of their positions. Candidates could still associate themselves with a party, but voters would need to form an opinion prior to entering the voter booth. While looking at the candidates they might realize that some of their party’s candidates are actually nut jobs that need to be kept out of office.
My final proposal addresses redistricting rather than the process of electing candidates. Instead of leaving redistricting to an elected legislature, put a nonpartisan commission in charge of coming up with the new electoral maps every ten years. Twenty-one states already have some form of commission-based redistricting. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave each state a grade based on how partisan their redrawn 2022 districts are. The states that use a commission on average scored a B+, states with legislature drawn districts had an average score of D. Of course, there is a wide range in how states implement redistricting commissions which influences their effectiveness. However, it’s pretty clear taking the process out of the hands of elected politicians tends to result in a less political process. Shocking.
Conclusion
If we implemented all these proposals, would Ray Guillory finally win an election? Probably not, none of these changes the electorate. At least for the moment, this county is still overwhelmingly Republican. It would however lower the cost for new candidates to run and create a more level playing field so candidates don’t start with the nearly insurmountable D beside their name. Unfortunately, the resistance to these types of reforms seems to be greatest in deeply Republican states. The long-term interest of all Americans is a government that reflects the wishes of the electorate. Republicans seem to have a fear that might hurt their party’s chances. The solution to this problem isn’t making the government less representative, it’s in making your party more representative.
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