The Two-Party State and Proportional Representation

Among those of us who support independent and third party alternatives to the Republican and Democratic parties, there are many who advocate for the implementation of structural reforms that would aid in opening up our political system and provide for more adequate representation in government.  One such structural reform is proportional representation.  Under the current winner-take-all system, a candidate can win an election against two challengers with 35% of the vote, while his or her opponents – who together garnered a majority of the votes – get nothing.  Perhaps we should start referring to the winner-take-all system as disproportionate representation or something along those lines. Under proportional representation, as I understand it, seats are allocated proportionally to the amount of support received by individual candidates or their parties.  Obviously, the supporters of the two-party state are least likely to support the implementation of something like proportional representation in government, since it would upset their cozy duopoly.

Ironically, however, the Democratic and Republican parties have become strong supporters of proportional representation for their own internal party processes, for example, in the awarding of delegates to select their presidential nominees.  You may be surprised to learn that the parties have quietly implemented proportional representation in their presidential nominee selection process over the course of the last four years.  An article in the Financial Times provides a fair amount of detail on the issue.  Excerpt:

With many US states shifting next year to a proportional voting system, making it harder for any candidate to lock up the nomination early, the Republican battle could mirror the drawn-out Democratic party contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 . . .

While the Democratic nomination contest three years ago created a bitter divide between the rivals, Republicans admired the party’s proportional voting system, which meant Mr Obama did not win the ticket until June.

Republican chiefs thought the process strengthened the candidates by forcing them to set up campaigning infrastructure in all 50 states and explaining themselves to the electorate . . .

The new rules are complicated and some are still unclear. All states that hold caucuses and primaries before April 1 are supposed to use a proportional representation system to allocate their delegates, who proceed to the party convention in August where the nominee is chosen.

Under the previous winner-takes-all system, the candidate who came first in a state would win all of its delegates. In states with proportional voting, if one candidate won 40 per cent of the vote in New Hampshire and another candidate 25 per cent, they would get 40 and 25 per cent of the delegates respectively.

Does anyone out there know any more of the details of how these rule changes have been implemented?  If the parties have begun to use proportional representation to choose their presidential nominees, that provides a strong lever to make the case for proportional representation in government itself. 

People Before Parties: Politics and Electoral Reform Group Releases Recommendations for Electoral Reform at #OWS

Two weeks ago, I relayed a number of recommendations for electoral reform being considered by the Politics and Electoral Reform group at Occupy Wall Street in NYC, in which I have been active.  This past Sunday, the group came to full consensus on the proposal, which has now been posted in full on the group forum at NYCGA.net.  That document is published here in its entirety.  Please distribute widely.


People Before Parties: Recommendations for Electoral Reform
A proposal of the Politics and Electoral Reform group at Occupy Wall Street

Free and fair elections inspire good citizenship and public service.  They engage the intelligence, good will, and real interests of the people.  Free and fair elections ensure that citizens can control their own political destiny, and make genuine contributions to society through sound self-government.  Free and fair elections can remedy myriad ills and counteract the abuses of a government that has come to prey upon the resources and spirit of citizens.

The centralization of political power in the hands of two narrow political factions at all levels of government is neither democratic nor republican. Lawmakers representing these factions have rigged our electoral system to ensure their continued monopoly on public office in the United States.  No party system whatsoever is mandated by the U.S. Constitution.  Government of the people, by the people and for the people has been transformed into government of the people, by the parties, for entrenched interests.

Whatever our political differences may be, surely on this we can agree: our government does not represent the interests or will of the people. It is time to institute free and fair elections in the United States.

A vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed.  Americans are not apathetic.  They have been demoralized by a forced choice between two corrupted political parties. The two-party system is incapable of providing adequate representation for the many diverse interests constitutive of the American electorate. This is a crisis of democracy and representation. It is a crisis of government.

In the federal system, the states are the laboratories of democracy. We urge the people of states, localities, and General Assemblies nationwide to begin a series of bold new experiments in democratic self-government, to open our political system to the millions of people who go unrepresented by the entrenched factions.

We call for experimentation with reforms to create a level playing field for all voters and for all candidates for elected office – whatever their party affiliation may be, or whether they have none at all –, and to curtail the influence of corporations and narrow political factions over our system of government.

We recommend experimentation with (in no particular order):

• Alternative voting methods. Our voting systems should promote honest participatory democracy.  There are alternatives to plurality voting, such as ranked choice voting, approval voting and range voting, liquid democracy and so on.

• Independent, nonpartisan redistricting. Voters should choose their representatives, lawmakers should not choose their own voters.  A bipartisan commission is not a non-partisan commission.  Independent council and computer drawn districts can remove partisan bias from the redistricting process.

• Smaller and more localized districts.  It is time to expand the number of representatives in local and state government and in the House of Representatives. This will ensure a closer relationship between the people and their elected officials, putting the latter on a shorter leash.

• Proportional representation. Winner-take-all, single member district plurality voting has allowed narrow political factions to wield disproportionate influence within our system of government.  Proportional representation has been used in the United States in the past to break up party monopolies.  It can be implemented again.

• Expansion of franchise.  Laws that restrict the right to vote should be repealed.  Those who are denied the right to vote because they have, for example, served time in prison, should be re-enfranchised. Participation can be encouraged through simple reforms such as election day voter registration.

• Term limits. Election to public office is not a lifetime appointment.  Fortunately, the people need not wait for officials to implement laws limiting their own terms.  The people can impose term limits at any election by voting for alternatives to the representatives of the entrenched factions.

• Ballot access reform.  Ballot access laws that favor the major parties and discriminate against independent and third party candidates, which are common in all fifty states, should be repealed and replaced with fair and reasonable alternatives. The default state of the ballot should be open.

• Primary election reform. A public election should be open to the public.  If parties desire to hold closed primary elections, they can provide for their own caucuses or conventions.

• Initiatives and referenda. The people retain the right to originate ballot initiatives and referenda and to recall any elected official.

• Vote counting.  Electronic voting machines are produced, operated and serviced by a small number of corporations with significant ties to powerful political factions.  Unless there are significant controls to protect against the rigging of such machines, hand-counted paper ballots should be re-introduced into our voting systems.

• Holiday voting. Voting should be encouraged not discouraged.  Election day should be ruled a holiday to encourage voter turnout.

• Fusion voting. Parties should be able to nominate the candidates of their choice across party lines.

• Combination and synthesis. A liquid democratic primary with an instant runoff between the top four candidates from the primary in the general election. Countless other possibilities.
This list is not exhaustive.

We urge assemblies across the country to deliberate on reforms that can help break the ruling political monopoly in government through free and fair elections, and put people before parties. We urge the people of states, localities and general assemblies nationwide to demand the implementation of electoral reform and begin a series of bold new experiments in democratic self-government, from the bottom up.
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This proposal was developed by the Politics and Electoral Reform group at Occupy Wall Street between September and November 2011. It contains input from well over 100 individuals who attended group meetings in Liberty Plaza as well as many others from across the country who influenced the proposal through online discussions.  The document was produced through a collaborative writing process.  It was approved by the Politics and Electoral Reform group with full consensus support on November 6, 2011.

Seeking Input for Electoral Reform Wish List: What Say You?

Since the Occupy Wall Street protests began in downtown Manhattan on September 17th, I have noted on a number of occasions that there is an inspiring amount of independent and third party activity and organizing taking place at the demonstrations.  Members of the Green, Libertarian, Socialist and Reform parties, among others, have been involved in the movement from the very beginning, in addition to legions of Independents. 

Much of the organizing work being accomplished at Occupy Wall Street is being done within autonomous working groups and caucuses.  There are working groups devoted to everything from media and internet to outreach, direct action and reform.  There are a number of groups, of which I'm aware, that should be of special interest to independents, third party advocates and opponents of the two-party state.  Over the next couple days, I'm going to provide some info on these various groups and relay portions of the documents and proposals they have been working on, all of which can be found through the New York City General Assembly's website for Occupy Wall Street.

Today, the focus will be the Politics and Electoral Reform group – in which I have been active for a number of weeks.  The group is working on a proposal recommending electoral reforms that could be implemented by states and localities to level the playing field for those who have been marginalized, and whose interests are not represented, by the Republican-Democrat two-party state. Numerous reforms are being considered by the group, which is collaborating on a working draft document for the proposal.  Here is an excerpt from the section of the document specifically devoted to the recommendations for reform:

• Alternative voting methods. Our voting systems should promote honest participatory democracy.  There are alternatives to plurality voting, such as instant runoff voting, ranked choice voting, approval voting and range voting, liquid democracy and so on.

• Independent, nonpartisan redistricting. Voters should choose their representatives, lawmakers should not choose their voters.

• Smaller and more localized districts.  Expansion of the number of representatives in local and state government and in the House of Representatives. This will ensure a closer relationship between the people and their elected officials, putting the latter on a shorter leash.

• Proportional representation. Winner-take-all, single member district plurality voting has allowed narrow political factions to wield disproportionate influence within our system of government. There are alternatives.

• Expansion of franchise. Those who are denied of the right to vote because they have, for example, served time in prison, should be re-enfranchised.

• Term limits. Election to public office is not a lifetime appointment. Term limits should be imposed by law or by the people at the ballot box.

• Ballot access reform. All should be equal before the law regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof.  Ballot access laws that favor the major parties and discriminate against independent and third party candidates should be repealed and replaced with fair and reasonable alternatives. The default state of the ballot should be open.

• Primary election reform. A publicly funded election should be open to the public.  If parties desire to hold closed primary elections, they can provide for their own caucuses and conventions.

• Initiatives and referenda. The people retain the right to originate ballot initiatives and referenda.

• Vote counting. The reintroduction of hand counted, paper ballots, or the introduction of significant controls to protect against the rigging of electronic voting machines, which are produced, operated and serviced by corporations with significant ties to powerful political factions.

• Weekend or holiday voting. Voting should be encouraged not discouraged.

• Fusion voting. Parties should be able to nominate the candidates of their choice across party lines.

• Campaign finance. Publicly funded election campaigns, or matching fund systems that allow candidates who refuse to accept corporate donations to compete on a level playing field with candidates who are heavily financed by corporate interests.

• Combination and synthesis. A liquid democratic primary with an IRV runoff between the top four candidates from the primary. Countless other possibilities.

(Note: the proposal is a living document, and any of the above could and probably will be changed by the group at some point.)  I'm relaying this excerpt because many readers here at Politea have thought long and hard about a lot of these issues, and could provide some interesting suggestions that could be taken up by the group.  So what say you, folks?  What do you think of the recommendations as they stand?  Should any be amended? or dropped? or edited?  Are there any important potential reforms that are missing from the list?

John Anderson Makes the Case for Runoff Elections and Proportional Representation

Hello dear readers and friends!  I hope you all had a relaxing or exciting holiday weekend, as the case may be.  I took a much needed blog break myself, which you might have noticed, and am still catching up on the news from the last few days.  Did you see John Anderson's op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor last Thursday?  He touches on one of the big points of discussion in the comments here over the weekend.  The former Independent candidate for president in 1980 and current board member of Fair Vote argues strongly against the winner-take-all system, and in favor of a number of electoral reforms, including runoff voting in presidential elections and proportional representation in Congress and state legislatures.  Some excerpts: 

while it’s just a matter of time before an independent wins the White House, America’s “winner-takes-all” voting system suppresses potential support for independent candidates and blocks their fair representation in Congress. We need new rules better designed for the realities of today’s politics. Americans’ desire for independents at all levels of government is clear.

Americans’ desire for independents at all levels of government is clear. Independents and third-party candidates have won recent gubernatorial elections in Alaska, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, and, in 2010, Rhode Island. Last year, independent candidates also finished ahead of major party nominees in races for governor and US Senate in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, and Maine . . .

plurality voting is not mandated in our Constitution . . . To combat the injustice of plurality voting rules that we use in our presidential election, many cities, states, and nations require a separate runoff election between the top two finishers if no candidate earns a first-round majority . . .

The problem of voting representation is even greater in congressional elections. It’s time to take on elections that distort fair representation in our state legislatures and Congress . . .

Reforming winner-takes-all elections for state legislatures and Congress may be a greater challenge than upholding majority rule with runoff systems in presidential elections, but doing so is a pre-condition for giving all voters real choices and new voices.

As a start, Congress should repeal a 1967 law that took away the power of states to adopt proportional voting systems for US House elections. As alternatives to winner-takes-all systems, proportional voting allows like minded voters to earn seats in proportion to their share of the vote – 30 percent of the vote earns 3 of 10 seats, rather than nothing, which would be the case if their chosen candidate didn’t win the most votes in their district.

Read the whole thing.

Reformism and the Politics of Infinite Deferral

Tirade Faction forwards a link to an article by Jon Walker at FireDogLake which argues that "if you want more bipartisanship, promote more political parties."  Comparing the Republican-Democrat two-party state with the UK's current government, which has three major parties, Walker points out that if no party has an outright majority in government, compromise becomes a necessity.  Excerpt:

The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats have been working together extremely closely. What is the cause of this outbreak of bipartisanship? The answer is simple, the UK has three big political parties and two of them were needed to form a coalition with a governing majority. This gave the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition a huge incentive to embrace their bipartisan relationship and do everything they could to make bipartisan compromise work . . . If they fail to work together to produce good results, both stand to lose seats, mainly to Labour. . . .  The reason you see little sustained, genuine bipartisanship in America, despite most beltway pundits acting like the mere hint of it sends them into ecstasy, is that there is no incentive for doing it . . . If you really want more bipartisanship, the only real solution is to promote more viable political parties.

Walker then goes on to list some of the ways to promote a multiparty system:

To have more viable parties requires systematic changes to our political system. You need to switch to a voting system like proportional representation and, to a lesser degree, instant runoff voting that promotes more than just two parties.

While such reforms would be a boon for third party and independent activism, we should disagree that they are "required" or "necessary" to elect third party and independent candidates to elected offices.  To elect third party and independent candidates to office, the only thing that is required or necessary is that voters cast their ballots for them.  To maintain that the government must pass a series of systemic reforms before it would become feasible for the people to support third party and independent candidates is just an indirect way of saying that opposition to the two-party state is futile, thereby deferring any active opposition until some unspecified date in the future.  Arguably, implementing systemic reforms to the political system should be secondary to inducing a change in the way Americans think about politics as such.  The two-party state is, first and foremost, a state of mind.

It is Time to Evict the Corporatist Squatters from the People's House

In an op-ed for the New York Times on Sunday, Dalton Conley and Jacqueline Stevens argued that Americans today are the "worst-represented group of citizens in the country's history."  Tell us something we don't know!  Refreshingly, however, the two professors do not make this claim on qualitative or ideological grounds, but rather purely quantitatively.  Excerpt via Ballot Access News:

It’s been far too long since the House expanded to keep up with population growth and, as a result, it has lost touch with the public and been overtaken by special interests. Indeed, the lower chamber of Congress has had the same number of members for so long that many Americans assume that its 435 seats are constitutionally mandated.  But that’s wrong: while the founders wanted to limit the size of the Senate, they intended the House to expand based on population growth. . . .

For well over a century, after each census Congress would pass a law increasing the size of the House. But after the 1910 census, when the House grew from 391 members to 433 (two more were added later when Arizona and New Mexico became states), the growth stopped. By the time the next decade rolled around, members found themselves reluctant to dilute their votes, and the issue was never seriously considered again.

The result is that Americans today are numerically the worst-represented group of citizens in the country’s history. The average House member speaks for about 700,000 Americans. In contrast, in 1913 he represented roughly 200,000, a ratio that today would mean a House with 1,500 members — or 5,000 if we match the ratio the founders awarded themselves. 

The article goes on to outline the cons of the current regime and the advantages of expanding the size of the People's House, effectively arguing that increasing the quantity of representatives and decreasing the size of districts would increase the quality of political representation:

This disparity increases the influence of lobbyists and special interests: the more constituents one has, the easier it is for money to outshine individual voices. And it means that representatives have a harder time connecting with the people back in their districts.

What’s needed, then, is a significant increase in the size of the House by expanding the number, and shrinking the size, of districts. Doing so would make campaigns cheaper, the political value of donations lower and the importance of local mobilizing much greater.

Smaller districts would also end the two-party deadlock. Orange County, Calif., might elect a Libertarian, while Cambridge, Mass., might pick a candidate from the Green Party. Moreover, with additional House members we’d likely see more citizen-legislators and fewer lifers.  [Emphasis added.]

Too bad Septimus of the Whig blog has been offline, this was one of his signature issues.

NY Greens Make the Case for Proportional Representation and Instant Runoff Voting

The Green Party of New York has begun an effort to push for proportional representation in the Empire State, spearheaded by Howie Hawkins, former Green Party candidate for governor.  From the Green Party NY:

Howie Hawkins, the former Green Party candidate for Governor, urged Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo to make Public Campaign Financing and Proportional Representation the centerpieces of a broad ethics reform package that should be adopted during the first weeks of the legislative session.

“We need Public Campaign Financing to end the pay-to-play culture that dominates the State Capitol, as witnessed by the ongoing scandals with the State Comptroller’s office and pension funds. Now is the time to finally stop the sale of lawmakers to the highest bidder. And while we strongly support an independent Nonpartisan Redistricting Commission to end the partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts, we want that commission charged with drawing up multi-member districts to implement Proportional Representation, which is the electoral system in almost every democracy on this planet,” said Hawkins. . . .

The Green Party supports proportional representation for legislative bodies in order to fully represent the diversity of political views among the voters. Candidates of the various parties would be seated in the legislature in proportion to the percentage of the vote each party receives. “The single-member-district, winner-take-all system now in place entrenches a two-party system of one-party districts that over-represent the plurality and completely exclude all political minorities in every district. Very few of these districts are competitive. Most are controlled by the majority party. Votes for minority parties are seen as pointless and turnout is low. Under proportional representation, every vote counts toward electing representatives one favors and turnout is high,” Hawkins said.

For executive branch elections such as Governor and Attorney General, the Green Party supports Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) where voters would rank candidates in order of preference, and a candidate would have to have a majority rather than a mere plurality to be elected. If no candidate had a majority on the first round, the lowest ranked candidate would be eliminated and their votes re-allocated to the voter’s second choice. This process would continue until one candidate had a majority. IRV is used for elections in many US cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, California; Mineapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; Memphis, Tennessee; and Portland, Maine.

Despite the known drawbacks of Instant Runoff Voting - see, for instance, this helpful post at Least of All Evils - IRV continues to be the favored proposal of many third party and independent advocates of voting reform, despite the clear advantages of approval and range voting over IRV and plurality.  Check out the Center for Range Voting.

Approval Voting and Proportional Representation

At Independent Political Report, Ross Levin relays a lengthy and informative article from The New Yorker by Anthony Gottlieb that provides a short history of voting methods and systems in the modern world. The piece compares and contrasts plurality, winner-take-all voting with proportional representation, instant-runoff voting and approval voting. An excerpt dealing with approval and range voting from the end of the article:

Range and approval voting deal neatly with the problem of vote-splitting: if a voter likes Nader best, and would rather have Gore than Bush, he or she can approve Nader and Gore but not Bush. Above all, their advocates say, both schemes give voters more options, and would elect the candidate with the most over-all support, rather than the one preferred by the largest minority. Both can be modified to deliver forms of proportional representation.

The fact that they escape Arrow’s proof, though, doesn’t mean that approval and range voting have no hidden kinks or paradoxes. Whether such ideas can work depends on how people use them. If enough people are carelessly generous with their approval votes, for example, there could be some nasty surprises. In an unlikely set of circumstances, the candidate who is the favorite of more than half the voters could lose. Parties in an approval election might spend less time attacking their opponents, in order to pick up positive ratings from rivals’ supporters, and critics worry that it would favor bland politicians who don’t stand for anything much. Defenders insist that such a strategy would backfire in subsequent elections, if not before, and the case of Ronald Reagan suggests that broad appeal and strong views aren’t mutually exclusive . . .

Mathematics can suggest what approaches are worth trying, but it can’t reveal what will suit a particular place, and best deliver what we want from a democratic voting system: to create a government that feels legitimate to people—to reconcile people to being governed, and give them reason to feel that, win or lose (especially lose), the game is fair. The novelty of range and approval voting in modern politics is so great that we can’t know how they’ll work out without running experiments.

While instant-runoff voting is likely the most well known alternative voting method, polities that have implemented it have already begun struggling with its limitations, thus underscoring the need for voting system experimentation at the state and local level. Dale Sheldon-Hess writes at Least of All Evils:

Dr. David Schultz . . . has posted his report for the Minneapolis Elections Department on the use of ranked choice voting [PDF] (more commonly known as instant runoff voting or IRV), as it was used in that city's recent elections. Schultz was (and apparently still is) a strong supporter of the use of IRV, having previously served as a board member for FairVote Minnesota, a fact he plainly states in his paper's Conflict of Interest heading. And this refreshing honesty continues throughout the document... which probably isn't good news for FairVote's or Dr. Schultz's objectives.

First on the chopping block is the claim that IRV increases turnout . . . We also find that the well-advertised claim of decreased election costs turned out to not be true . . . But my "favorite" part of the report is the section on Spoiled Ballots and Voter Error. Schultz begins by assuring us that "[T]he worst fears were not realized." By which he means IRV only quadrupled the ballot-spoilage rate, from 1.0% to 4.1%. . . . The true measure of an electoral system's quality is how well it can handle highly-contested and close-to-call elections. The predominant examples suggests that IRV would handle such elections poorly; but the Minneapolis data provides no real information for or against that proposition.

Read the whole thing. Dale is, of course, a strong supporter of approval voting and range voting; he's also has recently been involved in an on-going debate with David L. Wetzell, an advocate of strategic election reform and "American Proportional Representation." David sums up his position in the debate at A New Kind of Third Party. I don't know if David is acquainted with
Pete Healey of the Proportional Representation Party, but if not, they should consider getting in contact. In comments to the above-mentioned post at IPR, Pete wrote:

“One size fits all” [voting systems] is a poor guide. Our concept for New York isn’t a complete abolition of single-member districts and isn’t fully proportional (at least at first). It’s a transitional system that would have the state legislature elected half from single-member districts and half by party-line proportional vote. Each voter enters the booth with two votes, one for his/her local rep and the other for the party he/she wishes to represent him/her in the legislature.

A Plea for Electoral Sanity: Approval Voting and Proportional Representation

At As It Ought To Be, Broken Ladder posts an article by Andrew Jennings, Clay Shentrup and Warren D. Smith entitled: "Duopoly Must Go: An Appeal for Score Voting." The piece provides some background on Duverger's Law, and how plurality voting tends to result in a two-party system (which, as we see in so many states, itself tends to devolve into a one-party state), and then goes on to compare this system with the top-two runoff and instant runoff voting:

Opinions vary as to the relative merits of TTR versus other systems, and the above is not meant as an endorsement of TTR per se. Rather, it is a testament to the extent to which the voting method determines the party composition of a government. It seems clear that if we want to escape the two-party stranglehold, we must adopt a different voting method; specifically one which is not known to also maintain two-party domination.

Many of the modern efforts for voting reform promote an alternative form of runoff, called instant runoff voting (“IRV”), which allows voters to rank the candidates and appears to offer us a way out of our electoral difficulties. Unfortunately, communities and scholars are discovering that the hope IRV offers us for escaping our two-party system is only illusory.

Like TTR, IRV doesn’t fix the spoiler problem: a bloc of voters may get a worse result by supporting their sincere favorite candidate.

The authors see some of the most outspoken advocacy in favor of IRV as part of a larger strategy geared toward the implementation of proportional representation:

FairVote, the organization most often associated with the push for IRV, was founded in 1992 as “Citizens for Proportional Representation” (and later the “Center for Voting and Democracy”), and it seems that behind the scenes, their pursuit of IRV is a long-term play for proportional representation in America.

The stepping stone strategy might actually make sense were it not for the USA’s rigid impediments to proportional representation, which was made illegal at the federal level via a 1967 law which outlawed multi-member districts. In 1996, congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (who later ran as the Green Party candidate for US President) wrote, but failed to pass, bill HR 2545, which would have overridden that previous 1967 law. She re-introduced a similar bill, HR 1189, in 2001. It failed again. Then she tried again with HR 2690 in 2005. It failed yet again.

This leads us to believe that PR will be federally unobtainable in the USA as long as we are two-party dominated (a Congress dominated by two parties will continue to block anti-duopoly legislation such as McKinney’s). We therefore believe that proponents of PR must find a single-winner voting method which doesn’t maintain duopoly, as a prerequisite to PR.

The piece concludes, as promised in the title, with an appeal for support of score voting, or a simplified variant thereof, namely, approval voting:

In his 2008 book Gaming the Vote, author William Poundstone (an MIT physics grad) suggests a voting method called range voting (a.k.a. score voting), in which voters rate the candidates on a scale such as 0-10 or 1-5. When the scale is reduced to 0-1, we effectively have approval voting, which is identical to plurality voting except that there is no limit on the number of candidates a voter may support. . . .

Score voting has historically been overlooked, based on the assumption that it would succumb to pervasive tactical exaggeration. But that view was debunked back in 2000, when a Princeton math Ph.D. named Warren D. Smith performed an extensive set of computer calculations which showed the system working extremely well, even with high rates of tactical voting. . . . In election theory parlance, we say that score voting passes the Favorite Betrayal Criterion. . . .

A simple way to think of it is that a tactical score voter should support the same candidate as he would with a plurality ballot, and then also support all the candidates he likes better. This means that the appearance of being “unelectable” need not become a self-fulfilling prophecy, like with plurality, IRV, and so many other methods. If it turns out that enough voters prefer a minor party or independent candidate to the presumed frontrunners, then he can actually win, even if the voters are highly tactical! Empirical evidence strongly suggests election outcomes will then be vastly more representative of the actual relative support for the candidates.

We believe this has enormous consequences, beyond the obvious opportunity to escape from two-party domination.

On a related, but tangential, note, a reader recently sent me a link to the Proportional Representation Party. From their "about" page:

Proportional Representation IS modern democracy. The PR Party is an organization founded in 2007 to promote the concepts of proportional representation in New York and the entire US. Most modern democracies in the world today use some form of PR to elect their local and national legislatures and we in this country ought to be doing the same. The time has come to replace the old fashioned two-party-winner-take-all politics that characterizes US politics, and PR provides a modern all-inclusive method of doing it.

Primary Follies and Proportional Representation

Following up on another reader comment, on the News Tips page Paul Kroenke from Organized Exploitation relays a link to A Certain Enthusiasm discussing changes to the GOP's primary calendar that would draw out the presidential nominating process. In the post, Fred Bauer writes in favor of the measure:

One of the principal benefits of a drawn-out primary calendar that starts with smaller states is that it allows candidates who might not start out with the most money or the highest name ID to prove themselves to the voters, building a movement state-by-state, county-by-county. A national primary or a primary that is extraordinarily front-loaded greatly incentivizes the ability to raise money fast and generate free national media coverage. This set of incentives might not always lead to the strongest general election candidate.

Bauer bases his discussion on a report at Hotline On Call, which describes the rule change in the following way:

The new rule, written after months of painstaking negotiations among senior members of the national committee, would push the beginning of the presidential nominating process back a month, to Feb., as part of a plan to prevent wealthy candidates from stealing the nomination.

GOP caucuses and primaries would be held that month in the 4 early states -- the rule codifies IA, NH, SC and NV as states allowed to hold contests in a "pre-window." Every other state would be allowed to hold their nominating contests on or after the first Tuesday in March.

But there's an important caveat, members of the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee said: Any state that holds its nominating contest before the first day of April -- that is, any state that rushes to front-load their nominating process -- will have to award their delegates on a proportional basis. [Emphasis added.]

That's a dramatic change from previous party rules; many states awarded delegates on a winner-take-all basis, setting up key dates on which candidates could win big chunks of delegates and shut out their rivals.

As to whether the rule change will have the desired effect, we will simply have to wait and see. But its unintended effects may prove to be of greater interest, at least for those of us who advocate the dismantling of the Democratic-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government. For instance, proponents of proportional representation argue that its implementation would result in a more representative government. In the article on the subject I excerpted yesterday, David Wetzell writes that "American Proportional Representation is unapologetically biased in favor of smaller parties." Obviously, the Democratic and Republican parties do not take kindly to such proposals. But the rule change proposed by the RNC shows that party leadership are slowly becoming comfortable with at least one form of proportional representation. Granted, in this specific case, the awarding of delegates on a proportional basis seems to be intended as a disincentive to states that might consider holding an early primary. But why wouldn't this rule change function as an incentive for states to hold an early primary? And why shouldn't all delegates be awarded on a proportional basis for all states no matter when they hold their primaries?

Strategic Election Reform, American Proportional Representation and the Debate on IRV vs. RV

I'm going to take some time to follow up on reader suggestions made in comments over the last week or so. In a comment here last week, reader DLW relayed a link to an article at TPM on Strategic Election Reform, which led to another on American Proportional Representation, both written by David L Wetzell. On strategic election reform, Wetzell writes:

(SER) advocates for simple rule changes for state legislative elections. The basic idea behind SER is to use both winner-doesn't-take-all and winner-take-all elections, so as to bring together the best of the two types of elections. . . .

Just as the US Constitution prescribed two very different ways of electing congressmen and senators, Strategic election reform proposes that we use different election rules to elect our state representatives and our state senators. First, let us have state districts, and let there be three state representatives and one state senator per state-district. Then, we propose the use of American Proportional Representation to elect the three state representatives in each district. Then, for state senate elections, we propose a new hybrid winner-take-all election system, Top Three IRV. Thus, we would use a winner-take-all election for the state senate and a winner-doesn't-take-all election for the state house of representatives. . . .

American Proportional Representation is unapologetically biased in favor of smaller parties. Top Three IRV, like all winner-take-all election rules, is biased in favor of larger parties. When we use both rules for the two separate branches, their biases will tend to cancel each other out.

In the second article, Wetzell explains what he means by 'American Proportional Representation':

American Proportional Representation (AmPR) is a simple election rule. It is designed for use in state house of representative elections, as a part of Strategic Election Reform. It is a way to adapt Proportional Representation (PR) for the US. It is "American" because it works just like most US elections work, except there would usually be three winners. Like most US elections, with AmPR, there would be multiple parties with one candidate each and voters would vote for the candidate they support the most. The difference is that there would be three seats contested and the three seats would be distributed among the parties/candidates based on their percentages of the vote. The rule is to match as close as possible the percentage of the seats a party wins with the percentage of the vote their candidate received.

Independents and third party activists should be vocal supporters of these sorts of reforms. Over the last year or two, however, I have come to side with advocates of range and approval voting in their critique of both plurality voting and IRV, but I'm still working through my thoughts on the politics of the issue, which is somewhat embarrassing, as I've been meaning to write a guest post on the issue for Dale Sheldon at Least of All Evils for some time now. Coincidentally or not, over the last few days at Least of All Evils, DLW has been engaged in a detailed discussion and debate on the merits of IRV vs. range voting with Dale and commenter Broken Ladder, which is well worth a read.

On Learning from One's Students: the American Academic as Reactionary Apologist of the Two-Party State and Duopoly System of Government

Reading through some of the reaction to the UK's general election on this side of the Atlantic, I was struck by a difference between the responses of American college students, on the one hand, and American college professors, on the other. Obviously, the excerpts that follow are by no means comprehensive nor necessarily representative. However, they nonetheless prove instructive: these professors profess nothing but reactionary support for the existing relations of power and the ruling political class; they could learn a thing to two from their students.

Opinion pieces in two student newspapers emphasize the need to expand choice in US elections while stressing the importance of facilitating the creation of a more representative government. Both call for experimentation with proportional representation. From the Daily 49er at California State University Long Beach, a piece entitled, "British Elections Highlight Plurality System Flaws":

A central platform of last week’s British elections was the need for electoral reform. In other words, the U.K. recognizes the flaws of a winner-take-all or plurality system . . . A plurality voting system encourages the formation of two dominant political parties. In this country the Democrat and Republican parties are the beneficiaries of this system . . .

Compare this to a proportional representation system. This type of system encourages a multitude of political views and discourages the domination of two parties. This is achieved by awarding political parties legislative seats based on the percentage of votes their candidates receive.

An opinion piece in The Dartmouth from Dartmouth College, entitled "Open the Field," sounds similar tones:

In the United States, we use single-member plurality districts to elect members of Congress. This system has a number of consequences that are positively toxic for our country. The most pressing of these problems is that these electoral rules nearly always create a two-party system . . .

utter lack of responsiveness by Democrats and Republicans creates massive frustration for millions of Americans and contributes to the voter apathy that is pervasive in our political system. . . . A proportional representation system with a reasonable threshold for inclusion (to avoid repeating the mistakes of Israel’s Knesset, where any party can get seats with under 2 percent of the vote regardless of legitimacy) would fix most of these problems, and make our system more democratic, accountable and responsible.

Two professors, on the other hand, take the opportunity provided by the British elections to argue against the very idea of third party and independent political activism, and in favor of restricting political choice to the false choice between the Democratic and Republican Parties. At The Daily Beast, an associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York, Peter Beinart, responds to those who argue for third party and independent alternatives in the United States, writing:

Good luck with that. The more you know about what’s happening in Britain, and the more you know about the history of third-party candidacies in the U.S., the more dubious the whole idea becomes.

Beinart then goes on to "debunk" a series of mis-representations, slogans and talking points relating to third party and independent politics that pass for common wisdom in the corporate media and the American academy (if time permitted, it might be interesting to respond to his piece point by point). Ironically, however, and like so many apologists of the ruling political class, Beinart fails to note that the more you know about what's happening in the United States, and the more you know about the history of the Democratic and Republican parties, the more dubious the idea of reproducing the reigning two-party state and duopoly system of government becomes.

In the second piece, a guest post at Balkinization by David Schleicher, the assistant professor of law at George Mason University School of Law provides an informative and interesting comparison of plurality voting and proportional representation, but concludes by arguing that more should be done to discourage third party and independent political activism in the United States. Schleicher writes:

However Britain reforms its political system, let's hope they do something. And let us use its example as a lesson. If the United States persists in having a FPTP elections, we should use our election law rules to ensure that we get the benefits of using that system. Our election laws should encourage a healthy competitive atmosphere inside the parties so that groups try to succeed inside the two-party system. And should we keep the oft-criticized rules that discourage the development of national third parties. Abandoning these rules, or closing up our primaries, would lead us to where Britain is today.

Yes, the Democratic and Republican Parties have clearly not been allowed enough leeway in debasing our discourse and poisoning our politics; gerrymandering and district rigging are the very embodiment of "healthy competition"; and the ruling parties effectively represent the tens of millions of Americans they systematically disenfranchise in the interests of maintaining and expanding the global warfare and corporate welfare state.

While Republicans are fond of arguing that academics are nothing but Democrats with advanced degrees, and Democrats often fancy academics as objective observers or enlightened technocrats – the two above specimens suggest a third possibility, namely, that American academics profess nothing but reactionary support for the existing relations of power and the ruling political class, the reproduction of the two-party state and duopoly system of government. They could learn a thing or two from their students.

Update: In the comments, Shawn provides a link to a post at his Ranger's Arrows blog taking aim at the Beinart article mentioned above. Ranger's Arrows, by the way, is aimed directly at the two-party state: end the duopoly.

Excerpts from a Series on 'the Terrible Two-Party System' with a Provocation Concerning Christian Liberty and Human Bondage

In the conclusion to a series of posts on "The Terrible Two-Party System" at Political Jesus, Rod of Alexandria makes "A Christian Case for Proportional Representation." The series begins by laying out the present political situation:

Today, US politics functions as a single-party two-party system. Anyone who has read their US history books KNOWS that this was not the case in the first 100 years of this Republic’s existence. Don’t believe me? Check here. There was the smallest glimmer of hope in the mid-1990s with the rise of Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, and Pat Buchanan as third-party candidates. But, the situation remains almost hopeless.

In the second post in the series, Rod compares "majoritarianism" with "consensus democracy":

The results in this system lead to disproportional representation; that is, that the majorities are often over represented. . . . Unlike in a majoritarian society, it is important for as many people as possible to be represented in a consensus democracy.

In the third part in the series, Rod argues that proportional representation is superior to plurality voting, and finally concludes by making "a Christian case for proportional representation" on the basis of Luther's theology:

Perhaps it is best if we begin with the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers developed first by Martin Luther. This is the Reformation notion that all members of the body of Christ have connections to God through Christ the mediator . . . If we expand this doctrine politically, in terms of representation, we must come to the conclusion that everyone has rights, given to them by God, and that they should be allowed to be represented by the person that they choose. Also, secondarily, since the priesthood of all believers is not a doctrine that was originally intended to sustain rugged individualism, representation must be seen as a power to be shared by all citizens in a free society. Thus, we have a theological undergirding for proportional representation.

It would be interesting to see how Rod squares the central contradiction of Luther's theology with the call for consensus democracy and proportional representation. In On Christian Liberty, for instance, Luther employs a dualistic metaphysics of body and soul to allow for the possibility of spiritual freedom despite the reality of human bondage:

A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.

In other words, Luther's notion of Christian freedom is consistent with human slavery. Luther himself denounced peasants who were at least partly inspired by his teachings to rise up against their feudal overlords. During the Peasants' War, the protestant reformer admonished the "murderous thieving hordes of peasants" first and foremost for breaking an implicit oath of "submission and obedience" to their social and political masters.

Update: Rod has responded to my question regarding Luther's dualism, and sides against Luther's "two kingdom theory", concluding:

Dualism is unnecessary. Those who have been set free by the power of the Gospel are free in the world, to engage the world . . . a proportional representation system would benefit the church, third parties, the poor, and every American.

Thanks Rod!