As a radical Democrat (and a radical democrat), I've long had mixed reactions about the work of Hendrik Hertzberg, the liberal writer who I first met at the National Student Association in 1966 and who returned in 2000 to The New Yorker after various stints as a Jimmy Carter speechwriter and two runs as The New Republic's editor. His first time at the helm at TNR was in 1981-85, when the magazine's staffers could not quite agree how they felt about Ronald Reagan's foreign policy, particularly in Central America.
Hertzberg himself found that policy abhorrent, just as he had gradually if belatedly decided he hated Vietnam policy during his three years in the Navy. But TNR owner-publisher Marty Peretz fought every attempt by Hertzberg to give the contras the "terrorist" label they deserved and to deny that label to Nelson Mandela and his movement. Amazingly, Peretz's faction chose instead never to speak harshly of the Reagan Administration's diehard support for the racist murderers of the apartheid regime. That Hertzberg returned for a second round of editing stuck in my craw almost as much as the fact that I wish my word craft were half as eloquent as his.
On one subject, however, I've always agreed with his take: the desperate need for revamping the way we do elections.
Election reform, of course, is a big subject, including everything from ensuring paper trails of unhackable electronic voting machines, to how ludicrous it is that two states making up less than 2% of the national population have such a titanic influence on our presidential choices, to the rhinoceroses in the room called corporate contributions (which haven't been effectively reined in despite a century of efforts starting with the 1907 Tillman Act).
But Hertzberg's mini-crusade matters, too. He writes about it for the umpteenth time today in his The New Yorker blog:
In Australia’s November 24th general election, which I wrote about in this week’s Comment, the Green Party did rather well. It got 7.7 per cent of the vote. By comparison, the Presidential candidate of America’s Green Party in 2000, Ralph Nader, got about 2.7 per cent.
For the past seven years, Americans (and the world) have been suffering from the head-pounding hangover of that 2.7 per cent: President George W. Bush. Even though a clear majority of us — 51 per cent — wanted a left-of-center government, we got, with the help of a little nudge from the Supreme Court, a very, very right-of-center one.
In Australia, the consequence was precisely the opposite. The Labor Party, Australia’s equivalent of the Democrats,was the first choice of about 43 per cent of voters. But because Australia has preference voting — what we call instant runoff voting — the Green Party’s voters helped float Labor over the top rather than torpedoing it to the bottom. Once the second and third choices of the Greens and other minor-party voters were counted, Labor ended up with about 54 per cent — 43 per cent enthusiastic supporters, 11 per cent grudging ones.
From those of us who want never again want to see Supreme Court nominations emanating from someone like Dick Ch Mister Bush, the IRV provides the benefit of undercutting the spoiler effect of fractional third parties, even third parties with which we may have considerable agreement on the issues. From the point of view of some members of those third parties - whether of the left or right - it offers a way to take a "pure" stand on a first choice whom they know has no chance of victory but to hedge their bets with a second choice to avoid electing a candidate who, for instance, favors uniforms and armbands.
But, from the point of view of those who utterly detest the two-party system, IRV - in the short run, anyway - means helping those two parties, even if it, as Hertzberg argues, nudges them more in the direction of the minor parties. For someone who sees American salvation in a third party - who thinks the latest third-party incarnation can overcome the flaws of those parties whose bones and phantoms litter the American political landscape - IRV might very well be viewed as a cul de sac. A snare and a delusion, as my grandmother used to say. Instead of expanding the two-party system into the pluralist system that the third-party advocates desire, they see it as reinforcing it.
On the other hand, from the point of view of the leaders and strongest backers of major parties, IRV opens up a can of worms. As long as the minor parties stay minor, a preference-voting system would benefit the majors. But let's say a third party eventually gathers enough votes to raise serious opposition to the two major parties, at least at the state level. Then the issue of spoiler again arises.
These factors make it unlikely we'll see IRV come to pass beyond a few localities any time soon despite being backed by a number of organizations.
Which is too bad, because the present system denies progressives - not to mention radical Democrats - a chance to gain the clout inside the party that we deserve. Like any reform, IRV is no panacea, to be sure. But it would be better than what we've got.