While Americans vote in crucial races for president, Congress, and state and local governments this year, many states will also decide on critical ballot measures to alter the very way we conduct our elections themselves. Proposed changes would affect the electoral system, access to voting, and campaign finance. When self-interested officeholders manipulate the system to stifle competition, and when Republicans try to make it harder to cast a ballot, initiatives are an excellent way to advance pro-democracy reform. Below, we’ll take a look at some of this November’s most important ballot measures.
Electoral System Reforms
Voters in Maine have the opportunity to end plurality-winner elections (also called “first past the post”), where the candidate with the most votes wins regardless of whether or not they have a majority—a system used almost universally throughout the country. It’s a system that, for instance, allowed Trump-supporting authoritarian and racist Republican Gov. Paul LePage to win with pluralities in 2010 and 2014 after Democrats and left-leaning independents split the vote. Now, Maine will vote on whether to adopt instant runoff voting, sometimes called ranked-choice voting, making it the first state to do so if the measure passes like the polls predict.
This system would allow voters to rank their top five preferred candidates in congressional and state races. If no one wins a majority in the first round, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and their voters are redistributed to their next highest preference. This process repeats until someone wins a majority. The beauty of this system is that it significantly reduces the likelihood that a candidate wins solely thanks to a split opposition, which is how LePage became governor in the first place—something Mainers likely regret after now that he’s become a national embarrassment.
This reform could lead to much greater electoral competition, too, as it could allow independents and third parties to compete without fear of playing spoiler. That could be particularly valuable for voters in districts that strongly favor one party or the other, since competition is a defining aspect of truly democratic elections. Unfortunately, this reform has its drawbacks: It makes voting more complicated, and it can still sometimes produce the “wrong” winner. However, it’s a major improvement upon our current system, and success in Maine could serve as a model for states across the country.
Strongly Republican South Dakota isn’t a state we often think when it comes to fights over election rules, but voters there nonetheless face two important measures to reform their system. The first would establish an independent commission to handle redistricting. Although South Dakota only has a single statewide congressional district, this commission would draw the legislative maps instead of leaving it up to the Republican dominated legislature. We have long advocated that voters use initiatives for this very goal, and doing so in South Dakota would strike a modest blow against gerrymandering.
South Dakota could also become the second state after neighboring Nebraska to adopt nonpartisan elections for offices other than president and vice president. All candidates would run in a single primary without party labels, and the top-two vote-getters would advance, regardless of their partisan leanings. This measure aims to increase competition and reduce partisan polarization in the legislature, where Republicans currently have over three-quarters of seats and face little serious opposition in most races
The experience in Nebraska shows it just might accomplish those goals. Democrats could gain since they won’t automatically be associated with the unpopular national party, but so could moderate Republicans who no longer have to fear about making it through a primary dominated by ultra-conservatives. However, party labels do provide voters with crucial information about candidates, and removing them could simply lead to voters making choices less in line with their own policy preferences, which would do a disservice to democracy.
Colorado Democrats held a caucus to allocate their delegates for the 2016 presidential nomination, but Republicans didn’t even do that and held party conventions instead. Consequently, a 2016 initiative would switch the state to a system of open presidential primaries that all registered voters could participate in. Such a move would massively increase participation among regular partisans in addition to those who aren’t party members. A separate initiative would open up Colorado’s primaries for other offices to independents as well, without instituting the switch to a presidential primary, though many partisans have strong objections to the idea of open primaries.
One final Colorado initiative would alter the process for initiatives themselves. The Centennial State could join Florida as the second state to require supermajorities for initiatives, with a 55 percent support threshold for a vote to succeed. (In Florida, it’s 60 pecent.) It would also change the current requirement to qualify for the ballot for signatures of 5 percent of registered voters statewide to 2 percent of registered voters in each of the state’s 35 Senate districts.
Taken together, these two alterations could make it more difficult to initiate amendments, but requiring a little extra consensus is potentially a good thing when it comes to making far-reaching constitutional changes by ballot measure. Had these rules been in place in 1992, for instance, Colorado’s “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” initiative would have failed, instead of significantly hampering the state’s ability to make progressive budgetary policy.
Access to Voting
One of the biggest challenges facing American democracy is making it less burdensome for voters to exercise their right to vote, something that has sadly become a fiercely partisan issue. Five states have recently eased that process by automatically registering eligible voters who interact with government offices like the department of motor vehicles, rather than putting the onus on individuals to register. Alaska could vote to join them by signing up every eligible voter who receives a payment from the state’s Permanent Fund, which gives every permanent resident an annual dividend from oil production royalties.
Unfortunately, Missouri voters will decide on whether to make voting more difficult for many people. Earlier this year, Republicans in the legislature passed a law requiring voters to show ID when they cast their ballots, though Missourians still have to pass a constitutional amendment referendum for it to go into effect. Voter ID purports to fight fraud, but impersonation fraud is practically nonexistent, while many eligible and registered voters lack a suitable ID and can’t obtain one without a burdensome expense. While voter ID polls popularly in the abstract, voter suppression doesn’t. Minnesota voters rejected voter ID in 2012 despite an early polling lead, so its success in Missouri isn’t yet guaranteed.
Campaign Finance
Fortunately, Missouri voters also face a choice on a progressive election reform, in this case a measure that would finally impose restrictions on the amount an individual donor can give directly to a candidate in state races. Missouri is one of a dozen of states that astoundingly has no such restrictions, which has led to ultra-wealthy individual donors cutting checks for over $1 million in 2016’s gubernatorial election. As one might expect, Democrats largely support restrictions while Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens—one of the beneficiaries of those giant donations—oppose them, but what little polling we have shows the measure easily passing.
South Dakota and Washington could even embark on a far more audacious campaign finance reform plan. Past Supreme Court rulings prevent states from restricting the amount candidates can spend and from giving candidates public funds to match their opponents’ private funds. To help level the playing field, both states would give voters campaign-donation vouchers to allot public funds to the candidates of their choosing, hoping that it will empower grassroots campaigns that rely on small donors. Polls show the measure succeeding in Washington, where last year, a similar measure passed easily in the city of Seattle, and both states’ reforms could serve as a model for others.
When Republican politicians vigorously fight to make it harder to vote, and officeholders of all stripes try to protect their own power at the expense of the average voter, ballot initiatives are an indispensable tool for making sure our government of the people truly is run by the people.