But when we look forward, the bias to stick with the status quo knows no party. What’s wrong with the Electoral College? Does it not protect smaller states from being dominated by larger ones? Do we really need obscure changes to the voting system? Why are so many people obsessed with district boundaries? And isn’t it completely delusional to think that these fundamental structures can be changed?
We must be clear: the institutions of American democracy as they exist today remain fundamentally unjust, and the effort to fix them is part of a global struggle for vibrant, truly representative multi-party democracy. That’s no “pie in the sky” — it’s a fight in the streets, in local and national politics, and in social media. This is a primer, a starting point to prepare anyone to be part of this fight.
American Electoral Injustice
There are fundamental injustices present in American democracy today, and actions we can take to address them:
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Privileging white, rural voters in the presidential election is unjust: The popular vote winner is not the winner of the presidential election -- not even close, as Hillary Clinton’s 2.8M popular vote victory margin shows. The Electoral College was established in part because it allowed slave states to count their non-voting slave population toward their electoral votes. To this day, it favors rural white voters while it disadvantages black, Hispanic and Asian voters. It must, ultimately, be abolished.
Actions we can take:
Support the National Popular Vote Compact, which already has 165 of 270 electoral votes needed to take force. Once implemented, the President can be elected by popular vote. A constitutional amendment is not required, but may follow.
You can support the compact by contacting your state legislators if your state is not already on board (use the web form on their site), by donating, and by following and sharing NPV content on social media. And as the NPV gets closer to reality, we need to be ready to defend it against the inevitable backlash. The Electoral College won’t go away quietly.
You can fully familiarize yourself with the facts through the links above, and share them (illustrations like this one may help). Importantly, in the face of status quo bias, we cannot afford to be mealy-mouthed or ambiguous in our opposition to this broken system.
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House and state legislature elections are unjust: Partisan districting (“gerrymandering”) is used to such an extent that even in a two-party system, one party can win the majority of the votes while another can win the majority of the seats. At times Democrats use this to their advantage; more frequently, Republicans do, giving them a built-in advantage in state legislatures and in the House of Representatives.
Actions we can take:
Important lawsuits are underway to challenge the constitutionality of gerrymandering. Common Cause is one of the main groups fighting against partisan redistricting and has offices in 35 states. Ballot initiatives and state legislative action can be used to institute bipartisan or nonpartisan redistricting commissions.
This is not enough due to urban/rural clustering and other biases, and only a commitment to greater proportionality will sufficiently address unfair representation. More on this in the next section.
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Suppression of the vote is unjust: Many states engage in deliberate suppression of the vote, by closing polling locations, altering registration and voting requirements, and wrongfully purging voters from voter rolls. A wrongful purge of alleged felons in Florida was almost certainly outcome-determinative in the election of George W. Bush in 2000.
Actions we can take:
The American Civil Liberties Union (affiliates) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (local units) have a long history of fighting for voting rights for all Americans, and both benefit from volunteers and financial support.
Project Vote promotes nonpartisan common-sense reforms such as automatic (“opt-out”) voter registration. They have an excellent bill tracker you can use to find out what’s going on in your state.
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The spoiler effect is unjust: The first-past-the-post voting system used in US elections denigrates third party candidates with low viability to the near-perpetual status of spoilers. It pits largely like-minded voters against each other, as the countless attacks on candidates like Jill Stein and Ralph Nader demonstrate.
Actions we can take:
Voting systems that allow voters to express preferences suffer from less severe spoiler effects (they may still exhibit favorite betrayal). Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, is a popular alternative voting method and was recently introduced in Maine using a ballot initiative. FairVote promotes such initiatives across the country.
Following civil rights and election reform organizations’ efforts on social media is a good way to keep this information visible in your life, while also encouraging you to share vetted information graphics, news stories, papers, and so on. Here are some accounts you can follow on Twitter — it’ll take just a couple of minutes:
Fairvote, ACLU (state-level affiliate Twitter accounts), NAACP, National Popular Vote, Project Vote, Brennan Center (assesses voting-related policy issues), Common Cause (state-level and staff accounts), the Center for Election Science.
Justice through proportionality: a nearly forgotten history
A much more controversial question is whether voting for a single winner (at the level of a district, or the nation) leads to unjust representation. None of the aforementioned reforms address this fundamental question.
America has struggled with this question before, mainly in the first half of the 20th century. Douglas J. Amy writes in his (highly recommended) essay “A Brief History of Proportional Representation in the United States”:
Large cities often were dominated by ‘party machines,’ of which Tammany Hall in New York City was the most infamous. Bribery, kickbacks, favoritism, and voting fraud were rampant in these cities. The Progressives wanted to clean up these cities and blunt the power of the party bosses.
As part of these reform efforts, cities including New York City adopted proportional representation (PR) for their local elections. The new electoral system immediately increased diversity:
In Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Toledo, African-Americans had never been able to win city office until the coming of PR. Significantly, after these cities abandoned PR, African-Americans again found it almost impossible to get elected.
Opponents of the system — chiefly the political machines that had lost power because of it — appealed to white anxieties to get rid of it. In Cincinnati they warned of a “Negro mayor” as a worst case scenario. The repeal campaigns were relentless:
In Cleveland, well-financed opponents sponsored five repeal referendums in the first ten years of PR, with the final one succeeding. Similarly, PR opponents in Hamilton finally won their repeal effort after four failed referendums in 12 years. [emphasis mine]
Proportional representation meets resistance precisely because it works to create more diverse democracies. Groups that lose power as a result will seek to reclaim it. The lesson from America’s forays into proportionality is not that such efforts are doomed to fail, but that we must be prepared for the inevitable backlash that follows any reform.
Two-party injustice
A system that strongly favors only two parties is fundamentally unjust, because it narrows the plausible choices so dramatically that for many voters, there is only Hobson’s choice: take it or leave it.
The US system in particular has become so deeply polarized that one party now represents LGBT rights, access to abortions, protection of the environment, progressive taxation, and so on, while the other represents the exact opposite of these goals. At best, this is “Good vs. Evil”, at worst it is “Lesser of two evils” — in either case, there is really not much room for choice.
In this context, voters turn against each other: undecided voters are shamed as stupid, while third party voters are branded as pariahs. Reasoned debate is chilled, because nobody wants to be seen as supporting “that other candidate”. And minority concerns are either ignored or added to implausibly long laundry lists of issues a candidate supposedly will address.
Things are even more stark for the increasing number of people who are not even given the “Do you want to destroy all the things you care about — yes/no?” option, because they live in districts where candidates run unopposed. They simply get to tick a box, with absolutely no consequences. That is the perversity of single-winner plurality systems: they lead to localized unopposed single-party rule. And that trend is increasing due to geographic sorting. According to Ballotpedia:
“In 2014, 32.8 percent of people living in states with senate elections had no readily available choice about who to vote for, while 40.4 percent of those living in states with house elections similarly had no readily available choice.”
The global fight
Introducing ranked-choice voting or approval voting for presidential elections would certainly lead to a more diverse candidate field and healthier debates. It’s important to understand, though, that the fight for proportionality requires more comprehensive solutions: ranked-choice voting in a single-winner system is not proportional.
Campaigners around the world agree, and they fight for greater proportionality in their legislatures. These campaigns are most likely to succeed after systemic failures become undeniable. New Zealand experienced two such system failures, in 1978 and 1981, when the party which came in second-place in the popular vote received a majority of the seats in parliament (just as the Republicans did in the US House of Representatives in 2012).
After years of planning and debate, in 1993, New Zealand finally voted to scrap its single-winner plurality parliamentary electoral system in favor of proportional representation, with 53.9% of the vote, even enlarging its House of Representatives to accommodate the new system. In 2011, with plenty of experience under their belt, 57.8% of voters decided to stick with the change. The end result: greater diversity, real majorities, and a viable multi-party system.
Their success is inspirational to other campaigns, such as Fairvote Canada and Make Votes Matter UK. Both point to their recent election results as evidence that voters’ voices aren’t heard. In the UK 2015 election, 24.4% of all votes went to alternative parties like the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, and the pro-Brexit UKIP — but these parties combined only received 1.5% of the seats in the House of Commons.
Indeed, the Conservatives hold a majority of seats while only receiving 36.9% of the vote. This is what’s called a manufactured majority: one which is the result of “wasted votes” that don’t go towards any elected candidates.
In Canada, the frustration with the existing system became so palpable that Justin Trudeau made a campaign promise that the 2015 election would be the last one under the first-past-the-post system — only to walk that promise back once he got elected, citing lack of voter interest. Now voters are reminding him to keep the promise.
It’s not the first time progress has stalled. So far, Canada has seen more than a dozen different Commissions, Assemblies and Reports focused on electoral reform, ten of which advocated for a mixed-member proportional representation system (more on this below). We should all pay attention to these efforts, not just out of solidarity, but also because successful reform in Canada could serve as a model for American reform efforts.
When confusion reigns, anti-intellectualism wins
Many reform attempts are, of course, unsuccessful. In 2005, British Columbia’s electoral reform referendum for a proportional representation system failed in spite of 57.7% support (60% was needed). The 2011 UK “Alternative Vote” Referendum for a non-proportional (ranked-choice) system failed spectacularly, with only 32% of voters expressing support.
In 2010, Burlington, Vermont in the United States repealed ranked-choice voting with a 4% margin (see Fairvote’s Lessons from Burlington). And the aforementioned proportional representation systems in the United States have largely been rolled back (Cambridge, MA being a notable exception).
These city-level efforts for proportional representation were usually based on the Single Transferable Vote system. You rank your preferred candidates in order, and a quota-based formula is used to ensure proportionality. While voting is easy, the system as a whole can be a bit daunting to understand.
Indeed, even in straightforward ranked-choice voting without a proportionality mechanism, it can be difficult to understand how/why winners are chosen, and it does sometimes produce counterintuitive results. In particular, it squeezes out centrists because they’re usually fewer people’s first choice. The rank-order makes it possible for people to interpret the same result very differently: “candidate X should have won!”, “candidate Y should have won!”
When confusion reigns, anti-intellectual arguments may prevail, leading to repeals. Still, most election experts agree that even non-proportional ranked-choice voting is a major improvement on first-past-the-post voting. This is why the Center for Election Science supported Maine’s adoption of ranked-choice voting, rebutted some misconceptions, and offered reasoned criticism. Single Transferable Vote can be seen as the “upgrade path” for ranked-choice voting that helps to achieve proportionality.
The laboratories of democracy
In his excellent book about electoral reform and proportional representation, Real Choices / New Voices, Douglas Amy (Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College) writes:
America was once known as the laboratory of democracy, but in the area of elections we are now in danger of becoming the museum of democracy.
Indeed, wars, revolutions, secessions, decolonization, and other changes of the global political landscape have turned many parts of the world into testbeds for new political systems, some democratic, some not, while the United States system has only been modified incrementally.
This allows us today to look around the world and evaluate different political systems using any empirical criteria we care about, such as:
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Is the political system stable, or do governments routinely collapse?
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Is the parliamentary allocation of seats proportional or not?
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Are voters frustrated or confused by the system or not?
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Can new political movements successfully emerge or not?
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Do extremists, kleptocrats and authoritarians successfully exploit the system or not?
Of course, any electoral system exists in the context of countless other conditions which must be taken into consideration. Nonetheless, the systems that have over time become dominant in developed democracies tend to fall into two categories:
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Party list voting: each party compiles a list of potential representatives for each (multi-winner) district, and the total allocation of seats is determined based on the % of vote they get. In the popular “open list” variant, voters can specify which candidate from the party they prefer, while the party percentage still determines overall allocation.
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Mixed member representation (MMP): voters vote for a district candidate in a single-winner election (first vote), and for a party (second vote). The party vote determines overall allocation of seats, and candidates from the party’s list are seated to ensure proportionality consistent with the party’s total allocation. This system can be open to independent candidates not associated with a party.
In both cases, there may be a need for leveling to achieve true proportionality, and the degree of proportionality is ultimately implementation-dependent. The Fairvote Canada graphic above compares the index of disproportionality for different countries’ voting system; Canada’s parliamentary committee on election reform recommended a value of 5 or less.
In most European democracies, the parliament elects the chief executive, which means that parties typically must form coalitions to gain the requisite majority. In contrast, Latin American democracies tend to bias towards presidential systems with proportional representation only in parliament, rendering them more vulnerable to slips into autocracy (hyper-presidentialism).
Even in parliamentary systems, some variables increase instability and uncertainty. Proportional democracies without an electoral threshold may produce so many tiny parties that coalitions are difficult to form. In such an environment, extremists who promise easy answers may gain substantial shares of the vote while their opposition is divided.
This is the case in the Netherlands. Its electoral threshold is a single seat, so there are countless parties in parliament. In next year’s election, anti-Muslim extremist Geert Wilders’ party could get the most seats, but “the most seats” per current polling translates to only about 25% of the vote. 75% of the country opposes the man, yet his party would then by convention be tasked with leading a coalition government. (So far, fortunately, no other major party wants such a coalition.)
To be sure, the next year will be a stress test for Germany, France and the Netherlands, all of which face newly emboldened far-right extremists at the polls. But contrary to popular belief, proportional representation systems overall do not lead to more frequent elections than plurality-voting systems, according to political scientist Dennis Pilon:
“Between 1945 and 1998, plurality-using countries averaged 16.7 elections, while [proportional representation] using countries averaged 16 elections. Since their shift to MMP in 1996, New Zealand has gone early to the polls only once in four PR elections.”
America has its own laboratories of democracy: the states. With Maine taking the lead, other states have the opportunity to trial new electoral systems for gubernatorial elections, state legislatures, and municipal elections. Fairvote is the leading organization in the US supporting such efforts and vetting ideas for feasibility, including reforms aimed at achieving proportionality.
Of course, it would be irresponsible to make sweeping changes without good data about the potential effects. The Center for Election Science provides such data, most recently through a representative panel vote that compares the results of the 2016 US presidential election under different voting systems. The Center recommends the use of approval voting (“pick as many as you like”) over ranked-choice voting.
It’s easy to get lost in the arguments about which system produces better outcomes, and to retreat again into the comfortable status quo bias: if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it! But as reformers around the world know all too well, the first-past-the-post system is broken, and the careful exploration of new frontiers in American democracy is not a journey without a destination — it’s a journey towards a more just society.
Towards vibrant multi-party democracies
I’ve lived in the US for the last 9 years. I grew up in Germany, which uses a mixed-member proportional system. It’s not a perfect system (the two votes can be a bit confusing), but I never felt that my vote was wasted, even when voting for the opposition.
My mother was involved in the early years of Germany’s Green Party and generally a political person, so as kids we would be brought along to all manner of protests: against nuclear missiles in Europe, against nuclear power, for educational reforms, and so on.
I witnessed how what started as a movement in the streets became a party, and how the party joined first the parliament and then the federal government, where it successfully pushed for the recognition of same-sex civil unions in 2001, for the end of nuclear energy, for massive investments in renewables. Today, even small towns have Green Party offices and the party is usually represented in city councils.
In contrast, in the US, the Green Party is routinely treated like a cancer that must be excised, and its supporters and representatives are likened to the scum of the Earth — especially by progressives. We all understand why. The spoiler effect is very real, and it produces these toxic social and political outcomes.
Of course, Germany’s current political system represents a massive transformation of the nightmarish, genocidal dictatorship that preceded it. It was developed with help from the Allies after they liberated the country from Hitler. Talk about a system failure preceding reforms!
America will hopefully never experience its own version of this nightmare. Yet the ongoing national emergency of Trumpism, the fact that 82% of voters expressed “disgust” with the 2016 presidential campaign just ahead of the election, the manufactured majorities in the House and in the states, the historic disparity between 2016 presidential popular vote and election outcome, the brazen attempts to hijack democracy in states like North Carolina, all of these represent system failures, too.
This isn’t about tinkering, it’s about transforming people’s hunger for change into everyday politics. Imagine what movements like Black Lives Matter or #NODAPL could accomplish if they had a realistic path to political representation — and if their ideas were routinely put to the test of debate in legislatures at all levels.
The struggle for vibrant multi-party democracies is global. It is at its heart a struggle for justice, for including voices that were previously silenced. There are victories we can achieve in the near term, and others we may not achieve in our own lifetimes. Yet, we must fight with both near-term and long-term goals in mind. Be a part of this.
Notes, disclaimers and caveats
This is version 1.0 of the primer. The most up-to-date version can always be found on Medium.
Thanks to Aaron Hamlin of the Center of Election Science for providing feedback on an earlier draft of this primer.
The text of this primer is in the public domain; you may use it as you wish. Feel free to contact me (Erik Moeller) at <eloquence AT gmail DOT com> if you have comments or corrections.
“Republic vs. democracy”: You may feel tempted to point out that America is a republic, not a democracy. This is indeed true for virtually every democracy in the world today: the will of the voters is constrained by constitutions, and translated by elected representatives. It is not an argument for an Electoral College, or for first-past-the-post voting, or any other specific characteristics of American democracy criticized here.
Lower-case republican ideas such as non-negotiable human rights, separation of powers, and political parties are consistent with all the ideas expressed here.
Other electoral injustices: This is not an exhaustive view of electoral justice issues. Without question, money can have a toxic effect on political systems, and does indeed have that effect in the United States. Ballot access issues can make third party politics impractical even when the system otherwise is favorable, and do indeed contribute to the unusually strong two-party dynamic in the United States. And if the mechanics of democracy (the actual voting equipment and logistics) fail or are susceptible to manipulation, it can cause a whole different category of system failure.
Yet, the evidence is strong that multi-party systems are better prepared to confront such issues, which are often discussed only outside the mainstream of politics in the United States. Jill Stein’s multi-million dollar fundraiser to pursue recounts (even just to expose serious flaws like the ones found in Michigan) can serve as an example — Stein remains a villain of the 2016 election for many, and it was easy to marginalize and ridicule her efforts due to her negligible share of the vote.