To reform our policy, we must first reform our electoral system

To implement policies that promote progress, it is not enough to elect better people.

The following is an excerpt from my second book Promoting Progress: A Radical New Agenda to Create Abundance for All. You can order e-books at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase for full price on Amazon.

Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:

See my other articles on Electoral Reform:

1. What is the matter with American politics?

2. The Political-Industrial Complex

3. The Primary Problem with American politics

4. How did American politics get so polarized?

5. To reform our policy, we must first reform our electoral system (this article)

6. Is reforming American politics possible?

7. more

As I mentioned in previous posts, the American political system suffers from serious problem that make implementing a progress-based reform agenda almost impossible.

Our current political system is undermining progress because it violates many of the concepts within the Five Keys to Progress and How Progress Works. The current American political system:

• Concentrates political power into the hands of very liberal Democrats and very conservative Republicans

• Highly restricts competition between political parties

• Makes it very difficult for new parties to be formed and become competitive

• Overcentralizes power into the hands of the federal government

• Restricts the ability of local and state governments to experiment with different policies

• Makes it very difficult to identify and implement policies that actually work.

Goals for Electoral Reform

We must reform the terms of political competition in the United States. Replacing leaders with “better people” is not enough. The terms of political competition produce the incentives, which determine the behavior of our political leaders. Once we reform the terms of competition, our leaders and institutions will start behaving in very different ways.

I believe that any reform of our electoral system must start with the following principles:

1. Elected representatives must better reflect the ideological diversity of voters. Moderate voters, who make up a sizable share of the electorate, must be represented in Congress and state legislatures.

2. Elected representatives must also reflect the geographical diversity of voters as well. Americans would be very reluctant to give up “their” representative, and since much diversity in the nation is geographical, they should not have to do so.

3. The general election, where turnout is high and the electorate far more representative, must be the decisive election in determining which candidate wins.

4. We must remove the de facto duopoly that the Democratic and Republican primaries have over candidate selection.

My Proposal

This is one issue where supporters of Progress may have widely divergent views, but my preferred electoral reform would be to establish the following for all federal, state and local elections:

1. Establish an Independent primary.

2. Shift to ranked-choice voting.

3. Shift from single-member districts to multi-member districts for the U.S. House, Electoral College and state legislatures.

4. Select legislative leadership using ranked-choice voting by the entire membership.

An Independent Primary

To abolish the de facto nominating power of a small minority of partisan primary voters, I propose that we establish Independent primaries for federal, state and local elections. An Independent primary would function just like our current Democratic and Republican primaries, except it would be open to only Independent voters and candidates. This would empower the single largest bloc of voters in the American political system: Independents.

Existing Democratic, Republican, Green, and Libertarian party primaries would remain unchanged. Voters who are registered party members would still nominate their candidates in the partisan primaries before the general election. Ideally, the primaries would be closed primaries (i.e. only party members can vote in them), but that is not essential to the plan.

The big difference would be that the huge bloc of Independent voters would also be able to vote in their own primaries. Any candidate who is not running under a party label would be allowed to seek the Independent nomination. Any voter who is not registered as a voter in a specific party would be able to vote in the Independent primary.

The winner of the Independent primary would automatically be on the general election ballot. Currently, Independents and new third parties need to mount separate petition drives to get on the ballot. In some states, the number of required petition signatures is so high that they realistically cannot get on the ballot.

Independent candidates would also have all the rights and obligations of the Democratic and Republican nominees. This would affect fund-raising rules, campaign spending, advertising rules, and debate appearances. Hopefully, all of these changes would enable Independents to generate greater free media coverage.

An Independent primary would probably create a three-way race in most general elections. In some cases, the Independent nominee would be to the left of the Democratic party or to the right of the Republican party, but in most cases, Independent candidates would probably be someone from the ideological center. This would mean that Centrist Independents would finally have a candidate to support in the general election.

Ranked-Choice Voting

An Independent primary would make it easier for Independents to get on the general election ballot, but under the current electoral system, they would probably lose. Under our current plurality-voting system, voters are worried about wasting their ballot by voting for a candidate who cannot win.

Ranked-choice voting would end those fears. Ranked-choice voting is currently used in Ireland, the Australian Senate, and Malta.

In ranked-choice voting, voters do not just vote for their favorite candidate. Instead, voters rank the candidates. So let’s say that I am a center-right voter. Under the current system, I would probably vote for a Republican candidate, and that would be the end of it. Under ranked-choice voting, I might rank the Independent as my favorite candidate, then the Republican as my second, then the Libertarian as my third and the Democrat as my fourth.

Under the ranked-choice voting system, if no candidate wins a majority of votes, the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated from contention and their votes are shifted to the voter’s second favorite candidate. This continues until one candidate receives a majority of the vote. So I could vote for the Independent candidate or third party candidate and not worry about accidentally helping the Democrat win.

In the vast majority of the cases, small third-party candidates would be eliminated quickly. Vote counting in most districts would shift to a three-way race between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

All Democratic voters in Red districts would have a strong incentive to support a centrist Independent candidate as their second option. So would Republican voters in Blue districts. A de facto political alliance between Independents and the minority party would be a formidable force in the vast majority of electoral districts.

The exact outcome would vary greatly by election, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Independents would win up to one-third of the seats. For virtually all Presidential, Gubernatorial and Congressional elections, Independents would have a real chance of winning.

With three viable candidates, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would be able to win a majority on the first round of counting. Many Democrats and Republicans would rather vote for Independents as their second-favorite candidate rather than have their hated opponents elected. This would make it quite possible for Independents to win a majority in later rounds of counting.

Moderate Democratic candidates and moderate Republican candidates would have a strong incentive to choose to run as Independents as doing so would give them a better chance of getting to the general election. Knowing that they would not be filtered out by more ideological primary voters will open up the general election playing field.

Ranked-choice voting in three-way races including viable Independent candidates would give major-party candidates a powerful incentive to move toward the political center and run more positive campaigns. Neither Democrats in liberal districts, nor Republicans in conservative districts could afford to ignore the threat of a viable centrist Independent candidate.

Ranked-choice voting is not some pie-in-the-sky idea. There is currently a great deal of momentum for it in the United States, though it does not receive much national media attention.

Ranked-choice voting has already been implemented via popular initiative in the states of Maine (in 2016), Alaska (in 2020), and Nevada (in 2022). Particularly in states where referenda or initiatives can change the electoral law, such a change is very achievable. If ranked-choice voting were implemented in the third of states where citizens can choose their electoral system, it would have a major effect on federal politics.

Even if only 5 or 10% of Congressional and state legislative elections were won by Independents, it would send a thunderclap through the entire American political system. Governing majorities would immediately be much harder to construct without support from Independents. Rather than being forced to caucus with either Democrats or Republicans, Independents would have the incentive to create their own caucus. Partisan leaders would be forced to negotiate with a bloc of elected Independent senators, and they would have little leverage over them.

Toning Down the Negativity

One of the best outcomes of ranked-choice voting is that candidates have a strong incentive to run positive campaigns. In our current system, candidates have a strong incentive to run highly negative campaigns that focus on making their opponents look bad. They do so for one reason: it works. Negative campaigning hurts both candidates, but it hurts the opponent even more. So candidates win elections by destroying their opponent.

Major-party candidates would want to be perceived as the second-best option for Independent voters. Very few candidates will be able to win a majority of the vote on the first count. Attacking a person’s favorite candidate is a terrible way to win an electoral majority in ranked-choice voting, so candidates would probably be forced to change their campaign style.

Under ranked-choice voting, major-party candidates cannot win elections simply by demonizing the other side. Attempting to do so would only increase the chances that Independents would win.

Multi-member districts

Creating an Independent primary and ranked-choice voting would go a long way toward removing the de facto veto power of ideological activists in the primaries. It would not, however, overcome the lack of representation of Republicans in Blue States and Democrats in Red States. While each are a minority of voters in those states, they still make up a sizable portion of the electorate. Despite this, they have very little representation.

To remedy this problem, I believe that adding in one more reform would also be justified: convert U.S. House and State Legislative seats into multi-member districts. Multi-member districts are somewhat of a blend of America’s current single-member district system and the proportional representation system that is common in Europe. Multi-member districts are currently used in Germany, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales.

Multi-member districts have the advantage of representing ideological and geographical diversity, and eliminating gerrymandering. Even if Independents win absolutely no elections, giving conservative voters in California and liberal voters in Kansas representation would be a big step forward in federal representation. So would the elimination of gerrymandering.

Multi-member districts would have their biggest effect in states where one party has a huge partisan advantage (i.e. Red states and Blue states). Democrats in Red states currently have virtually no representation. The same goes for Republicans in Blue states. Under multi-member districts, the minority party would get something like 40% of the seats, a radical change from our current system.

Converting the U.S. House from single-member districts to multi-member districts in most states would be quite simple: just establish each state as one multi-member district. Since the vast majority of states have 10 or less House seats, this is a fairly easy conversion.

Let’s use Colorado, a medium-sized state, as an example. Colorado currently has 7 seats in the U.S. House. Colorado would go from having 7 separate single-member districts to one 7-seat multi-member district. So if the Democrats get 41% of the vote, Republicans get 39% of the vote, and the Independents get 14% of the vote, the parties would get 3, 3, and 1 seat respectively.

While combining multi-member districts and ranked-choice voting is more complicated when it comes to counting votes, it is not necessarily much more difficult for voters. To make the voting process easier for voters, they should be allowed to rank either parties or individual candidates. By voting for parties, voters would effectively agree to the rankings established by the results of the primaries.

Voters who vote for individual candidates would probably have to be fairly well-informed about each candidate. It is not, however, difficult for even casual voters to understand what each of the political parties stands for.

Uninformed partisan voters would simply vote for either Democrats or Republicans as their first choice and then Independents as their second choice. Many uninformed voters who dislike both major parties could just vote for the Independent “party” as their first choice and then either the Democratic or Republican party as their second preference and then stop.

My proposal does leave something of a problem for very populous states such as California (with 53 House seats), Texas (with 36 seats) New York, and Florida (with 27 seats each). Rather than one very large multi-member district, each of these states should probably be divided up into multiple districts with fewer seats. This would break up the power of the dominant party (either Democrat or Republican), and enable representation of the minority party and Independents, while still preserving a close geographical link between voters and representatives.

Even better, entire metro areas with a population of over 2 million or so should comprise a single district. This would give them separate delegations to metro areas with enough of a population for 3 House seats.  Geographically distinct rural regions would form their separate multi-member district. The number of seats in each district would be determined by population. If multi-member districts are required to consist of entire counties, this would undermine the opportunities for gerrymandering.

To use a particularly complicated example, let’s consolidate California’s current number of 52 House districts into 7 different multi-member districts. Four districts would represent the four largest metro areas in the state, while the other 3 districts would represent separate rural regions. (All the numbers below are estimates only and would change with each census).

Los Angeles metro area: one 17-seat district

SF Bay metro area: one 9-seat district

San Diego metro area: one 4-seat district

Sacramento metro area: one 3-seat district

Northern rural areas: one 5-seat district

Central rural areas: one 9-seat district

Eastern rural areas: one 5-seat district

The Electoral College, which indirectly elects the President, could also function with identical multi-member districts. Electoral College votes would no longer be passed to one candidate as a single huge bloc. Instead, states would be divided up into multi-member districts, each of which would distribute Electoral College votes in a more representative method. This maintains the Electoral College while diminishing its distortions of the popular vote.

A similar electoral system could also be implemented for state legislatures, except each federal district might be divided up further into smaller districts. Currently, the number of state legislative districts per state varies between 49 for the state of Nebraska and 253 for Pennsylvania. Consolidating the current districts into multi-member districts with approximately 3-9 members each, which roughly correspond to the proposal above seems quite workable.

Departisanizing Legislative Leadership

The final reform that I propose is replacing partisan legislative leadership positions at the federal and state level with non-partisan committees representative of the entire chamber. This may seem a bit “pie-in-the-sky”, but we already have a model for how it might work: the Nebraska state legislature. The Nebraska state legislature is the only non-partisan legislature in the United States, and it has found a way to deliver results without party leaders.

To avoid getting bogged down into details in the main section of this book, I have moved the details of my proposal to Appendix A at the end of this book. In the current section, I will only go over the main principles of my proposal, which are:

1. Abolish all partisan leadership positions, including Majority Leader, Minority Leader, and Whips.

2. Elect Speakers via secret ballot and ranked-choice voting. This will make the Speaker representative of the entire legislature, not just the majority of the majority party.

3. Shift the power to set the legislative agenda to a non-partisan Executive Board elected by all members via secret ballot and ranked-choice voting.

4. Shift the power to set committed assignments to a non-partisan Committee of Committees elected by a similar means.

5. Members of those committees may only serve one two-year term every 10 years. Nor may they serve on any other committee. This will limit their ability to hoard power over time.

6. The vast majority of policy negotiations will be shifted back to the committees (as they were before 1970).

Our current leadership system gives power to the majority of the majority party, virtually all of whom are elected by low-turnout primaries and non-competitive general elections. Now, Independents and moderates within each party would be empowered. And because of my other proposed reforms, those two groups would be far bigger than they are currently.

The combination of Independents, potential third parties, Democrats from Red states, and Republicans from Blue states would form a significant bloc in Congress. With such a bloc in the center, less partisan centrists would have a real chance of getting elected to governing committees.

Because those non-partisan committees would control the legislative agenda and committee assignments, this change would ripple through the entire institution. Whereas our current system empowers ideologues from non-competitive Blue/Red states, the new system would empower those who are willing to create centrist majorities on each issue. Non-elected bureaucrats would have to shift their stances to maintain Congressional funding.

Many of you may think that achieving the above is impossible, but it is not so far-fetched as it may seem. In a future post, I will explain how we can actually implement these reforms.

The above was an excerpt from my second book Promoting Progress: A Radical New Agenda to Create Abundance for All. You can order e-books at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase for full price on Amazon.

Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:

See my other articles on Electoral Reform:

1. What is the matter with American politics?

2. The Political-Industrial Complex

3. The Primary Problem with American politics

4. How did American politics get so polarized?

5. To reform our policy, we must first reform our electoral system (this article)

6. Is reforming American politics possible?

7. more