Regardless of the outcome of this election, freedom can't survive in America without fixing the perverse structural incentives for extremism in its electoral system
Thanks. The short version is by allowing parties to cross-nominate the same candidate if and when they want, it gives third parties a more fruitful and effective niche to operate under. So where it’s not banned, even though those are still first past the post elections, you see those sorts of parties doing better and finding more of a foothold than just always being fringe spoilers. Working Families Party and the Conservative Party in New York are the most prominent examples, but my paper runs through others and the history of how and why fusion was banned and those bans should be undone.
The author's conception of ‘liberalism’ is so clearly written between the lines of this essay as to make it an excellent argument for anarchy to those who profess individualism, or for unbridled majoritarian tyranny to those who profess collectivism.
”There is of course a danger of going too far and imposing excessive supermajority requirements. At the most extreme, the liberum veto, or unanimity rule, contributed to the collapse of pre-partition Poland, and similarly excessive unanimity rules hobbled the United States under the Articles of Confederation. A minority with unlimited ability to veto majority decisions can become a kind of minority rule unto itself.”
That the ability of a minority to veto majority decisions to exercise the state's coercively sustained monopoly power to physically coerce or punish the individual(s) comprising that minority is regarded by the author as “a kind of … rule unto itself” reveals that his ‘liberalism’ entails a liberal tolerance of tyranny.
Historically, such tyranical liberalism has consistently demonstrated its natural tendency to metastasise. Political power is the opiate of tyrants.
Eventually, the victims of tyranny will begin to recognise the odor of the renamed rose and to reject its painful thorns. The stench of theft prevails despite having been renamed ‘taxation’ and slavery is soon revealed aka ‘compulsory public service’.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” – John Adams
The United States is stll a young nation, and the limitations of the Constitution on the perils of democracy have only weakened since its inception. Adams and Jefferson may come to be known, not only as founders, but also prognosticators.
The choice to highlight ranked-choice voting here is a suboptimal one, because RCV has some pathologies that make it hard to elect compromise candidates, and consequently RCV is likely to perpetuate the polarization of our politics.
Take this simple example of a 3 candidate election, with candidate A on the left, candidate B in the middle, and candidate C on the right. Candidate A gains 40% of first-choice support, with all of their supporters ranking their choices A-B-C; candidate C also gets 40% of first-choice support, ranking their preferences as C-B-A. Candidate B gains only 20% of first-choice support, so they are eliminated in the first round of voting and B's support is reapportioned among A and C. However, in this case, B is actually the candidate with the broadest base of support!
This dynamic, much like that of the spoiler effect in first-past-the-post voting, means that it's a more winning strategy to polarize the electorate than it is to compromise.
For single-winner elections, STAR voting (https://equal.vote) is a much better choice. It always delivers a majoritarian result, but doesn't diminish the chances of compromise candidates. RCV just results in the continuation of the 2-party system with all of its pathologies; STAR voting actually offers a way for stable third parties arise, and for voters to be able to express their preferences without diminishing the chances of candidates other than their highest-rated pick.
There are definitely fruitful discussions about the merits of particular electoral reform ideas. I think RCV is positive; its benefits can also be overstated in some ways like I mentioned, such as for single-winner two-party general elections. I’m partial to proportional representation and also fusion, and have written papers on both those in the American context at the Rainey Center, but for this I wanted to give a more general overview of the common proposals on the table and the coalition-broadening goal which they all broadly share. One good thing about American federalism as I note is there’s a lot of room for different ideas to be pursued in different states and localities, and let the best ones rise to the top through a more organic experimental sort of process. Sometimes there are going to be specific things about a place’s history, traditions, culture, norms, etc. which might make some ideas a better fit than others, so I avoid trying to come down too much on necessarily having the singular best one for every state. Local adaptation and bottom-up solution-finding is good and important.
The following is part of a submission I made to Protect Democracy -
Proportional representation is a far-from-perfect form of democratic government
I note that Protect Democracy favors replacing the USA’s winner-take-all voting system with a proportional voting system. As a New Zealander, my assessment is that our MMP form of proportional representation has resulted in a government that is a long way from functioning optimally. Our last election (October 2023) lead to a new combination of parties and major reversals of previous government policy. The end result is considerable public dissatisfaction and economic disruption. With 6 parties in our current government, 2 minor parties “did deals” with the party winning most of the votes to form a coalition government. The outcome of the post-election coalition negotiations is a government effectively coerced into implementing minor party polices favored only by small numbers of voters. Some of the outcomes of our last election were:
• The previous (Labour party) government largely supported actions to mitigate Climate Change. It introduced a penalty tax to discourage the purchase of large petrol/diesel powered utility vehicles (pickup trucks) and a compensating tax rebate for electric vehicles. The current government removed the pickup truck penalty tax and the electric vehicle tax rebate and also introduced a road user charge for electric cars. The end result of the change of government is an upending of our car market and an increase in future CO2 emissions.
• The current business-focused government is slashing costs from healthcare, education, social housing and water supply infrastructure, while simultaneously promising to build new highways. The previous government’s substantial investments towards achieving long term goals in the former areas are now being obliterated.
My point in mentioning these examples (out of many policy reversals) is not to debate the issues themselves but to show that New Zealand’s proportional voting system does not stop political parties promoting wasteful “flavor of the month” policies to regain power. Proportional representation has not solved the racial equality problem we have here; has not made New Zealand a more egalitarian society and has not resulted in cross-party agreements to cement critical long term plans in place. While I admit to being a novice on the subject of politics, as best I can determine not one of the world’s political party-based democracies is currently delivering a particularly high level of voter satisfaction – despite the many variations of voting system. I believe this is because all current forms of party-based democracy have fostered – and continue to foster - neoliberal, trickle-down competitive behavior driven by wealth and over-sized egos. The end result for all party-based democracies, in my view, is that life has become less satisfying for the majority of citizens.
If of interest, I am happy to share my thoughts as to how democracy might be improved ...
Europe has multi party parliaments and I don’t see it solving anything. The problem is that the liberal consensus just isn’t popular and they won’t change.
And the “liberals” play lots of games to keep themselves in power. How many actual votes did labor get in the UK? How did French democracy respond to an uptick in support for the right (oh yeah, Marcon threw in his lot with the socialists and hamas).
This identifies the center of the problem. No system can be better than the incentives it creates. We are doomed to ever-worse candidates without thoughtful electoral reform.
There are good and bad ways to implement open non-partisan primaries. California’s open top two is an example of a bad implementation. Gehl & Porter recommend an open top-5 primary with RCV for the final election.
Pardon my ignorance here but I’m not familiar with fusion voting. Explain further?
It's a good question.
Here's a link to the author's own description: https://www.raineycenter.org/policy-brief/free-speech-on-the-ballot-the-case-for-fusion
Thanks. The short version is by allowing parties to cross-nominate the same candidate if and when they want, it gives third parties a more fruitful and effective niche to operate under. So where it’s not banned, even though those are still first past the post elections, you see those sorts of parties doing better and finding more of a foothold than just always being fringe spoilers. Working Families Party and the Conservative Party in New York are the most prominent examples, but my paper runs through others and the history of how and why fusion was banned and those bans should be undone.
The author's conception of ‘liberalism’ is so clearly written between the lines of this essay as to make it an excellent argument for anarchy to those who profess individualism, or for unbridled majoritarian tyranny to those who profess collectivism.
”There is of course a danger of going too far and imposing excessive supermajority requirements. At the most extreme, the liberum veto, or unanimity rule, contributed to the collapse of pre-partition Poland, and similarly excessive unanimity rules hobbled the United States under the Articles of Confederation. A minority with unlimited ability to veto majority decisions can become a kind of minority rule unto itself.”
That the ability of a minority to veto majority decisions to exercise the state's coercively sustained monopoly power to physically coerce or punish the individual(s) comprising that minority is regarded by the author as “a kind of … rule unto itself” reveals that his ‘liberalism’ entails a liberal tolerance of tyranny.
Historically, such tyranical liberalism has consistently demonstrated its natural tendency to metastasise. Political power is the opiate of tyrants.
Eventually, the victims of tyranny will begin to recognise the odor of the renamed rose and to reject its painful thorns. The stench of theft prevails despite having been renamed ‘taxation’ and slavery is soon revealed aka ‘compulsory public service’.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” – John Adams
The United States is stll a young nation, and the limitations of the Constitution on the perils of democracy have only weakened since its inception. Adams and Jefferson may come to be known, not only as founders, but also prognosticators.
The choice to highlight ranked-choice voting here is a suboptimal one, because RCV has some pathologies that make it hard to elect compromise candidates, and consequently RCV is likely to perpetuate the polarization of our politics.
Take this simple example of a 3 candidate election, with candidate A on the left, candidate B in the middle, and candidate C on the right. Candidate A gains 40% of first-choice support, with all of their supporters ranking their choices A-B-C; candidate C also gets 40% of first-choice support, ranking their preferences as C-B-A. Candidate B gains only 20% of first-choice support, so they are eliminated in the first round of voting and B's support is reapportioned among A and C. However, in this case, B is actually the candidate with the broadest base of support!
This dynamic, much like that of the spoiler effect in first-past-the-post voting, means that it's a more winning strategy to polarize the electorate than it is to compromise.
For single-winner elections, STAR voting (https://equal.vote) is a much better choice. It always delivers a majoritarian result, but doesn't diminish the chances of compromise candidates. RCV just results in the continuation of the 2-party system with all of its pathologies; STAR voting actually offers a way for stable third parties arise, and for voters to be able to express their preferences without diminishing the chances of candidates other than their highest-rated pick.
There are definitely fruitful discussions about the merits of particular electoral reform ideas. I think RCV is positive; its benefits can also be overstated in some ways like I mentioned, such as for single-winner two-party general elections. I’m partial to proportional representation and also fusion, and have written papers on both those in the American context at the Rainey Center, but for this I wanted to give a more general overview of the common proposals on the table and the coalition-broadening goal which they all broadly share. One good thing about American federalism as I note is there’s a lot of room for different ideas to be pursued in different states and localities, and let the best ones rise to the top through a more organic experimental sort of process. Sometimes there are going to be specific things about a place’s history, traditions, culture, norms, etc. which might make some ideas a better fit than others, so I avoid trying to come down too much on necessarily having the singular best one for every state. Local adaptation and bottom-up solution-finding is good and important.
The following is part of a submission I made to Protect Democracy -
Proportional representation is a far-from-perfect form of democratic government
I note that Protect Democracy favors replacing the USA’s winner-take-all voting system with a proportional voting system. As a New Zealander, my assessment is that our MMP form of proportional representation has resulted in a government that is a long way from functioning optimally. Our last election (October 2023) lead to a new combination of parties and major reversals of previous government policy. The end result is considerable public dissatisfaction and economic disruption. With 6 parties in our current government, 2 minor parties “did deals” with the party winning most of the votes to form a coalition government. The outcome of the post-election coalition negotiations is a government effectively coerced into implementing minor party polices favored only by small numbers of voters. Some of the outcomes of our last election were:
• The previous (Labour party) government largely supported actions to mitigate Climate Change. It introduced a penalty tax to discourage the purchase of large petrol/diesel powered utility vehicles (pickup trucks) and a compensating tax rebate for electric vehicles. The current government removed the pickup truck penalty tax and the electric vehicle tax rebate and also introduced a road user charge for electric cars. The end result of the change of government is an upending of our car market and an increase in future CO2 emissions.
• The current business-focused government is slashing costs from healthcare, education, social housing and water supply infrastructure, while simultaneously promising to build new highways. The previous government’s substantial investments towards achieving long term goals in the former areas are now being obliterated.
My point in mentioning these examples (out of many policy reversals) is not to debate the issues themselves but to show that New Zealand’s proportional voting system does not stop political parties promoting wasteful “flavor of the month” policies to regain power. Proportional representation has not solved the racial equality problem we have here; has not made New Zealand a more egalitarian society and has not resulted in cross-party agreements to cement critical long term plans in place. While I admit to being a novice on the subject of politics, as best I can determine not one of the world’s political party-based democracies is currently delivering a particularly high level of voter satisfaction – despite the many variations of voting system. I believe this is because all current forms of party-based democracy have fostered – and continue to foster - neoliberal, trickle-down competitive behavior driven by wealth and over-sized egos. The end result for all party-based democracies, in my view, is that life has become less satisfying for the majority of citizens.
If of interest, I am happy to share my thoughts as to how democracy might be improved ...
CVW
Europe has multi party parliaments and I don’t see it solving anything. The problem is that the liberal consensus just isn’t popular and they won’t change.
And the “liberals” play lots of games to keep themselves in power. How many actual votes did labor get in the UK? How did French democracy respond to an uptick in support for the right (oh yeah, Marcon threw in his lot with the socialists and hamas).
This identifies the center of the problem. No system can be better than the incentives it creates. We are doomed to ever-worse candidates without thoughtful electoral reform.
There are good and bad ways to implement open non-partisan primaries. California’s open top two is an example of a bad implementation. Gehl & Porter recommend an open top-5 primary with RCV for the final election.
Ref.: https://gehlporter.com
I voted third party in Wisconsin. Im sick of the duopoly drama.