Surely our current form of representative democracy has failed this challenge. The key is whether we can figure out the solution soon enough to prevent its collapse or whether the leadership sees their imminent demise and starts scuttling the ship.
The current regime solves the problem by saying that one person has the answers. All voters need to do is trust him and, as long as you don't cross him, life will be fine. That's an easy message for voters to digest no matter how undemocratic it is.
Proportional representation may be a useful tool but selling it to voters, like many other liberal approaches (RCV), is not inherently easy for people to grasp. And it's not the voter's fault; it's the messenger's fault for not distilling these ideas in a way that can be easily grasped.
My perception is that our collective attention spans are very short, the things we care about are curated by algorithms and as long as there is a roof over our head and our devices are connected, there is little that can shake us out of our stupor.
So, someone needs to package a democratic answer to authoritarianism that starts with some easily understood ideas like:
- Open the two-party system to ALL voters starting with local elections
- Expand the use of electronic voting
- Hold local officials accountable for local successes and failures through social media
- Positive counter-messaging on issues like immigration, declining crime rates, better health outcomes, cleaner environment and a system of government that works for ALL citizens, not just a few
- More forceful messaging on the threats from authoritarians, militarized law enforcement, dirtier technologies, isolationist policies and a reliance on idealogues v. experts.
We cannot roll back the clock. The sooner we accept that the system failed and needs a major overhaul the sooner we can form a message that resonates.
The point of representation at the U.S. House (or state lower chamber) is to represent constituencies with local regional and subregional commonalities based on a compact geography. Partisan proportionality operates on the pretense that our political structures should be organized around parties and not the principle of meaningful local representation. There’s a way to get more proportionality but it perfect partisan proportions aren’t a North Star. That’s a vision that changes the map to accommodate partisanship rather than trying to transcend it.
Many people have various ideas how this should be reformed but it is an absolute imperative that the monster of gerrymandering must be slain and the utterly unnecessary practice of district drawing that makes it possible must be eliminated altogether.
I'd propose a slightly different proportional representation scheme: if a candidate for the House gets over some small share of the vote (like 1%), he or she is entitled to go to DC and cast that fractional vote in Congress. (Maybe also getting a corresponding fractional salary.)
For example, in my district (NH01) last year, Democrat Chris Pappas beat Republican Russell Prescott 54.00% to 45.93%. So if this scheme was in place, Pappas would get to cast 0.5400 of a vote in DC, Prescott 0.4593 of a vote.
So: voters get "represented" by the person they voted for. This would expand the House population, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
This would almost certainly change voting incentives, I think for the better. Notably, it would encourage voter participation in even lopsided Red or Blue districts. Third-party candidates and Independents would get a better shot. And I think it would make gerrymandering a thing of the past.
I prefer 3 to 5 member districts with each voter casting one vote for one named candidate. Simplest way to balance votes afterwards is that anyone with too many votes or not enough votes has 5 business days to write down which other candidate they want to transfer their votes too. Afterwards, top 3 to 5 vote-getters get seats.
That gives us the best of both worlds: you still have relatively small districts where the candidates have to keep the district's situation in mind, and you still elect candidates by name, not by party, but anyone who can throw together 20%-33% of the local vote share is guaranteed a seat without being locked out.
While the logic of this change is absolutely perfect, the fact is that no Congress of the current sort will enact it for one simple reason - none of the current people in Congress would survive the first election under the new system. Since staying in their seat is the only priority of every person there, that completely shoots the idea down. The same is true of every sort of fair election system (including the NZ suggestion below) for the same reason.
One thing the current lunacy is going to force is a complete re-evaluation of every aspect of our governance. The MAGAts have completely corrupted the Federal Government and most of the state governments, so by now it is pretty obvious that the Constitution has way too many bad leftovers from the European systems - lifetime appointments of judges, presidential pardons and commutations, etc., etc., and far too many opportunities for graft and corruption at all levels.
Things like the blatantly corrupt and stacked Supreme Court that McConnell pushed through could not have happened without the complete corruption of enough of the GOP. That said, it has made it obvious that having any politics at all in the process of producing what amounts to an all-powerful court is deadly destructive and a severe weakness. The existence of the all-powerful court is, in the end, a massive flaw.
The orange goon has proven that the presidency is likewise too powerful. The guardrails everyone wishes were there never were, except in their own imaginations; the thief-in-chief just ran rampant over all of them.
That ANYONE could vote for a known Nazi sympathizer and convicted felon says amazingly bad things about our completely missing education system, and our total lack of any sort of community morals. The hilarious part is that "conservatives" were the ones who overwhelmingly voted for the orange cult, made the most noise about "morals," and then proved they had none.
Every institution in the US has its share of blame for this debacle, but the biggest share of the blame goes to the cults that profit from the ignorance and stupidity of their followers. Without them, the so-called conservative movement would be the tiny laughingstock it deserves to be. The so-called churches that sell ignorance and fairy tales instead of teaching moral behavior - all of them - have a huge amount of the blame here, and even moreso because this is what they want - the destruction of democracy and human rights, and themselves having absolute brutal control over the populace. History tells us what the inevitable result of that sort of theocracy is, but history is not something they bother with.
We are well and truly screwed right now, and there is no good way out. Letting the orange cult go forward will only get the country bombed out of existence when they go full Mussolini, which won't be long at the current rate, as happened when Italy and Germany went fully fascist in WWII. If it goes to an internal rebellion/revolt/revolution, it will wipe out a huge amount of the populace, but in the end, those that survive will be smarter and, sooner or later, better governed.
I have no crystal ball, just a huge foreboding. Nobody wanted to listen to those of us who saw it coming as far back as Reagan, so now the results are here.
Totally on board with this one, Andy, and it makes the feasibility of 3rd party representation a possibility in some states as well. Not likely but at least feasible.
This whole mid-decade redistricting thing has become ridiculous and really says a lot about the decadence of our political system right now.
The crisis for 2026 and 2028 is happening RIGHT NOW and no long-term evolutionary changes are going to cut it. If we (all non-MAGA's), allow tRUMP and his minions to win the midterms next year and continue their dominance of both houses of congress, WE ARE DOOMED along with our precious democracy. You are describing a "nirvana-like" scenario where everyone plays nice together and we all live happily ever after and I support changes to our current system that would potentially make our elections an equal, level field of play - including getting big money OUT of our political system. However, so much has transpired in just 300 days (!!!!!) of tRUMP-ism, I believe drastic action must be taken, NOW.
Please do not expect a change to proportional representation to deliver a more equitable form of democracy. New Zealand (where I am writing from) has had Mixed Member Proportional Representation since 1996 and our multi-party parliament is now a squabbling shambles. This has occurred because minor parties negotiate “deals” with the major party after an election to enable the major party to govern. Unpopular minor party policies are supported the major party in return for the minor parties agreeing to support the major party’s policies. This results in deeply unpopular decisions being rammed through our parliament.
In my view, democracy is in decline worldwide - regardless of the electoral system used - and I think is occurring primarily because:
1. Political parties are inherently competitive – not cooperative.
2. Election cycles result in wasteful short-term decision making
3. Government decisions are made with insufficient consensus.
While the following suggestions were written for a New Zealand audience, (which has a small number of electorates, 3 year terms and a single layer house of elected representatives), I think democracy’s deficiencies could be fixed relatively quickly; with possible solutions being:
a) Encourage independent political candidates and enfeeble political parties by limiting donations to parties to a small amount, say $50/year maximum from any one individual or organization
b) Implement elections that “roll” around the country every month by dividing the country into 72 electorates, with 2 geographically disparate electorates voting on a rotating basis every month of the year. In its designated month, every electorate would elect one individual by popular vote to serve that electorate for a 3 year term.
c) To reduce the impact of political parties, support every elected representative by a citizen advisory group (CAG) randomly selected from their electorate and allow the CAG to fire the elected representative if at least 80% of CAG members consider that the elected representative is not meeting the local community’s expectations.
d) Require a consensus for the passing of votes in parliament to be 80% or more.
The end result should be a government more representative of the general population, subject to refreshment monthly. If the politicians are getting things wrong in the public’s view, government’s makeup would quickly change as new pairs of electorates vote over the following months. In the long term, ego-driven politicians should disappear!
It’s all a thought experiment now (and I have no access to specific data), but it might be more popular in extremely red or extremely blue states, where the dominant party becomes more lazy and strident as it consolidates power (and tends to elect more extreme candidates because their bases dominate primary voting). That’s just a guess, though.
It sound like (a) there would be no chance at all for candidates who aren’t either Republican or Democrat and (b) the party bosses would have complete control over their slates (rather than the primary system).
Surely our current form of representative democracy has failed this challenge. The key is whether we can figure out the solution soon enough to prevent its collapse or whether the leadership sees their imminent demise and starts scuttling the ship.
The current regime solves the problem by saying that one person has the answers. All voters need to do is trust him and, as long as you don't cross him, life will be fine. That's an easy message for voters to digest no matter how undemocratic it is.
Proportional representation may be a useful tool but selling it to voters, like many other liberal approaches (RCV), is not inherently easy for people to grasp. And it's not the voter's fault; it's the messenger's fault for not distilling these ideas in a way that can be easily grasped.
My perception is that our collective attention spans are very short, the things we care about are curated by algorithms and as long as there is a roof over our head and our devices are connected, there is little that can shake us out of our stupor.
So, someone needs to package a democratic answer to authoritarianism that starts with some easily understood ideas like:
- Open the two-party system to ALL voters starting with local elections
- Expand the use of electronic voting
- Hold local officials accountable for local successes and failures through social media
- Positive counter-messaging on issues like immigration, declining crime rates, better health outcomes, cleaner environment and a system of government that works for ALL citizens, not just a few
- More forceful messaging on the threats from authoritarians, militarized law enforcement, dirtier technologies, isolationist policies and a reliance on idealogues v. experts.
We cannot roll back the clock. The sooner we accept that the system failed and needs a major overhaul the sooner we can form a message that resonates.
The point of representation at the U.S. House (or state lower chamber) is to represent constituencies with local regional and subregional commonalities based on a compact geography. Partisan proportionality operates on the pretense that our political structures should be organized around parties and not the principle of meaningful local representation. There’s a way to get more proportionality but it perfect partisan proportions aren’t a North Star. That’s a vision that changes the map to accommodate partisanship rather than trying to transcend it.
Many people have various ideas how this should be reformed but it is an absolute imperative that the monster of gerrymandering must be slain and the utterly unnecessary practice of district drawing that makes it possible must be eliminated altogether.
I'd propose a slightly different proportional representation scheme: if a candidate for the House gets over some small share of the vote (like 1%), he or she is entitled to go to DC and cast that fractional vote in Congress. (Maybe also getting a corresponding fractional salary.)
For example, in my district (NH01) last year, Democrat Chris Pappas beat Republican Russell Prescott 54.00% to 45.93%. So if this scheme was in place, Pappas would get to cast 0.5400 of a vote in DC, Prescott 0.4593 of a vote.
So: voters get "represented" by the person they voted for. This would expand the House population, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
This would almost certainly change voting incentives, I think for the better. Notably, it would encourage voter participation in even lopsided Red or Blue districts. Third-party candidates and Independents would get a better shot. And I think it would make gerrymandering a thing of the past.
[Also left as a comment at City Journal.]
I prefer 3 to 5 member districts with each voter casting one vote for one named candidate. Simplest way to balance votes afterwards is that anyone with too many votes or not enough votes has 5 business days to write down which other candidate they want to transfer their votes too. Afterwards, top 3 to 5 vote-getters get seats.
That gives us the best of both worlds: you still have relatively small districts where the candidates have to keep the district's situation in mind, and you still elect candidates by name, not by party, but anyone who can throw together 20%-33% of the local vote share is guaranteed a seat without being locked out.
While the logic of this change is absolutely perfect, the fact is that no Congress of the current sort will enact it for one simple reason - none of the current people in Congress would survive the first election under the new system. Since staying in their seat is the only priority of every person there, that completely shoots the idea down. The same is true of every sort of fair election system (including the NZ suggestion below) for the same reason.
One thing the current lunacy is going to force is a complete re-evaluation of every aspect of our governance. The MAGAts have completely corrupted the Federal Government and most of the state governments, so by now it is pretty obvious that the Constitution has way too many bad leftovers from the European systems - lifetime appointments of judges, presidential pardons and commutations, etc., etc., and far too many opportunities for graft and corruption at all levels.
Things like the blatantly corrupt and stacked Supreme Court that McConnell pushed through could not have happened without the complete corruption of enough of the GOP. That said, it has made it obvious that having any politics at all in the process of producing what amounts to an all-powerful court is deadly destructive and a severe weakness. The existence of the all-powerful court is, in the end, a massive flaw.
The orange goon has proven that the presidency is likewise too powerful. The guardrails everyone wishes were there never were, except in their own imaginations; the thief-in-chief just ran rampant over all of them.
That ANYONE could vote for a known Nazi sympathizer and convicted felon says amazingly bad things about our completely missing education system, and our total lack of any sort of community morals. The hilarious part is that "conservatives" were the ones who overwhelmingly voted for the orange cult, made the most noise about "morals," and then proved they had none.
Every institution in the US has its share of blame for this debacle, but the biggest share of the blame goes to the cults that profit from the ignorance and stupidity of their followers. Without them, the so-called conservative movement would be the tiny laughingstock it deserves to be. The so-called churches that sell ignorance and fairy tales instead of teaching moral behavior - all of them - have a huge amount of the blame here, and even moreso because this is what they want - the destruction of democracy and human rights, and themselves having absolute brutal control over the populace. History tells us what the inevitable result of that sort of theocracy is, but history is not something they bother with.
We are well and truly screwed right now, and there is no good way out. Letting the orange cult go forward will only get the country bombed out of existence when they go full Mussolini, which won't be long at the current rate, as happened when Italy and Germany went fully fascist in WWII. If it goes to an internal rebellion/revolt/revolution, it will wipe out a huge amount of the populace, but in the end, those that survive will be smarter and, sooner or later, better governed.
I have no crystal ball, just a huge foreboding. Nobody wanted to listen to those of us who saw it coming as far back as Reagan, so now the results are here.
Totally on board with this one, Andy, and it makes the feasibility of 3rd party representation a possibility in some states as well. Not likely but at least feasible.
This whole mid-decade redistricting thing has become ridiculous and really says a lot about the decadence of our political system right now.
The crisis for 2026 and 2028 is happening RIGHT NOW and no long-term evolutionary changes are going to cut it. If we (all non-MAGA's), allow tRUMP and his minions to win the midterms next year and continue their dominance of both houses of congress, WE ARE DOOMED along with our precious democracy. You are describing a "nirvana-like" scenario where everyone plays nice together and we all live happily ever after and I support changes to our current system that would potentially make our elections an equal, level field of play - including getting big money OUT of our political system. However, so much has transpired in just 300 days (!!!!!) of tRUMP-ism, I believe drastic action must be taken, NOW.
Please do not expect a change to proportional representation to deliver a more equitable form of democracy. New Zealand (where I am writing from) has had Mixed Member Proportional Representation since 1996 and our multi-party parliament is now a squabbling shambles. This has occurred because minor parties negotiate “deals” with the major party after an election to enable the major party to govern. Unpopular minor party policies are supported the major party in return for the minor parties agreeing to support the major party’s policies. This results in deeply unpopular decisions being rammed through our parliament.
In my view, democracy is in decline worldwide - regardless of the electoral system used - and I think is occurring primarily because:
1. Political parties are inherently competitive – not cooperative.
2. Election cycles result in wasteful short-term decision making
3. Government decisions are made with insufficient consensus.
While the following suggestions were written for a New Zealand audience, (which has a small number of electorates, 3 year terms and a single layer house of elected representatives), I think democracy’s deficiencies could be fixed relatively quickly; with possible solutions being:
a) Encourage independent political candidates and enfeeble political parties by limiting donations to parties to a small amount, say $50/year maximum from any one individual or organization
b) Implement elections that “roll” around the country every month by dividing the country into 72 electorates, with 2 geographically disparate electorates voting on a rotating basis every month of the year. In its designated month, every electorate would elect one individual by popular vote to serve that electorate for a 3 year term.
c) To reduce the impact of political parties, support every elected representative by a citizen advisory group (CAG) randomly selected from their electorate and allow the CAG to fire the elected representative if at least 80% of CAG members consider that the elected representative is not meeting the local community’s expectations.
d) Require a consensus for the passing of votes in parliament to be 80% or more.
The end result should be a government more representative of the general population, subject to refreshment monthly. If the politicians are getting things wrong in the public’s view, government’s makeup would quickly change as new pairs of electorates vote over the following months. In the long term, ego-driven politicians should disappear!
Start with ranked-choice voting, which could be done state-by-state.
Not either or but RCV is less politically popular with Republicans
Governor Hair Gel to his constituents: You're too stupid to understand ranked-choice voting.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-vetoes-bill-to-allow-ranked-choice-14535193.php
It’s all a thought experiment now (and I have no access to specific data), but it might be more popular in extremely red or extremely blue states, where the dominant party becomes more lazy and strident as it consolidates power (and tends to elect more extreme candidates because their bases dominate primary voting). That’s just a guess, though.
It sound like (a) there would be no chance at all for candidates who aren’t either Republican or Democrat and (b) the party bosses would have complete control over their slates (rather than the primary system).
So even worse than what we have now …
RCV candidates can be partisan or unaffiliated. Some jurisdictions already use it on a limited basis.
https://fairvote.org/where-is-ranked-choice-voting-used/