Is H.R.4632 - Fair Representation Act the only piece proportional representation legislation currently in U.S. Congress? Does it have any chance of passage without a trifecta flip and filibuster proof Senate?
Great article. My understanding is you no longer favor the Fair Representation Act? I am wondering if there is a new bill in the works by reformers? For activists and organizations trying to support proportional representation it is really important to have a concrete bill to point to when building support. The urgency is here, 2029 might be the one shot in years — even if it's a long shot.
If Open Primaries were held using a consensus voting system, they would be ok, but they never are. They always use FPTP, which suffers from the vote-splitting and spoiler effects that make party primaries necessary in the first place, so they accomplish very little and can even make things worse.
I wish I knew how to get through to large numbers of people. So many people rightfully want a change, but so few understand how to do it effectively.
A very thorough analysis. What reform(s) other than multiple member districts do you advocate that would democratize our electoral system? This political scientist would start with outlawing gerrymandering (and a mechanism to enforce it) and start of getting big money out of elections. Your ideas?
Because our federalist system is specifically designed to avoid them. From the get-go, to borrow your words, our nation was founded on the idea of local representation. Multi-member districts or PR systems move away from that towards national party vote totals. Representatives become less accountable to specific communities and more beholden to the parties that select them. Voters choose parties instead of people. That type of system undermines the principle of federalism.
Disagree. The Founders set up a system where each Representative was elected by 30,000 people. We (USA) are now at about 760,000 people per representative. Unless one plans on expanding the House of Representatives to over 10,000 (435 now) that local connection has long been overwhelmed.
Indeed, a modest expansion of the House and use of multi-member districts/proportional representation would enable direct representation by urban Republicans and rural Democrats as well as minority voting groups. As a bonus, partisan gerrymandering becomes effectively impossible under multi-member districts with proportional representation.
For offices like governor and senator, use a system like Alaska’s Top-4 non-partisan primary and ranked choice voting in the general election. That keeps partisan purists from screening moderate candidates out of the general election and requires the ultimate winner to receive a majority of final-round votes among the electorate.
The deep frustration of the electorate does provide a unique opportunity for structural change. We need candidates for President with the courage to drive a national debate of proportional districts, ranked choice voting, and fusion voting. How about adding expansion of the House of Representatives and increasing the size of the Supreme Court and adding 16 year term limits for Justices. The argument is straightforward- fairness.
To stack on, having to run two campaigns (primary and general) to win office increases the role of money in elections.
Non-voters are not apathetic, they are alienated. When the candidates in the general election do not represent their interests, many (or most) vote with their feet. This lack of buy-in harms the legitimacy of representative democracy.
One of the strengths of single-member districts is that voters choose a person from their community to represent their community, not just a national party. That creates accountability to local voters and ensures regional interests have a voice in government. PR shifts the focus away from places and toward national party vote totals. Representatives become accountable to the party rather than to the voters in a specific community. In a federal system like the U.S., that's not necessarily an improvement. The purpose of representation isn't just to reflect national opinion; it's also to ensure that different regions and communities can advocate for their own interests. The founders specifically chose a federalist style of government because we are so large and because we have such diverse interest. Having single member districts follows that principle. PR system undermines it.
I think that looking at a single variable in isolation--in this case, open primaries--may not be the most appropriate methodological approach. In a complex system, it may be necessary to change multiple variables simultaneously to achieve a desired outcome. Indeed, changing any one part of the system in isolation may result in either the opposite of the desired outcome or no effect at all. Think of a missile system with thousands of parts, each of which is essential for the missile to achieve its function. Despite the paucity of data, I'd suggest that the combination of open primaries, fusion party labels, and ranked-choice voting could be one such system in which the sum is greater than its parts.
A possible confounder for your tests of bipartisanship and moderation: states that tend to be single party would have more pressure to move away from a closed primary (because those are the states where only one primary matters). So swing states may wind up being more likely to keep a closed primary (e.g. on your map I see FL, PA, and NV are closed). At the same time, it is exactly from swing states that we would expect to see more moderation and bipartisanship. So to have a fair analysis of this, you would likely need to control for how much a state leans to one side or the other, to distinguish how much you're observing the effect of different primaries vs. how much you've wound up just detecting whether this is a swing state.
The one flaw that I learned in the last legislative round is that the top three get into the runoff which allowed for the two in many cases to unite against FN. I would lose that, and probably have presidential and legislative at the same time and not one after the other.
Except they allow actual political parties who control their own nominating processes, have free and equal ballot access, and have no part of the process state sponsored. And before you make a case for public financing they’ve got that figured out too - if you get 5% or more you’re reimbursed *after the fact.*
Doesn't France use FPTP top two primaries? That's a pretty awful system. Didn't they have a very unrepresentative candidate make it to the general election because of vote-splitting in the primary?
Every district has primary elections where the political voters choose the candidates to run in the general election.
In the general election the top two candidates both win, but with a catch: they only win a fractional vote. If the Democrat wins 60% and the Republican 40%, then when voting on legislation the Democrat’s vote would count 0.6 and the GOP 0.4. This would be like having multi member districts but fined tuned to the percentile level, and would give representation to the minority even in states with only one congressional seat.
This would have the advantage of essentially eliminating gerrymandering. Every vote would count, and everyone would be represented. A state that was 55-45 couldn’t end up with all representatives of one party.
I’m sure there would be a lot of sticky details to work out: committee assignments and office budgets, for example.
What you are describing is PR except (1) restricted to top two parties and (2) with fractional votes in the legislature. I like PR but I think your proposed system is worse because multi-party democracy is good, and I think the complication from having fractional votes in the legislature adds a lot of complexity for not a lot of gain--and it also goes against the intuition some people have about distributed decision-making (it is better to have multiple people look at something), traditions around rules of order (most bylaws of organization do not allow people who have two ex officio places on a body to have two votes), and I can imagine being easier for people to delegitimize.
I do think the instinct is good, but that's what OLPR or STV or whatever is for without the disadvantages.
Is H.R.4632 - Fair Representation Act the only piece proportional representation legislation currently in U.S. Congress? Does it have any chance of passage without a trifecta flip and filibuster proof Senate?
Great article. My understanding is you no longer favor the Fair Representation Act? I am wondering if there is a new bill in the works by reformers? For activists and organizations trying to support proportional representation it is really important to have a concrete bill to point to when building support. The urgency is here, 2029 might be the one shot in years — even if it's a long shot.
Why doesn't Lee Drutman favor the Fair Representation Act?
If Open Primaries were held using a consensus voting system, they would be ok, but they never are. They always use FPTP, which suffers from the vote-splitting and spoiler effects that make party primaries necessary in the first place, so they accomplish very little and can even make things worse.
I wish I knew how to get through to large numbers of people. So many people rightfully want a change, but so few understand how to do it effectively.
A very thorough analysis. What reform(s) other than multiple member districts do you advocate that would democratize our electoral system? This political scientist would start with outlawing gerrymandering (and a mechanism to enforce it) and start of getting big money out of elections. Your ideas?
Multi-party democracy enabled by PR, as Drutman constantly harps on about: https://demarchy.substack.com/p/the-virtues-of-multi-party-democracy
Why not multiple member districts? Why do you eliminate that possibility from the get-go?
Because our federalist system is specifically designed to avoid them. From the get-go, to borrow your words, our nation was founded on the idea of local representation. Multi-member districts or PR systems move away from that towards national party vote totals. Representatives become less accountable to specific communities and more beholden to the parties that select them. Voters choose parties instead of people. That type of system undermines the principle of federalism.
Disagree. The Founders set up a system where each Representative was elected by 30,000 people. We (USA) are now at about 760,000 people per representative. Unless one plans on expanding the House of Representatives to over 10,000 (435 now) that local connection has long been overwhelmed.
Indeed, a modest expansion of the House and use of multi-member districts/proportional representation would enable direct representation by urban Republicans and rural Democrats as well as minority voting groups. As a bonus, partisan gerrymandering becomes effectively impossible under multi-member districts with proportional representation.
For offices like governor and senator, use a system like Alaska’s Top-4 non-partisan primary and ranked choice voting in the general election. That keeps partisan purists from screening moderate candidates out of the general election and requires the ultimate winner to receive a majority of final-round votes among the electorate.
Yeah, 1. Outlaw gerrymandering (though that is somewhat ambiguous to define)
2. Use consensus voting methods like Approval Voting, STAR Voting, or Total Vote Runoff, etc. to break the two-party system and reduce polarization.
The deep frustration of the electorate does provide a unique opportunity for structural change. We need candidates for President with the courage to drive a national debate of proportional districts, ranked choice voting, and fusion voting. How about adding expansion of the House of Representatives and increasing the size of the Supreme Court and adding 16 year term limits for Justices. The argument is straightforward- fairness.
To stack on, having to run two campaigns (primary and general) to win office increases the role of money in elections.
Non-voters are not apathetic, they are alienated. When the candidates in the general election do not represent their interests, many (or most) vote with their feet. This lack of buy-in harms the legitimacy of representative democracy.
One of the strengths of single-member districts is that voters choose a person from their community to represent their community, not just a national party. That creates accountability to local voters and ensures regional interests have a voice in government. PR shifts the focus away from places and toward national party vote totals. Representatives become accountable to the party rather than to the voters in a specific community. In a federal system like the U.S., that's not necessarily an improvement. The purpose of representation isn't just to reflect national opinion; it's also to ensure that different regions and communities can advocate for their own interests. The founders specifically chose a federalist style of government because we are so large and because we have such diverse interest. Having single member districts follows that principle. PR system undermines it.
I think that looking at a single variable in isolation--in this case, open primaries--may not be the most appropriate methodological approach. In a complex system, it may be necessary to change multiple variables simultaneously to achieve a desired outcome. Indeed, changing any one part of the system in isolation may result in either the opposite of the desired outcome or no effect at all. Think of a missile system with thousands of parts, each of which is essential for the missile to achieve its function. Despite the paucity of data, I'd suggest that the combination of open primaries, fusion party labels, and ranked-choice voting could be one such system in which the sum is greater than its parts.
A possible confounder for your tests of bipartisanship and moderation: states that tend to be single party would have more pressure to move away from a closed primary (because those are the states where only one primary matters). So swing states may wind up being more likely to keep a closed primary (e.g. on your map I see FL, PA, and NV are closed). At the same time, it is exactly from swing states that we would expect to see more moderation and bipartisanship. So to have a fair analysis of this, you would likely need to control for how much a state leans to one side or the other, to distinguish how much you're observing the effect of different primaries vs. how much you've wound up just detecting whether this is a swing state.
The analysis controls for district PVI.
So is RCV and any proportional scheme - France has the ideal system.
France uses two-round. Nothing ideal about that.
The one flaw that I learned in the last legislative round is that the top three get into the runoff which allowed for the two in many cases to unite against FN. I would lose that, and probably have presidential and legislative at the same time and not one after the other.
Except they allow actual political parties who control their own nominating processes, have free and equal ballot access, and have no part of the process state sponsored. And before you make a case for public financing they’ve got that figured out too - if you get 5% or more you’re reimbursed *after the fact.*
Doesn't France use FPTP top two primaries? That's a pretty awful system. Didn't they have a very unrepresentative candidate make it to the general election because of vote-splitting in the primary?
Has anyone ever tried such a system:
Every district has primary elections where the political voters choose the candidates to run in the general election.
In the general election the top two candidates both win, but with a catch: they only win a fractional vote. If the Democrat wins 60% and the Republican 40%, then when voting on legislation the Democrat’s vote would count 0.6 and the GOP 0.4. This would be like having multi member districts but fined tuned to the percentile level, and would give representation to the minority even in states with only one congressional seat.
This would have the advantage of essentially eliminating gerrymandering. Every vote would count, and everyone would be represented. A state that was 55-45 couldn’t end up with all representatives of one party.
I’m sure there would be a lot of sticky details to work out: committee assignments and office budgets, for example.
What you are describing is PR except (1) restricted to top two parties and (2) with fractional votes in the legislature. I like PR but I think your proposed system is worse because multi-party democracy is good, and I think the complication from having fractional votes in the legislature adds a lot of complexity for not a lot of gain--and it also goes against the intuition some people have about distributed decision-making (it is better to have multiple people look at something), traditions around rules of order (most bylaws of organization do not allow people who have two ex officio places on a body to have two votes), and I can imagine being easier for people to delegitimize.
I do think the instinct is good, but that's what OLPR or STV or whatever is for without the disadvantages.