The Need to Move Forward: Election Reform

A Time For Renewal

What does it mean to be American? More importantly, what do we want it to mean?

I suspect that, in a country of 330 million people, you’d have millions of different answers. We are all unique. We have unique views, unique preferences and unique weightings of those preferences. And yet, in my experience, there’s more common ground between us than one might think.

Don’t we all want to live in safety, free from the constant danger of physical attack?

Don’t we all want a society anchored in justice, where the same rules apply to all citizens regardless of wealth, race, religion, creed or politics?

Don’t we all want the actionable opportunity to advance based on our own merit?

Don’t we all seek prosperity for ourselves and our families?

Don’t we all feel some degree of empathy for people less fortunate than we are?

And in the end, don’t we all want the freedom to choose our own courses through life, knowing that we must assume responsibility for the outcomes of those choices?

If you agree with me that, by and large, this is the type of nation we want, then I think we have space for a conversation. Whether you are liberal or conservative or something altogether different, we can discuss an updated approach to the American Dream. A renewed vision for our nation. We share a whole lot of common ground, and I think we’ll find that our expectations and needs are not all that different from one another. 

It’s time to talk about updating the American system for the 21st century and beyond. We’re all in this together. 

A House Divided

That said, division is all around us. Hope and optimism are hard to come by. 

A recent poll found 72% of respondents felt the country was moving in the wrong direction. 61% say their family income is falling behind the cost of living. A stunning 76% of respondents believe that democracy in this country is in jeopardy. And, perhaps most tellingly, 70% of people believe the country has become too polarized to solve major issues.

How can this be? If we really want the mostly the same things, how can we be so divided? How can we be so powerless in the face of a changing future?

The answer is - we aren’t as divided as we think, but many of the vested interests we rely on are incentivized to make us think that we are.

The Power of Incentives

People respond to incentives. It’s as simple as that. And while we may want certain outcomes, something along the lines of the national identity I described above, there is no magic wand that can make it so. Regardless of what we want in the abstract, what we will do, for the most part, is follow where our short-term incentives lead. And right now, our incentives do not lead to our desired outcomes. 

For example, I proposed that we want a land of opportunity. I would be surprised if you could find any number of Americans who would disagree with that statement. And yet, when it comes to a third party candidate wanting to run for a political office, both major parties will find a rare bipartisan spirit in making that as hard as possible. Sure, they want a land of opportunity, but when the specific opportunity in question is one that threatens the paradigm by which they personally thrive, you’ll find altruistic values quickly shunted into the back seat. We want a land of opportunity, but less so when it means giving an opportunity to someone else who might threaten our own interests.

We have values, we have a vision for our country, but those values and that vision will amount to nothing if the incentives are not arranged to support them. 

The Misalignment

So here is the problem. To realize our collective vision for the country, we need to arrange the facets of our lives such that the incentives lead us toward that vision. And that arrangement is largely dictated through our democratic government, either by direct legislation or by the restraint not to legislate and let civil society incentives reign.

And that all makes sense! It should all work beautifully. Political leaders need to win popular elections, and so they are incentivized to arrange things, to set the table so to speak, so that the daily incentives of our personal lives align with the achievement of our vision. If they fail in this job, they will become unpopular and be replaced. If they succeed, they will grow in popularity and remain in office. Over time, the governmental structure under which we live will be shaped to lead us toward our desired end state.

The problem is that the feedback loop between election victory and delivering positive political outcomes is broken.

This is the central flaw in our current system. It is responsible for our increasing polarization and resultant dysfunction. And it derives from our arbitrary and poorly conceived party primary system. 

Primary Problems

In today’s America, upwards of 80% of districts are either solid Republican or solid Democrat. Which is to say, the result of the general election is largely known prior to the election occurring. If you live in a solid red area, for example, you can bet that the winner of the general election will be whoever wins the Republican nomination through the Republican primary.

Yet, party primaries do not have the same dynamics as general elections. And because of the unique ways in which we choose to hold primaries, the incentives are all wrong for picking leaders that will need to serve the majority of their constituent population to remain in office.  

First of all, primaries are mostly confined to members of the party, meaning only those who have registered Republican can vote in Republican primaries and only those who have registered Democrat can vote in Democratic primaries. That is not universally true in all states, but it is mostly true today.

Off the bat, that cuts out 40ish % of voters who are not registered for a either party. That 40% tends to be independent minded and/or more centrist. By virtue of choosing candidates through partisan primaries, we’ve already effectively excluded the moderates from having a voice in selecting the candidates. One simple, arbitrary and frankly un-democratic decision on how primaries will operate has already slanted us heavily towards increasing polarization. 

Additionally, think about how primaries are decided. You typically have several candidates. With our current system, it is likely that none of those candidates win a majority of primary votes. Votes are split five, six, seven ways etc. So the winner might have only, let’s say, 20% of the primary total.

What does that mean? It means primaries are particularly beholden to special interest groups and extreme partisan wings. The former because special interest groups can deliver blocks of votes for candidates who reward their particular cause, and extreme wings because by definition extreme candidates will be more rare than moderate candidates. Since moderate voters are more likely to vote for moderate candidates and there are likely to be a greater number of moderate candidates, it is fair to expect that the moderate candidates will split votes of like-minded voters more extensively and leave extreme candidates with bigger pluralities.

There is no reason primaries have to be run this way. There are other, equally or more democratic ways to choose candidates. But because this is our predominant system for nominations, we are naturally inclined to nominate extremist candidates or candidates that represent special interest groups. 

An Example

Imagine the following. We live in a heavily blue district where the Democratic nominee for our house seat is assured to be the winner of the general election. Therefor the party primary will, for all intents and purposes, decide our next congress rep.

Among registered Democrats, who are the only eligible voters in our primary, our district is 75% moderate and 25% extreme.

Now imagine we have five candidates. One is an extreme socialist who wants to abolish private property and nationalize all major industries. The other four are moderate democrats who support an enhanced social safety net and more federal benefits for workers. The four moderates have various views on how those things are achieved. 

How would this hypothetical primary turn out? We should expect that the four moderate candidates divide the moderate 75% of voters, each getting around 19% of the vote. And the extreme candidate would capture the 25% of extreme voters. Despite only 25% of primary voters being considered extreme, the extreme candidate is expected to win the primary. 

From there, the candidate walks through the general election, as our district is heavily blue and would vote for virtually any Democrat over any Republican. 

This simple example illustrates why our current primary system is set up to reward extreme candidates and punish moderates. And why, in most cases, incumbent politicians are more afraid of being attacked from the more extreme end during a primary than they are of losing the general election.

Unpleasant Implications

So what does it all mean?

It means that the whole contraption is broken, twisted beyond recognition and the original intent of the Founders. Though we live in a democracy where politicians should, theoretically, need to serve broad swathes of their constituents, the primary system has in fact bypassed that necessity. Instead, politicians must serve the powerful special interests and extreme wings of their parties, who have outsized power in party primaries.

It’s hard to overstate how insidious the implications of this are. Like anyone else, politicians will strive to have success in their careers. That means winning elections and fundraising to win future elections. They will, consequently, exhibit the behavior that gives them the best chance at winning elections and fundraising.

But, as we’ve seen above, the success optimizing behavior does not entail pleasing the majority of independent/centrist voters. It doesn’t even entail pleasing registered partisans. Because of how our primaries work, success optimization comes from pleasing special interests and extremists. 

Here is a roadmap to primary success:

1. Advocate for a particular powerful special interest group, even at the expense of all other causes and interests
2. Position yourself as the most extreme candidate and then prove it by relentlessly attacking, opposing and ruthlessly obstructing anything being pushed by the other party
3. Display outrage about but make sure to never solve any hot button issue, keeping your primary supporters motivated to donate and vote

On the other hand, here is a recipe for primary defeat:

1. Work on behalf of all constituents, even those who vote against you
2. Compromise for the greater good
3. Actually solve problems

Is it any wonder, then, that the politicians we elect are all about confrontation and outrage and not at all about compromise or problem solving?

Secondary Consequences

The consequences of our primary system should be clear to anyone who cares to consider them. 

I reaffirm my earlier theory, that most people by and large want safety, justice, opportunity, prosperity, empathy and freedom. The weightings may differ, and the beliefs about how to achieve these things may differ, but I maintain that average Americans are pretty united in the desire for these outcomes. 

The problem is, our election system is not designed to reflect the will of average Americans. It is designed, through the use of partisan primaries, to reflect the will of only small and often non-mainstream portions of the nation. And so the mechanism of popular elections that should ensure that the government works for the people has broken down. 

Electoral Reform

Luckily for us, as the problem is actually quite simple, the solution is also simple. We need to reset the way elections work so that, in order for politicians to win election and reelection, they are incentivized to do the greatest good for the greatest number.

We need non-partisan primaries and ranked-choice voting.

Non-Partisan Primaries

If we want our nominees to be productive, to get things done, to be reasonable, etc, then we shouldn’t choose them through processes where only the most partisan ends of society can participate.

Today, according to Gallup, 40% of voters consider themselves independent. That’s a higher number than either Republicans or Democrats. And yet those people are generally excluded from the primary process.

If we want our candidates to be reasonable and to answer to the will of the people, what sense does it make to have those candidates chosen only by the partisan extremes?

We need to abolish partisan primaries and require all states to allow independents, at the very least, to participate in the process. 

Ranked-Choice Voting

We need to reform our methodology for choosing winners. By taking plurality winners in multi-candidate fields, we inevitably empower the most extreme candidates.

Ranked-choice voting solves that problem. It’s simple and its benefits are clear. Here’s how it works:

1. Voters choose and rank as many candidates as they want, from 1 up to whatever number they prefer
2. After votes are cast, a winner will not be chosen until a candidate has a majority of #1 votes
3. If no candidate has 51% of #1 votes, the candidate with the fewest #1s is eliminated
4. Ballots with the eliminated candidate selected as #1 automatically promote the #2 choices (where one exists) to #1
5. Ballots are re-tallied
6. Repeat from step 2 until a candidate has 51% of #1 votes.

It’s simple, it is self-working, and it nullifies the advantages of interest groups and extreme wings during primaries. 

Let’s revisit our hypothetical scenario. We had extreme voters representing 25% of the primary electorate and moderate voters representing 75%. We had four moderate candidates and one extreme candidate. 

In the existing system where the highest plurality wins, we showed why it was likely that the extreme candidate would carry the primary. But with ranked-choice voting, the advantages are flipped. Ranked-choice voting makes it highly likely that a predominantly moderate electorate will choose a moderate candidate.

Instead of the moderate candidates splitting moderate votes, the moderate candidates are methodically eliminated and their voters are recycled, likely to other moderate candidates until one has a majority. The extreme candidate likely never gets much higher than the 25% take they got under the plurality system. 

Ranked-choice voting has other benefits, such as solving the “spoiler effect,” but I don’t even want to focus on those benefits right now. I want to stick with the primary advantage: Ranked-choice voting is a more democratic way to choose candidates and a better reflection of the will of the people-at-large.

Bottom Line - the Call to Reform

Our country is divided. More divided than I can ever remember it being. But we don’t need to be. We want mostly the same things. We have debates ahead on how we manage trade-offs between our values and what methods most effectively achieve our desired ends. But, if we are to have any hope of achieving anything of meaningful, lasting worth, we need to reform how our leaders are chosen. It starts with this.

Non-partisan primaries - include a wider and less partisan portion of the electorate in the process to choose candidates.

Ranked-choice voting - reform the methodology for picking a winner so that it better reflects the will of that electorate.

This is what we need to replace our existing, obstructionist, hyper-polarized leaders with reasonable people who are ready and willing to compromise when it will make a positive impact.

From there, we can all debate and arrive at mutually agreeable approaches to realizing our objectives. We can revise them as time goes on based on the successes and failures we experience in practice. We can work together, even if none of us get exactly what we want, because by working together we all get something better than what we have. That is the fundamental value of a free society, it is the formula for a renewed national opportunity, and it is achievable at benefit to all except for the politicians who thrive in the current, polarized and polarizing system.

But it starts here. As it stands, our politicians are not rewarded for compromise and achievement. They are rewarded for obstructionism and outrage theater. So obstructionism and outrage theater is what we get. If you want something better, change the incentives. 

Reform elections. Identify better leaders. Then we get to work.