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Progressive Populist
Forging a Vibrant
Democracy
By Rob Richie and Steven Hill
February 15, 2003
Two centuries ago, Thomas Paine wrote that political
institutions are the slowest to adapt to advances in technology and
knowledge. The root of the problem then and now is that elections
often are a poor substitute for open exchanges of ideas and free
markets. When governments are immune from real competitive
pressures, institutional inertia rules.
The partisan implications of the 2002
elections are obviously significant, but we must not overlook the
real evidence that our nation is in a paralyzing political
depression. Consider that once again voter turnout was less than 40%
of adults, far below the international norm for national elections,
and even more skewed by how few low-income, youth, and people of
color participated. The U.S. Senate continues to have no
African-American or Latino representatives, and no members elected
on a third party line.
The U.S. House theoretically could have been
shaken up after redistricting, as it was a decade ago, but instead
incumbents did such a masterful job at protecting themselves that
only four lost to non-incumbent challengers, the fewest in history.
Nearly five of every six races were won by landslide margins of more
than 20%, shutting out potential partisan changes and smothering any
chance to improve the startling under-representation of women and
racial minorities. State legislative races were generally even more
static than congressional elections.
At what point does a democracy cease to be
democratically governed? We largely maintain the key freedoms of the
Bill of Rights, but with the active consent of fewer and fewer
citizens. George Bush was elected with the support of only one in
four adults. The Republican Members led by Tom Delay and Dennis
Hastert in the U.S. House won even fewer votes.
Most of our political leaders have lost the
spirit of innovation that guided our founders. They avoid questions
about our basic electoral rules that determine the accountability
and legitimacy of our government. And now the Republican-dominated
Congress promises not even to fund the federal electoral reform law
passed in the wake of the Florida debacle in 2000, leaving
cash-starved states to fend for themselves in improving basic voting
processes. Here are a just a few among several important reforms
that we believe must be debated.
- Number of representatives: The size of the
U.S. House of Representatives has not increased since 1911, even
as the average number of people in House districts has tripled and
some districts have nearly a million people. The very geographic
basis of our Winner Take All system is undermined when the
districts are so populous. The end result is "taxation with less
representation."
- Bicameral state legislatures: Because of
an interest in voters being able to hold legislators accountable,
no other established democracy has two legislative branches of
equal power. Yet 49 out of 50 state legislatures follow the
bicameral model of our U.S. Constitution that was designed as part
of the "grand compromise" to balance states' rights with the
principle of one person, one vote. Two houses in a state
legislature undercut accountability and are redundant when they
both represent geographic interests.
- Single-seat districts: All U.S. House
elections and most state legislatures and major cities' councils
are elected from single-seat districts. Single-seat districts mean
that 51% of voters allegedly "represent" 100% of people in the
district, and 49.9% of losing voters can be shut out. By limiting
the opportunities for non-geographic communities of interest to
win representation, single-seat districts make where we LIVE more
important than what we THINK. They also give incumbents the
opportunity to gerrymander district lines to guarantee themselves
safe seats. This 18th century construct artificially props
up a two-party system that poorly reflects our country's political
diversity and consigns most Americans to "no-choice" legislative
races.
Most other
established democracies have jettisoned exclusive reliance on
single-member districts in favor of systems of proportional
representation. Such systems mirror a free market economy, with
voters having the choices they treasure so highly as consumers. A
political force winning 51% of votes earns a majority of seats,
but not everything. A party winning 10% wins its fair share of
representation too.
- Plurality elections: Of the few mature democracies still using
"winner-wins-all" elections, fewer still use plurality elections
in which winners don't need majority support. Some nations use
runoff elections. Australia uses an innovative instant runoff
voting (IRV) system where voters rank candidates in order of
choice. Ballots are counted so that winners need majority support,
and voters are freed of worries over "wasting" their votes on
"spoilers" with no chance to win. Last year, San Francisco voters
handily adopted IRV for city races, while several other states
have vibrant efforts to adopt IRV for their elections.
It is time for national and state
discussions of our electoral rules. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his
twilight years that "Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with
the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more
enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and
manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances,
institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times." Our
leaders who think that our democracy is beyond such re-examination
are betraying the spirit of our founders -- and the trust of us
all.
Rob Richie is the executive director of the
Center for Voting and Democracy, www.fairvote.org. Steven Hill
is senior analyst for the Center, and author of "Fixing Elections:
The Failure of Winner Take All Elections" (Routledge Press, www.FixingElections.com).
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