Tom Mast, founder Solve American Gridlock
PROBLEM
Over the past roughly 10-25 years, our U.S. Congress has evolved into a bipolar entity, this becoming increasingly obvious in the past several years.
ANALYSIS
There is plenty of evidence that this evolution has taken place. The parties view winning and power above the work for which their constituents elected them. All too often, we see validation of the axiom that the ends justify the means. Problem solving is a lost art; the broken big things are not getting fixed, however obvious they may be.
What are the results? This polarization has brought the approval of Congress down to 20% or lower. Respect for America has declined internally and abroad. The similar vote-getting power of the two parties has resulted in frequent “See Saws” – changes in who is in charge – that result in massive swings in focus and reversals of what the other party just finished doing. #congress
We have only two similar sized parties, and the fact they have degenerated into the present bipolar and dysfunctional mode is not unnatural. It is a function of our electoral systems. The founders of our nation were very suspicious of political parties, and several of them predicted our present circumstance of having two parties constantly at war with one another. Pogo once said “We have met the enemy, and he is us!” Meaning to me that we voters are in charge in America, and the monkey is on our backs to get the problem fixed.
SOLUTION
Proportional voting is necessary to break this vicious cycle. It means that the results of an election are as proportional to the desires of the voters in that election as practicable. According to the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network, some form of proportional representation is used for national lower house elections in 94 countries.
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) methodology significantly improves proportionality. #rankedchoicevoting Voters get to rank their choices of several candidates, and if no one wins a majority on the first ballot counting, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is dropped, and his or her second ranked votes are distributed to the other candidates. This repeats as necessary until someone has a majority. It has been called Instant Runoff Voting because this process is the runoff, avoiding the time, expense, and poor voter turnout of a runoff. Since voters get to express a preference for more than one candidate, the chances are that the final winner will be more representative than in either a winner-takes-all election or a runoff. Also, the problem of having a very poor turnout for a runoff election disappears. RCV is rapidly catching on; Maine and Alaska have chosen to use it across the board, and other states and political entities use it for an increasing portion of their elections. There are other advantages including that it works to increase the number of effective parties beyond two. You can quickly learn more from www.fairvote.org, or rcvfortexas.org or www.solveamericangridlock.com .
In addition to RCV, we need to have more than two effective (meaning large enough to have some influence over events) parties to reduce the bipolar and See Saw consequences of our present two-party system. One only has to look briefly at the chart below to see what an exception our United States Congress is in being “locked into” two parties.
The United States has not always had single-member districts with their Gerrymandering and Safe Seat issues; prior to 1967, the House moved back and forth between having multi-member and single-member districts. But in that year, Congress passed a law using Article I, Section 4 of the constitution to require single-member districts, and that law is sadly still in place.
Candidates representing several parties could be on the ballot; having more parties would promote civility, negotiation, and consideration of more than two viewpoints in congress, something badly needed in these years of polarization and perpetually kicking serious problems down the road. Coalitions will be formed on an issue-by-issue basis among the parties.
The graphic below from www.fairvote.org shows how multi-member districts produce more proportional results.
Safe districts – now said to be around 90% of those in the House – would be a thing of the past as would the very divisive and unfair Gerrymandering that creates them. A larger percentage of voters would have a representative for whom they had voted. More people would vote in elections.
America can move to House multi-member districts just as easily as it created the single-member districts in 1967. Modifications can be made for the Senate at the same time, using ranked choice voting and modifying or eliminating the party primary system. Congress should move quickly. These changes will foster more parties, more viewpoints, less polarization, and better problem solving in Congress.
Einstein is credited with saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
“See Saw” Congress – vaya con Dios.
Reference: Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America, by Lee Drutman
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