Our democracy has been greatly injured and continues to be endangered by numerous factors that I and many others have discussed on DU, including the role of
money in politics, a
corporate controlled news media,
unverifiable elections,
voter suppression, and
powerful interests that exert their influence out of the view of the public. There is much overlap between these various anti-democratic forces, and they reinforce each other. In this post I discuss another anti-democratic process, which is much less discussed than the others: plurality voting.
Plurality voting – the system of voting used in U.S. federal and most state and local elections – is the voting system in which whoever gets the most votes wins, regardless of how many millions of votes they fall short of obtaining a majority. This system produces many anti-democratic effects, and may be a major reason for many of our country’s current problems, including its rule by two parties which in some respects are similar enough that some people consider them to be two wings of the same party.
A good alternative to plurality votingOne very good alternative to plurality voting is
instant runoff, majority voting. The concept is very simple: Instead of voting for a single candidate, the voter votes for as many candidates as s/he wants, while ranking them in order of preference. If one candidate gets a majority of the vote, that candidate wins. If no candidate gets a majority, the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated, and the votes are counted again. The process is repeated until one candidate gets a majority.
Let’s consider the many ways in which this system or a similar system would enrich our democracy if it replaced our current system of plurality voting.
The most popular candidate would be much more likely to winFirst and foremost, majority voting would make it more likely that the most popular candidate would win when more than two candidates run for office. Whenever more than two candidates run for an office, similar candidates are likely to pull votes from each other, thereby enabling a dissimilar candidate to win even if that candidate is the least popular of the bunch.
Consider for example the 2000 presidential election. Among the top three candidates, two (Al Gore and Ralph Nader) were much more progressive than the other one, George W. Bush. Among those three candidates, there is no question that the second choice of most Nader voters was Gore (and I don’t doubt that the second choice of most Gore voters was Nader, though he was much less well known than Gore). With instant runoff voting, voters who voted for Nader would have been given the opportunity to list Gore – or Bush – as their second choice. After less popular candidates were eliminated, Nader would have been eliminated and Nader voters who listed Gore or Bush as their second choice would have had their votes go to their second choice.
Nader received more than 97 thousand votes in Florida, a state that Bush “won” by 537 votes. With instant runoff voting, those 97 thousand votes would have gone to Gore and Bush in proportion to the frequency with which the Nader voters listed Gore or Bush as there second choice. That would likely have resulted in Gore receiving tens of thousands more Nader votes than Bush. Gore would have won Florida by tens of thousands of votes. There would have been no recount. Five brazenly corrupt U.S. Supreme Court justices would never have received a chance to weigh in on the election. In short, the election would not have been close enough to steal. George W. Bush never would have been president.
American voters could vote their hopes – without having to settle for the lesser of two evilsMillions of voters in 2000 (and other years as well), including myself, my wife, and my children, were faced with a dilemma. Al Gore appeared much less liberal during the 2000 election campaign than he turned out to be in later years. Consequently, I and many others wanted to vote for Nader, but we didn’t dare do so because we were afraid of risking the chance that voting for Nader could cost Gore the election and therefore catapult a psychopath to the U.S. presidency. Actually, I faced similar dilemmas in 2004 and 2008.
More generally, American voters often feel forced into voting for what they consider to be “the lesser of two evils”, rather than for the candidate who they really want, because they fear enabling the greatest of the evils to win the election. Is that any way to run a democracy? With instant runoff voting (or other majority voting system), Americans could freely vote for their first choice, without the slightest fear that by doing so they would enable their last choice to win the election by obtaining a majority of votes. And by using this kind of system we would obtain a much better idea of how popular some third party candidates really are.
As former third party U.S. presidential candidate
John Anderson explains:
In plurality voting, third-party and independent candidates too often are vilified for daring to offer a new choice, and their would-be supporters are pressured to select the lesser of two evils instead of the greatest of their hopes.
Plurality voting inhibits the creation of third partiesThe problems discussed above greatly discourage the development of strong third parties. Potentially strong third party candidates often decide not to run for office because they worry about taking votes away from candidates who most represent their views. Similarly, when they do decide to run, many voters will not vote for them because they fear that they will be throwing away their vote by doing so.
Such inhibitions would be removed by instant runoff or other majority voting system. No candidate would ever again have to worry about taking votes away from other candidates with similar views, and no voter would ever have to worry about throwing away their votes by voting for less popular, but more desirable (to them) candidates.
Consequently, more candidates would run, and when they did run they would get more votes. Getting more votes would attract national attention, thereby putting their party (and themselves) in a better position to win future elections. Our current two major parties would have some serious competition, and they would risk losing power if they failed to comport themselves more in line with the interests of the American people.
Roger Myerson at the University of Chicago discusses the anti-democratic effects of inhibiting third parties in an article titled “
Constitutional Structures for a Strong Democracy”:
An individual's right to vote is incomplete without the right to have major political parties competing for (their) vote. So nothing should prevent any national political party from nominating candidates in all elections throughout the nation, as long as the party is endorsed by at least some minimal number…
The simple plurality system… has been widely used in many countries throughout the world, but it creates substantial barriers against the entry of more than two serious parties…
In India before 1967, for example… for the opposition's popular support to be expressed effectively in plurality elections, the various opposition parties had to negotiate agreements to have only one among them competing in each district. In any other competitive market, such agreements to restrict competition would be considered a conspiracy against the public, but in plurality elections such noncompetition agreements are considered responsible political leadership. In plurality elections, voters must be focused on two serious candidates, with an understanding that a vote for any other candidate would be wasted…
The strong incentive against supporting third-parties candidates in plurality elections
should be recognized as a political entry barrier that weakens democratic competition.
The problem of Democratic Party support for conservative candidatesThere are many Democratic voters today who are getting sick and tired of their party’s leadership choosing to
support conservative candidates in Democratic primaries. Probably those decisions by the Democratic leadership are at least partially driven by its belief that moving to the center will help it win the support of centrist voters – while taking its liberal base for granted. Having little fear of being shunned or attacked from the left, on the theory that liberals have nobody else to vote for, they feel free to pursue such a strategy.
The development of strong third parties will help to torpedo such strategies, while giving voters more choice. The Democratic Party would have to worry more that pursuing centrist policies will give rise to more progressive parties and candidates, as large segments of the American people become disenchanted with having a choice only between a centrist and a far right wing party. And furthermore, even if the Democratic Party continues to pursue a centrist strategy it won’t matter as much because progressive voters will have other candidates to choose from.
There would be little or no need for primariesUltimately, one of the major reasons to have political parties is to
avoid some of the problems discussed above. What if all eight of the major Democratic Party candidates for President in 2008 had decided to run in the general election? If the Republicans chose only a single candidate to run, none of Democratic candidates would stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. Thus the need for primaries.
But with instant runoff voting, all eight of them could have run without hurting the chances of the others. That would have at least partially eliminated the ability of the corporate news media to crown the frontrunners in the Democratic field almost two years before the election. And it is also of significance that John Edwards would have stood a much better chance of winning under those conditions, since
polls showed that he was the most popular candidate in the whole field.
Limiting the role of corporate influenceWhen our elections are narrowed down to two major party candidates, the corporatocracy has a golden opportunity to influence future U.S. policy and legislation by showering money on one or both candidates. But if elections became crowded with several candidates, the opportunities for the corporatocracy to influence them would be much more limited.
The bottom line is that there is unfortunately a large minority of American voters who are inordinately
influenced by campaign advertisements – thus providing great advantage to candidates who are supported by the corporatocracy. George W. Bush is a prime example of such a candidate. But the downside for such candidates is that another large minority of American voters is highly suspicious of and alienated from candidates who receive large amounts of corporate support and tow the corporate line at the expense of the American people. In a crowded field, voters like that would rate corporate candidates at the very bottom, thereby tending to cancel out the advantages of corporate support.
The bottom lineThe bottom line is that many millions of Americans are sick and tired of an election system in which they are often forced to either vote for the lesser of two evils or throw their vote away. Millions of voters believe that their role in choosing major party candidates to run for high office is greatly limited, and that the process is largely fixed by powerful forces beyond their control. This is reflected in chronic abysmally
low voter approval of Congress, as well as chronically
low voter turnout. There is no good reason why in a democracy voters have to be presented with such limited choices.
In short, there is no good reason why the leaders of the major political parties should exercise such great control of the political process, beyond the control or even the view of the American people. The elimination of plurality voting would be a major step towards giving American voters more political choices and thereby giving them more control over the issues that affect their lives.
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