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Electoral Reform Electoral Reform Max Taubenberger July, 2020 Executive Summary The United States once prided itself on being a bastion of democ- racy for the world to see. The resilience of our democracy, like so many of our institutions has atrophied and become sclerotic and ineffective. As of 2020, the US comes in at a measly 25th place on the Democ- racy Index1. Furthermore, the average American voter and grassroots organizations have little to no influence over the direction of public policy.2 take a cursory overview of the current circumstances and pro- pose several paths for reform and many different options that can be taken at the municipal, state, and federal levels to help restore the vitality of American democracy. 1https://infographics.economist.com/2020/democracy-index-2019/map.html 2https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/ article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/ 62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B 1 Voting Systems 1.1 Presidential/Executive Presidential elections in the United States are an outlier in that they're the only major office that isn't directly elected by the people. Instead, there are electors (of which there are currently 538) that are sent to the Electoral College. Throughout the history of the US, the method of electoral appor- tionment has varied as the constitution gives full levity to states in how they choose to select electors. It wasn't until the election of 1872 that all states apportioned their electors predicated upon the popular vote in the en- tire state. Two states today (Nebraska and Maine) use a more proportional method where some electors are chosen by the popular vote in a congres- sional district. Like nearly all other elections, people cast a ballot with the plurality vote or first past the post (FPTP) method. These factors lead one to believe that a candidate has far more popular support than they really do (Bill Clinton never got more than 50% of the popular vote). There are several reform recommendations that would make presidential elections more open, transparent, and allow for more and higher quality candidates to have a fighting chance. First, change how electors are apportioned. The current methodology of electoral apportionment is inadequate for reflecting the will of the people. There are three options, each successive one being arguably bolder than the last. Move to proportional allocation of electors Move to the National Popular Vote (NPV) compact Eliminate the Electoral College The first two options are constitutionally sound3 as the constitution has no mandate on the states to apportion in a particular way as previously mentioned. Electors in this proportional allocation scenario would be done by a state by state basis (rather than nationally); electors would be chosen by using the total vote share of a candidate and taking it as a proportion of the total electors and rounding to the nearest whole integer (i.e Hillary Clinton would receive 16 electoral votes in Texas out of 38 with 43.24% of the vote, Trump would get 20 with 52.23% of the vote). The advantage is some- what better representation overall as candidates still get some electors, even if they don't get a plurality of votes. It is also the case that the Democratic 3There is a lot of legal debate over NPV 2 presidential primary uses a proportional allocation method for electors to the National Convention by state, so there is already some precedence for a method like this. The massive downside of this method is that it would likely lead to a number of elections determined by the House of Representatives as the Electoral College mandates that a candidate must have a majority of Electoral College votes to avoid a Contingent Election. In some cases, it would lead to just as unrepresentative (or even more so) a result than if we used the present system. The National Popular Vote compact is an interstate agreement among a number of states and the District of Columbia to award all of their electors to the winner of the popular vote nationally. Some clear advantages to this method are the likelihood of increased civic engagement, upholding the principle of voting equality (that some people don't have a stronger say than others), and increase the security of elections by reducing incentives to engage in suppression or misinformation campaigns from perni- cious actors, domestic or international. Some people worry that it "reduces the voices of small states". When borne out, this becomes a tenuous claim as the Senate is an institution that was designed to give overwhelming weight to small states. For example, a state like Wyoming with a population less than 600,000 inhabitants gets two senators (the same as California, which has nearly 40 million inhabitants) and a representative in the House of Rep- resentatives. Furthermore, the current system forces candidates to spend nearly all their time in swing states (typically in the most populated areas of those states) to try to tilt the popular vote of 5-10 states. Rural areas aren't visited, because the return on investment is parsimonious regardless of what electoral system you utilize; there just aren't enough people there to justify the candidate to spend a majority of time in those areas. For example, both Trump and Clinton spent the majority of their time in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina in the final two months. Neither even visited 27 states, most of which were more rural states. Having to campaign for the entire country, and not just a handful of swing states would make can- didates have to earn the trust and support of Americans at large, not just a few. The third option is abolishing the Electoral College. The effects of this and the second option are nearly functionally identical. Abolition would be a considerably more arduous task and require the ratification of a 28th amendement, requiring a 2/3rd vote in both congressional chambers and 38 out of 50 states approving it. Unlike what some claim, the popular support for removing the EC entirely has been pretty high historically; support for abolition was in the 70s for much of the 1970s and 63% of Americans in 2013 still wanted to abolish it. The hyper-partisan election of 2016 lessened its support to a near tie, but it has rebounded to 55% as of 2019. Notably, more voters in both the Democratic and Republican parties supported amending 3 the constitution over an interstate compact. Figure 1: Support was high in the 1970s 4 Figure 2: 2013 sentiments 5 Figure 3: Support for amending is higher than the NPV The Second major change necessary is altering how primaries are done. The core components that should be altered are the voting system used, the timing, and the standards of debates. Regarding voting systems, all 50 states need to move to a direct voter election rather than the kludge that is caucuses (as we all saw in the bungled affair that was the Iowa Democratic Caucus). Furthermore, the voting method used must change away from FPTP. (as it should in the general as well). Here are a list of single winner voting methods that are available for use 6 First Past The Post (FPTP)/Plurality Voting Ranked Choice/Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) Borda Count Condorcet Range/Score Voting Approval Voting As follows is a concise description of each. Range voting is a voting method that involves scoring a list of candidates on a "range" (i.e 0-5 or 0-9). The scores are then either averaged or added and the candidate with the highest score is the winner. Approval voting is a degraded version of range voting where voters can either "approve" or "disapprove" the list of candidates standing for election (essentially like range voting if the range was 0-1). Like range, the highest count yields the winner. Plurality requires little introduction as it's the standard method for nearly all elections in Canada, the UK, and the US; voters mark one candidate and whoever gets the most votes wins. Instant Runoff Voting involves 3 or more candidates where voters do a preferential rank of each candidate. If no candidate gets an outright majority, the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated. The voters who had the eliminated candidate as their first choice have their votes added to their second choice. This process is iterated until a winner has been selected. Borda count is equivalent on the voter side as IRV (you rank candidates from 1 to n), but votes are tallied differently; the winner is calculated by awarding points in reverse proportion to the ranking voters assigned that candidate. For example, with n candidates, we award n points to first preferences, then n - 1 for second preferences, and so on until bottom preferences, which receive only 1 point. The points are tallied, and the one with the highest score wins. Borda is notable in that it is more consensus based than majoritarian. Condorcet describes several methods in which the winner is the candidate that can win a majority in any pairwise match with another candidate (against every other candidate one on one, they win). In evaluating the efficacy of these methods, there are a few salient param- eters to maximize for: minimizing Bayesian regret, ease of administering, and ease of comprehension for voters. The first parameter warrants consideration; Bayesian regret can be defined as the discrepancy of satisfaction choosing the selected candidate in a given voting system and the best candidate. It can be measured by running Monte Carlo simulations of virtual elections millions of times.
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