Some Conceivable (But Perhaps Not Feasible) Alternatives to Our Current Arrangements (Part 2 of 3)

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The most straightforward of the changes that I have been musing about would be to change the candidate nominating process of the major political parties. I think that we would probably benefit by moving away from a system where these nominations are determined exclusively by party primaries and returning to the pre-1970’s model where some degree of support from party officials and officeholders was generally essential to winning a party’s nomination. While the role that such officials played in screening potential nominees certainly did not prevent the nomination and election of bad candidates, it seems likely that it would reduce the likelihood of choosing candidates who are obviously unqualified for office, disdained by those who know them, or intent on destroying the government in which they seek to serve.

However, while this could be done without significant revision or reinterpretation of the Constitution, it is difficult for me to imagine how it might come about. How likely is it that party officials who have risen under the current “populist” rules would press for such a change, and how likely it that ordinary party members would advocate for a reduction in their voice? Further, for the GOP at least such a reform might represent “locking the barn door after the horses have been stolen”, given the extent to which today’s Republican party officials and officeholders reflect the same extreme views, contempt for opposition, and disdain for expertise that seem to characterize most of their primary voters.

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A different path to reducing our exposure to the risk of anti-democratic or extremist rule would be to move our political system towards proportional representation (PR).

Our current winner-take-all rules strongly encourage a two-party system. This system encourages negative campaigning, including the demonization of the opposing party, since a loss of support for the opposing party is automatically a gain for your own. Over time, this can foster extreme polarization of the electorate, which makes it increasingly difficult for supporters of one party to even consider voting for the other; under these conditions, the political price of moving toward further extremism is low. Further, under winner-take-all rules, more moderate officeholders have little freedom of action if their party is dominated by extremists, since taking more moderate positions is likely to lead to primary defeat and the loss of office.

In contrast, a PR system with multiple parties in competition provides more incentive for positive campaigning for your own party, since attacks on one particular opposing party may have negative effects on support for both your party and theirs. Breaking up the us-versus-them dynamic of the two-party system may also reduce the intensity of partisanship, so that voters who become dissatisfied with the candidates or tactics of their own party can more readily vote for a different party. And in a PR system, if more moderate members of one political party become outnumbered by extremists, they may still be able to win a “fair share” of legislative seats by forming an alternative party. Under these conditions, even if the political environment leads to a strong performance by an extremist party, they are unlikely to be able to take over full control of the government on their own, and are likely to be at least somewhat constrained by coalition partners if they seek a role in government.

This model is most straightforwardly implemented in a parliamentary system. It would be a challenge to apply this model in the United States, and to do so at the national level would likely require either Constitutional amendments or some sequence of events leading to a wholesale rewrite of the Constitution. State legislators could readily be elected on a proportional basis (and this is a change that could be implemented by individual states), and most states could also choose their Federal House members in the same way. However, for the benefits of proportional representation to be reflected in the selection of our Presidents, it might be necessary to amend the Constitution so that the President was elected by the (individual) members of the House, which would require an unlikely degree of consensus on the need for such a change.

Moving to a proportional representation system for Senate seats while retaining the current 2-votes-per-state character of the Senate would be even more challenging. In order for Senate membership to reflect proportional representation, it would probably be necessary to allow for individual Senators to have fractional votes, preserving the 2-votes-per-state feature while allowing for those votes to be shared by a delegation of 5-7 members. However, even this would require a Constitutional amendment since both the Constitution and the 17^th Amendment specify that “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State…..and each Senator shall have one vote.” This seems nearly as unlikely as a wholesale revision of the Constitution that would simply abolish the Senate or retain it while eliminating the requirement of an equal number of votes for each State.

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Another perhaps more radical approach might try to directly address the inherent problem of looking to most individuals in a population of millions to invest in the learning and reflection that is needed to make an informed and considered vote for President or for most other offices when they know that their individual choice will almost certainly not affect the outcome. This is a deep problem for democratic governance, and the response that I am going to suggest is likely outside of the feasible even in the longer run, but I offer it as food for thought.

In the alternative system that I imagine, 10-20 initial candidates for the Presidency and for other major offices would be selected based on some process (signature drives? A “jungle primary”? Nominations by multiple parties?) that would invite participation by the whole electorate. However, the choice AMONG the candidates for any particular office would then be made by a relatively small panel of individuals who would first be required to invest a considerable period of time in becoming educated about the candidates and the issues. In addition to requiring panel members to become well-informed about their choices, this would create a circumstance where each individual participant COULD plausibly affect the outcome of the vote, and hence would provide far more motivation to make that vote in a considered fashion. Their situation would then resemble that of a juror in a major trial rather than that of a single voter in a pool of millions. If this panel were chosen at random from among eligible citizens, its choices could still reasonably be viewed as democratic in that they would plausibly represent the choices that would be made by the population as a whole if all voters were well-informed and made their choices in a context where their individual choices matter. But it is not easy to imagine the circumstances in which such a dramatic and unprecedented change in the nature of our government could be improved and implemented.

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(Continued)