Make Political Parties Great Again

The fall of Eric Swalwell over several days in April was something to behold. A golden boy with a rapid rise, he was twice an impeachment manager against Donald Trump in the president’s first term. In the space of barely a week the first public airing of sexual assault accusations against him became national news. What followed were still more credible accusations, an announced investigation by the Manhattan DA, followed by his dropping out of the California Governor’s race in which he was briefly the leading contender. He then resigned from Congress on April 14^th.

A flurry of statements followed by Democratic party insiders that the married Swalwell’s aggressive sexual behavior was—in an oft quoted phrase—'an open secret.’ I’m not sure if this is supposed to make the individuals saying this feel better, but for the rest of us reading it, (including from those this author knew in Democratic party circles in years past) it leaves us wondering about the culture of sexual violence and misogyny that inhabits the halls of Congress.

Though as Samantha Hancox-Li pointed out in these pages, predation on the young and underage is far and away a GOP problem, being a sex pest is not limited to any party. Yet Democrats can take some solace that the fall of Swalwell was rapid once it began. Contrast that with Speaker Johnson’s Republicans whose members languish in their misdeeds, such as GOP Texas Rep. Tony Gonzalez, who despite a long affair with a staffer which ended in her suicide by self-immolation, did not bother resigning until it became clear he would lose his primary runoff.

Swalwell has moved all too quickly into the rearview mirror. California Democrats took a breath when it became clear that California's unique "jungle primary" wouldn't misfire and lock Democrats out of the general election. But we should take a moment and reflect on the systemic flaws that allowed a predator like Swalwell to rise in the party.

The institutions and rules of the game in the US—and California in this particular case—make party selection and discipline systems fundamentally weak. Swalwells and cults of personalities around certain elected officials are encouraged and incentivized by America’s bizarre electoral systems, especially open primary elections, lack of party control over the ballot label, and single-member district elections for legislatures.

Parties are a must and primaries are not freedom

There can be no governance of the modern state without parties as Liberal Currents’ Adam Gurri recently pointed out. Even authoritarian, one-party states have one party—it's right in the name!  (In Marxist-Leninist regimes this is often accompanied by a simulacrum of multipartyism.)

But parties and primaries are distinct. The US is essentially the only democracy where the primary election enjoys legally binding control over who carries a party label in the general election. The primary is thought of as a bulwark against elite control of the two parties and was sold as such more than a century ago by Progressive Era reformers. Progressive reformers didn’t like the American party system they found and for good reason: it was dominated by party machines, candidates determined in back rooms by corrupt party bosses. But instead of turning to proportional representation as many other democracies did (except for the fascinating story of municipal PR last century), early 20^th century progressives adopted primary elections (state legislatures and Congress) and non-partisan elections (many states’ municipal elections) to break the power of party machines.

But their reforms locked in an unusually rigid form of two-partyism. Single member district (SMD) elections already tend to only let two parties win the vast majority of seats. This phenomenon is often called Duverger’s Law. However, SMD plus open primaries prevent the formation of all but a faint whiff of multipartyism. Canada, the UK, and France, for instance, while using single member districts have two major parties and also several minor ones that get votes and win seats.

Only having two parties elected in a vast continental-sized federal country of 350 million is truly a perverse form of American exceptionalism. In many states and localities, one or the other of these parties is so dominant as to have an effectively permanent supermajority. This is not democracy.

Our two parties are weak

You might think that our two parties are strong because they are always spamming your text messages and emails trying to raise money. But this actually demonstrates their fundamental weakness. They are dominated by an outside donor class and free agent elected officials who are the main beneficiaries of small donors.

For many of my friends in Democratic party activism this arrangement seems natural. But this is odd compared to other developed countries, where parties are funded significantly by membership dues (a small minority of citizens are members) and candidate selection is driven by what Americans would think of as small caucuses, party clubs, or even the dreaded smoke-filled room. Arguably, primaries make political parties somewhat illegal in the US, at least in the way parties exist in Europe (or East Asia, or Latin America, or Oceania—take your pick). Controlling access to party labels is a core function of parties that is de jure denied to America’s two parties.

Parties de jure have no ability to police the use of their names in the primary or general elections

Parties in this country have no ability to do intraparty discipline of men like Swalwell. The list of people who became candidates that no party elites would want to run is as big as this country is wide. Trump is obviously one. Democrat Graham Platner in Maine sure seems like another. It includes perennial candidates who can hijack a party label, despite laughable moral turpitude. Take 88-year-old perennial candidate Mike Schaefer, a member of California’s Board of Equalization. He enjoys disbarment as a lawyer in multiple states, spousal violence convictions, and multiple runs for office in Nevada, Maryland, and California. And an endorsement by California’s Democratic Party, because since they can’t beat him, they may as well join him.

California’s setup is particularly bad, even by US standards

While there is nearly no proportional representation and little RCV in the US, there is a rich federalism of various confusing ballot access rules, party label formation regulations, and prohibitions on party labels at all (for local elections in many states).

California, the state where I’ve spent most of my life and am familiar with the political scene, distinguishes itself with: very low costs in terms of money and volunteers to get on the statewide ballot (leading to ballots with many names in random order), ballot lock-in months before the first round (the so-called primary) with no legal mechanism to remove names (despite the political inevitability of many candidates dropping out de facto but not de jure).

But worst of all is the two-round electoral system that was born of former Governor Schwarzenegger’s post partisan fever dreams. The first June round, euphemistically called a primary, contains all candidates jumbled together. Candidates get to claim a party label without any vetting at all. Then the top two vote getters go to the general, even if they are from the same party. Even if they were the top two vote getters in the first round. Even if someone got a majority in the first round. Madness.

As has happened in multiple district races, this has led to “top two lockout” in the general election. That is, the party which clearly has the majority of support among voters as a whole isn’t even on the ballot in the November general because majority party support was split among candidates.

California state parties have mechanisms to endorse that are neutered by the state’s laws

There are some institutional bones within the two major parties in California that resemble “real” parties. For the Democrats, the state party composed of locally elected activists and elected Democrats choose which candidate to endorse for the primary. An endorsement by the party requires 60% of this internal vote. This routinely happens for most legislative and congressional seats. The endorsed candidate gets no special notation on the ballot but under state law gets a notation in the ballot pamphlet, mailed to all voters, as being endorsed.

But because of the wide-open governor’s race this year with many well-known (and some self-financed) candidates, that was never going to happen this time around.

Imagine no primaries, it’s easy if you try

An effort to go back to the status quo ante Schwarzenegger in California, the closed primary, is underway. This approach is a step backwards.

For inherently single winner offices—like mayors, governors, and state attorneys general—get rid of the primary and just have a single representative for each party in the general election. All of a sudden, the state party convention will be strongly inclined to meet that 60% threshold, even if it takes multiple rounds to do so, or risk having no candidate in the general election. If that leaves a faction of activists pissed off, leave them a window in the election schedule to form another party label for another candidate. Make the general election ranked choice voting, so there is virtually no worry about the spoiler effect of (say) progressives splitting their votes across multiple candidates and accidentally electing a candidate whose policies only have minority support.

Finally, have ballot printing/lock schedules—that actually reflect the reality of candidates dropping out and endorsing—up to a convenient timeframe, like four to six weeks before the election. Give party leaders the ability to kick out Swalwell-type sex fiends and replace them with alternates, in a manner and procedure defined by law.

Multiparty, proportional representation in all legislatures

Most democracies use proportional representation to produce multiparty results. The US is increasingly an outlier in this respect. Many academics and increasing numbers of elected officials (especially Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) who keeps introducing his PR bill for the US House) are advocating for proportional representation for the US House of Representatives. But there is state and local proportional representation activism across the country too. Including in California, where supporters have recently pushed for PR for the Los Angeles City Council and the Colorado state legislature.

We can go beyond this piecemeal effort. The US constitution guarantees each state a small-r Republican Form of Government (Article 4, Section 4). It’s time for Congress to authorize this clause and bring multiparty democracy to this vast land.

It’s not just the Left—PR is bubbling up on the Right

No, not that right. Not at the Federalist, the Heritage Foundation, or any number of other hard right, MAGA devoted groups.

But among some center-right think tanks that have cultivated an arms-length relationship to MAGA, PR is becoming popular. Robert Levy, the chairman emeritus of the Cato Institute, published an explainer and advocacy piece for PR on June 1st. Jonathan Madison of the R Street Institute was even more glowing in his piece in Governing, also published on the 1st, going into significant detail on different methods–open list PR (OLPR), closed-list, and the single transferable vote (STV). Madison also reported on the effort a few months ago of three state Senators in Wyoming to enact closed-list PR for the state’s lower house.

Wait, did you just say there was a legislative effort to enact PR in a state legislature this year?

It’s even more significant than that. The three state Senators who sponsored the legislation were Republicans in a heavily GOP state. The author was one state Senator Troy McKeown, a small town grocery store owner who nobody would mistake for a liberal. The version of proportional representation they drafted was Closed List PR. Closed list PR is often conceptualized as “the most” PR version of PR as you just vote for a part list, with no influence on the ordering of the list as with OLPR.

The effort failed for this year (the Wyoming legislature only meets for a few months each year). In any case it’s significant that even state elected officials on the right know that they can’t keep winning forever. And that perhaps the best way forward, post-Trump, would be for other parties to form on the center-right. Even if they can’t quite say it that way while MAGA and Trump control Republicans.

Instead of one-party states, let’s do multiparty states

Elected officials in legislatures and statewide offices should be free to exercise judgement to be sure. Party members can and do defect in multiparty parliamentary style systems. But American-style Free Agent Politicians are a disaster. Strong parties with de jure control over their labels can police their own ranks, while remaining accountable to elections that they can lose if their elite selections don't accord with their voters' preferences. If you like democracy, you must resist the peculiar Americanism of anti-partyism. Be pro-party—as many of them as possible.

In polling—69% in the most recent Pew survey—Americans consistently support multipartyism. Academics advocate it too. A reform opinion shared by both the academy and the public is something to behold. Many in activist circles among Democrats fear this change—being familiar with the American way of doing things and assuming multipartyism is some kind of trick to crack them and give a small GOP power.

For those on the GOP-MAGA authoritarian side, they know that they have hacked the game of American two-party presidentialism and its perverse rules. They will doubtless be opponents of proportional representation. This is to be expected because, as Jamelle Bouie recently posted, it’s a pious American myth that reform is bipartisan:

"If there is a path to either national nonpartisan redistricting or proportional representation, it is going to go through one party or another. But the first step toward it actually happening is for that party to win power, and you go to war with the system you have, not the one you want."

As we move towards a moment of reconstruction in the coming years post-Trump, it’s critical that we quickly embrace pro-democracy electoral reforms at the national and state levels. Call me a dreamer, but I can imagine a USA that actually has fine, modern institutions of local, state, and federal republican democracy instead of backwards relics.

Featured image is "Croatian Parliament 2024," CC0 1.0 Vittoriochichia 2024.