Proportional Representation Would Fix That

Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural address’ famous line “ … the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is familiar to us as an exhortation to action. But you really need to imbibe the second part, “—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

We must embrace what Samantha Hancox-Li called on these pages a war mindset as to the problems our democratic life faces. War is certainly a fearful thing. But we need to get over the terror, change the facts on the ground, and convert “retreat into advance.”

We can fix our broken system. We can change the structure of elections in America to make them more free, more democratic, and more fair to every voter. Here's how.

What do we fear?

Republicans made constitutional hardball their mission under Obama and Biden. The new 21^st century filibuster became a norm. The Supreme Court began to erode long established civil and voting rights protections.

All the while simple statutory or rules fixes—principally filibuster elimination and Supreme Court expansion—could have been undertaken under the trifectas that each Democratic president since the end of the Cold War enjoyed during their first two years.

But we told ourselves that the norms will hold. McConnell will allow Obama to appoint Scalia's replacement. After he didn't, we told ourselves that if we did expand the Supreme Court or get rid of the filibuster that after our inevitable loss in the  future that the Republicans would get back at us.

Republicans are doing far worse now. They had no need to get rid of the filibuster because they have no lawful agenda that could command a majority. Russ Vought and DOGE have shown that Congress is not needed in MAGA's authoritarian politics. Republicans still, for now, claim to require Congress to enact budget appropriations. Hence the Big Beautiful Bill, which was a staggering give away of power to the executive branch. Congress has prostrated itself before Trump's authoritarian push. Norms haven't saved us. It's time we saved ourselves.

The fix: proportional representation

The inevitability of the president losing control of Congress in the midterms is called the thermostatic election cycle. We can end that inevitability by changing the law that effectively mandates our strict two-party system. Instead, we can have a vibrant multiparty Congress where no single party has a majority and where the fascists who hijacked a zombie GOP are marginalized.The center-left would be expanded by new enthusiasm for real choices. A responsible center-right could emerge from the ashes of the GOP, joined to “responsible” small-d democrats of the Romney/Bulwark variety. The sharp urban/rural electoral divide between conservatives and liberals is greatly exacerbated by single-member districts. Prairie populists and urban conservatives would emerge under multipartyism.

Proportional representation (PR) is a family of voting systems that replace the winner-take-all principle and replace them with a formula that ensures, to some extent, that seats are distributed in proportion to their votes. Under single-member districts, if the second-place finisher gets 49% of the votes, they get 0% of the seats. Under PR, they would get approximately 49% of the seats. Sounds fairer, right?

There are several broad types of PR with corresponding ballot designs, some very familiar to Americans (names of candidates with a party label), to somewhat familiar (ranked choice voting), to ones less familiar (just a party label in party list systems). Smart, readable primers for how to think about what PR looks like from a comparative and American perspective include Patterns of Democracy and A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective.

Single transferable vote?

Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) has been introducing his Fair Representation Act over the past four Congresses calling for proportional representation. Attracting more co-sponsors each time, the bill would create three to seven member multimember House districts (with the smallest states just having one to two such districts), mandate ranked choice ballots, ban gerrymandering, and distribute seats proportionally instead of winner-take-all. The bill’s current version, while asserting the authority of the Constitution’s elections clause to impose PR, keeps mostly intact the myriad of states’ ballot line formation laws, ballot access rules, and primary systems.

The form of PR that Beyer proposes is called multi-member ranked choice voting (MM-RCV) or in traditional literature the single-transferable vote (STV). Used in several English-speaking countries, it has the “advantage” over party list systems in preserving the ability to vote for individuals' names. But despite a smidge of familiarity with single winner RCV in some US jurisdictions, the ballot paper presents complexity over current ballot forms. And the counting is not as straightforward as either single-member districts or party list proportional representation.

Open list proportional representation?

Despite the trend of many activists pushing MM-RCV lately, some electoral systems scholars I reached out to would prefer the “simpler” system called open list proportional representation (OLPR). This could use the same ballot design we have today but in multi-member districts. Either way, they support ditching single-member districts.

Matthew S. Shugart, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at UC Davis and one of the authors of A Different Democracy, explained in an email to me:

Strong cases can be made for single transferable vote (STV, which is a form of ranked-choice voting in multi-seat districts) or for mixed-member proportional (MMP). However, open-list proportional representation (OLPR) best meets the criteria of simplicity in implementation, voting, and administration. My argument for OLPR is inspired partly by my own sense of what is workable.

Political Science Professor Emeritus at Troy University Steven L. Taylor, another author of A Different Democracy, similarly wrote to me:

I outlined my OLPR preferences in my Protect Democracy white paper last year. But I would take MM-RCV too. And I would absolutely expand the [size of the] House. That would increase small-d democratic representation and lessen (but not fix) the problems with the EC (electoral college).

Other political scientists I reached came to similar conclusions.

Jennifer N. Victor, political science professor at George Mason University, advocates for “Institutional reforms… [including] some form of PR system with a complementary balloting system.”

David Faris, political scientist at Roosevelt University, is on team MM-RCV, “Obviously I'm a big supporter of the Fair Representation Act. Multi-member districts elected with ranked choice voting is the best way to extricate ourselves from the nightmarish spiral of polarization and paralysis in Congress.”

Yale political scientist Kevin Elliot, a recent guest of our Neon Liberalism podcast, makes another nuanced case for OLPR’s applicability to American political habits. He explains:

Single choice, rather than ranking, makes for an easier task for voters. Open list allows voters to select either the ordering set by the party or to choose their own most preferred candidate. This arrangement can replace the hated, no good primary system while still retaining a role for citizen/party rank & file choice in who their representatives are. But since most voters will just tick the box at the top, the party will get more power in deciding who its candidates will be by setting the list order. Open list is, I think, an excellent fit for the US.

What a multiparty system might look like

Given our system of primaries and single-member districts we have a uniquely “pure” form of two-partyism in the US. What would a multiparty U.S. House look like? Let me speculate.

The current "third parties" with ballot lines in one or more states have had the role of institutional spoilers built into their identities for many years. There would quickly be a sorting of those who want to be serious players in a new electoral system and those who do not. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have been smart enough never to try to be a ballot label anywhere due to the spoiler effect—they are among the more obvious parties-in-waiting.

Green, Working Families Party (WFP), Libertarians, etc—would be taken over quickly by serious people in their state and national organizations or they would slip further into irrelevancy. Democrats and Republicans would crack into two to three parties each, one way or another. The Libertarians might fill up with some former GOP'ers, while a firmly centrist Bulwark-type outfit might attract others. The institutional remnants of the GOP national and state organizations might attract the hard-core MAGA types, equivalent to the neo-fascist AfD or Reform in Germany and England, respectively.

This seems scary to many in the activist ranks of Democrats because we are so traumatized by the brutal logic of plurality single member district elections. Many Dem activists I talk to assume multipartyism in America would be a trick to divide them. But I argue that the sum of the three parties under PR—centrist Dems, liberal Dems, and DSA'ers—would be greater than the "whole" that the Dems are now. A multiparty America would attract to the November elections the votes of so many people who now identify as independent and/or don't vote.

With no party able to ever have a majority on its own a legislative coalition would form a majority to govern the House’s business. No longer would there be the perverse incentives of divided government for relentless obstruction (like the GOP tanking bipartisan immigration reform in 2024). Coalition members would be incentivized to pass multipartisan legislation. They would be in the catbird seat with regards to policy formation vis-a-vis the president—a welcome 180-degree turn from the current power arrangement with the chief executive.

Resiliency to the rise of right wing, fascist politics

In his recent piece It Wasn’t Fascism All Along: Conservatism was a distinct ideology but it is dead and it is not coming back, Toby Buckle argues that conservatism’s reign may have been ended by the re-rise of a fascism that has squelched it for good (at least in the US and UK). Whether that’s the case or not, only a European-style proportional representation cordon sanitaire system can keep the fascists at bay. A center to left multiparty coalition would be able to then run the affairs of a democratic republic where rules of the game are respected and violence and its rhetoric are a civic sin. Without PR, the fascists in the GOP are able to depend on many voters who’d rather give their votes to fascists than for the one other option—Democrats.

Across Europe, far-right parties command a quarter to a third of the vote. Only in single-member district systems like France, the UK, or the US do they threaten outright fascist rule simply because the electoral and party systems let them convert a mere plurality into government control.

Under PR, on the Republican side the entrenched, tribal affiliation that Republicans have to that identity would be smashed under a regime of new options. With the logic of us versus them eliminated, perhaps positive center-right conservative politics would have the space to emerge.

Resiliency to authoritarian, xenophobic, and fascist politics is the problem that we face. PR systems, like Germany, have been able to contain their authoritarian right-wing menace with fair, lawful electoral politics. The US, UK, and France, among others, face massive headwinds from those forces exacerbated by their electoral and constitutional designs.

Making PR a “hundred days” reform as soon as possible would upend our calcified two-party system. Only a few party insiders and timid squishes would miss this most contemptible aspect of the old republic. Combined with other rapid-fire statutory reforms—DC and Puerto Rico statehood, Supreme Court reform and expansion, and conversion of the Department of Justice to an independent service akin to the Federal Reserve—we can entrench democracy and pass down our system of freedom to everyone who calls this land their home.

Featured image is "1888 National Democratic Convention Delegate Ticket," Basil Gordon 1888.