Why do winner-take-all voting systems (like in the USA) persist?

[villa]

@foolsguinea

It’s entirely possible within our constitutional traditions to change the Senate to an STV system, which is proportional without being party-list. The Aussies call it the best & fairest system in the world; they’re right.

The Aussies also think Vegemite is better than Marmite, so let’s not rely on their opinion about anything…

STV may be good in theory (I’m not sold on it) but it is a clusterfuck in practice. I’ve counted/worked on many STV elections, and they are overly susceptible to influence by stupid things. In particular, the person first on the ballot is at a huge advantage when it comes to picking up transfer votes.

[BrainGlutton]

Back in 1992, Michael Lind (who later co-founded the “radical centrist” New America Foundation) published a pro-PR article in The Atlantic Monthly, “A Radical Plan to Change American Politics,” which made some points of interest here:

The chances that tiny fringe parties would win significant representation would be limited by the division of the country into multimember districts. The danger of extremism could also be guarded against by setting a threshold for participation in the legislature. Germany’s requirement that parties get five percent of the nationwide vote, for example, has been enough to exclude both the neo-Nazi Republicans and the radical-left Greens. Anyone who argues for a higher threshold should explain just which 10 or 20 percent of his fellow citizens are so dangerous that they should be effectively disenfranchised.

It is extremely doubtful that PR could bring black-nationalist or white-supremacist parties to power in the House. Since blacks constitute only 12 percent of the population, and an even smaller proportion of the electorate, most black voters would have to support an extremist party for it to clear a five-percent threshold. It seems unlikely that they would, because more-moderate multiracial parties would more accurately reflect the economic concerns and values of most black voters. Even if a black-nationalist party passed the five-percent hurdle, it could be kept out of the House leadership. To elect one member to a five-member leadership committee, at least 17 percent of the House membership would be necessary. Black radicals would have to form coalitions with non-blacks.

What about white Klansmen and neo-Nazis? Right-wing nationalist parties have made gains in recent European elections, but these are protest votes by moderate voters who seek to change particular policies of centrist parties, not to replace those parties permanently with extremists. In the United States the support for Buchanan’s extreme conservatism, even in the Republican Party, appears to have been in the single digits, and support for David Duke-style racism vanishingly small. This suggests that the only viable far-right parties in a multiparty House would be Pat Robertson-style Christian conservatives, not Aryan Nation skinheads.

Those who claim that PR was responsible for the electoral successes of the National Socialist party in Weimar Germany are mistaken, according to no less an authority than Hermann Goering. Enid Lakeman, a British advocate of PR, writes of Weimar Germany that “if the British electoral system had been in use [the Nazi party] might have been grossly over-represented…Goering said at his trial that under the British system that [1933] election would have given the Nazis every seat in the country, and he cannot have been far wrong.” Hitler would have loved the Anglo-American electoral system.

For some, of course, a system that gives any influence to “extremists” like conservative Christians and social democrats is bad. Even if this intolerant position could be reconciled with a commitment to democracy in America, would PR be worse than the plurality system in this respect? Under our present system small but intensely motivated ideological minorities have the power to force moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats to placate them in order to get the small margin of voters sometimes necessary for election in winner-take-all races. In a multiparty system such intense minorities might gain direct representation in Congress but would lose their ability to dictate centrist-party platforms. To be sure, on particular measures large, centrist parties might need small-party help, but they would not need to ally themselves with small parties in order to win election in the first place. In the shifting coalitions formed to pass different bills, the larger, moderate parties would have the upper hand.

In addition to ideological extremism, today’s two-party American system promotes “extremism of the center.” This results from the need for the two national parties to exaggerate their differences in order to appeal to the crucial minority of white middle-class swing voters. These voters–Wallace-ites and Reagan Democrats–do not identify completely with either national party. Since 1968 they have elected primarily Republican Presidents who share their conservative cultural and foreign-policy values, and Democratic congressmen who protect their middle-class transfers (Social Security, Medicaid, student loans). The penchant of these “populists” for ticket-splitting not only exaggerates the indirect power of this group but also encourages Democrats and Republicans alike to pander to their worst instincts. The Democrats try to appeal to the populist swing vote with giveaways; the Republicans play on racial resentment and call for military strength. If populists had their own party in Congress, their leaders would presumably have to be more responsible and measured in their views than are swing voters whose prejudices and appetites are stoked and exploited by both of today’s national parties. As long as there is ticket-splitting, extremism of this kind will be built into our present system–and will corrupt it. A case can be made, then, that PR is just as likely to reduce the political power of extremist minorities as to enhance it.

[foolsguinea]

“the person first on the ballot is at a huge advantage…”

Also true in SNTV & FPTP. Not a great reason to discount STV. Also. Aussie STV has above-the-line voting, which can partially correct for that.

[Pitchmeister]

@foolsguinea

Do Germans see a natural link between opposition to abortion, opposition to socialized medicine, & support of a large military-industrial complex? Because in the USA, with its sticky permanent coalitions, those are treated as all of a piece. I consider that illogical.

Well, first off, we do have socialized medicine already.

And, of course, there are general terms of “conservative” vs. “progressive”, but the Free Democrats, for instance, focus heavily on free markets and tax cuts for corporations, while being more on the “Democrat” side on several other issues. In general, however, the divide is not as vast as what I perceive it to be in the US (main source: The Daily Show), and there are no news networks that can rival the partisanship of Fox News (or maybe MSNBC on the other side of the spectrum). Political ads don’t smear their opponents and no one accuses anyone of being a secret muslim socialist nazi.
It’s not bad, actually…

[Bryan_Ekers]

@sleestak

Plus, how do you seat 1/2 of a Senator?

Run him in Georgia?

[Shodan]

@foolsguinea

]You’re still thinking in binary terms. And in fact a PR system is the opposite of gerrymandering, & the opposite of knowing you’re throwing away your vote. You have it exactly backwards. If you understood the actual process, you might embrace PR.

I don’t think I am misunderstanding.

What I am saying is that PR loses the aspect of voting that expresses my wish that, not only do I want my guys in place, I don’t want the other side in place. The US elected Clinton twice and Bush once in spite of the fact that in each instance, the majority of the electorate wanted someone else to be President.

Regards,
Shodan

[foolsguinea]

@Michael Lind

For some, of course, a system that gives any influence to “extremists” like conservative Christians and social democrats is bad.

As a social democrat & former Christian Right baby, I’m profoundly offended. Why does one have to be a godless small-government type to be “mainstream”?

Under our present system small but intensely motivated ideological minorities have the power to force moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats to placate them in order to get the small margin of voters sometimes necessary for election in winner-take-all races. In a multiparty system such intense minorities might gain direct representation in Congress but would lose their ability to dictate centrist-party platforms. To be sure, on particular measures large, centrist parties might need small-party help, but they would not need to ally themselves with small parties in order to win election in the first place. In the shifting coalitions formed to pass different bills, the larger, moderate parties would have the upper hand.

I think this is susbstantially true. It won’t happen quick, of course. Habit & tradition will keep the center-right looking to the Norquistians for a while. From my experience of the Democratic Party, I suspect they’d adapt to seeking centrist coalitions more quickly (if a bit crankily) while the GOP would balk & favor hard-right alliances for several terms. Then the Dems would have to make awkward coalitions of the left, & the GOP would accuse them of being “extreme” & “unpatriotically weird.” In other words, same attitudes, different structure.

[sleestak]

@foolsguinea

To shine the light of day on the coalitions & backroom deals & give us a chance to choose or reject you for what you are. Binary politics doesn’t do that well.

Why do you think this would lessen the amount of back room deals? AFAICT, this would increase the amount of back room deals in the U.S. The more fractional the institution, the more the pols will have to make deals to get things done. Of course, the pols will still want to play to their core supporters, so they will have to be even more inventive when it comes to the lies they tell.

I also disagree that the larger parties would have the upper hand all the time. If there are a few minority party members that have to be convinced to get a bill passed, then that minority ends up with a huge amount of power when it comes to making deals.

Slee

[BrainGlutton]

@Shodan

What I am saying is that PR loses the aspect of voting that expresses my wish that, not only do I want my guys in place, I don’t want the other side in place.

No, it doesn’t. Your preferred political location, call it the All Night Party, denies seats to other parties in exact proportion as it wins seats for itself. You can’t fairly ask for more than that!

@Shodan

The US elected Clinton twice and Bush once in spite of the fact that in each instance, the majority of the electorate wanted someone else to be President.

The solution to that would be instant-runoff voting, which is designed for elections to single, nonapportionable offices like the presidency or governorships, and which makes sure that whomever wins is at least acceptable to the majority of voters; but that’s a different discussion.

[Shodan]

@BrainGlutton

@Shodan

What I am saying is that PR loses the aspect of voting that expresses my wish that, not only do I want my guys in place, I don’t want the other side in place.

No, it doesn’t. Your preferred political location, call it the All Night Party, denies seats to other parties in exact proportion as it wins seats for itself. You can’t fairly ask for more than that!

Yes it does, under our current system. We lose that with PR.

Regards,
Shodan

[BrainGlutton]

@Shodan

@BrainGlutton

No, it doesn’t. Your preferred political location, call it the All Night Party, denies seats to other parties in exact proportion as it wins seats for itself. You can’t fairly ask for more than that!

Yes it does, under our current system. We lose that with PR.

Regards,
Shodan

No, we don’t. Under PR, your party still denies seats to all other parties in exact proportion as it wins seats for itself.

[BrainGlutton]

So, what would a PR-elected Congress look like?

Also from Lind’s article:

The largest party in the House might well be the Republicans. As it is, their party, with its homogeneous and stable group of core voters and centralized, disciplined organization, is far more like a European party than the Democratic Party is. If PR were adopted, the Republicans might lose their right wing to a new conservative party or parties, but the number of right-wing Republican voters is fairly small (as the Patrick Buchanan campaign unintentionally demonstrated, by adding only single-digit figures to large protest votes). The Republicans might compensate for their loss by becoming a more consistently classical-liberal party–pro-business, pro-choice–and attracting fiscally conservative social liberals who now identify with a Democrat like Paul Tsongas. Such a neoliberal Republican Party might hold steady at 35 to 40 percent of the House.

The Democratic Party, an incoherent coalition of smaller proto-parties, lobbies, interest groups, and machines, which are brought together only by the winner-take-all logic of our electoral system, would, however, probably disintegrate. The breakup of the Democratic Party as the result of PR would not mean that the power of today’s Democratic voters would decline. On the contrary, the kind of moderate Democrats represented by the Democratic Leadership Council, freed from the electoral necessity of appeasing ethnic and liberal lobbies, might well prosper. Together with “Reagan Democrats” wooed back from the Republican presidential coalition, moderate Democrats in Congress might form a Populist Party equivalent to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. Slightly right of center on social issues and foreign policy, slightly left of center on middle-class benefits, such a party could be expected to draw substantial support from Northeastern ethnics, middle-and lower-middle-class whites and Hispanics in the South and West, and perhaps socially conservative blacks. It would be heavily Catholic. A Populist Party might be the nearest rival to the Republicans for the status of largest party in the House.

The United States, unlike Europe, probably would not have a strong Social Democratic Party, given the low level of unionization and the lack of a mainstream socialist intellectual tradition here. There might nevertheless be something that called itself the Social Democratic Party, representing unions, farmers, public-sector employees. Heavily black and Hispanic, such a party would favor protectionism and government subsidies to industry.

A small American Green Party would almost certainly arise from the decomposition of the Democrats. Appealing to New Age environmentalists, pacifists, feminists, and gay-rights activists, such a party might have trouble winning five percent of the vote in successive elections. So might other fringe parties that are easy to imagine: the Conservatives, a far right-fundamentalist alliance; the Multicultural Coalition, a coalition of ethnic-separatist parties; and anti-tax Libertarians.

Carrying this speculative exercise one step further, we might assign percentages of House membership to these hypothetical parties. Based on European experience and American political subcultures, the pattern might be as follows: Republicans (40 percent), Populists (30 percent), Social Democrats (15 percent), Greens (5 percent), Conservatives (5 percent), Multiculturalists and Libertarians (5 percent between them).

In light of political events over the past two years, I think Lind might have overestimated the unanimity/coherence of the GOP and underestimated the electoral appeal of social-religious conservatism and libertarianism. Still, it’s a good starting point.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

@Shodan

Yes it does, under our current system. We lose that with PR.

Regards,
Shodan

No, we don’t. Under PR, your party still denies seats to all other parties in exact proportion as it wins seats for itself.

And if your All Night Party only gets 30% of the vote, you can’t fairly ask that any other parties be barred from more than 30% of the seats. You understand, now?

[Quartz]

I’m glad to see I’m not the only proponent of Approval Voting. Approval Voting and FPTP have the clear advantages of being simple and definite. They produce winners on the first count. You don’t need to consider order of voting. In FPTP you simply tick the best candidate; in ApV you simply tick those candidates you like.

[BrainGlutton]

Apart from such trifling low hurdles as the vested interests and absolute power of the Republicrats, I see one basic obstacle to introduction of PR in America:

Nobody talks about it and nobody knows what it is. (And try explaining it on a bumper sticker.) At various times I have asked several major-party candidates for public office (including Alex Sink, Democratic nominee for governor of Florida, recently) for their opinions on PR. They didn’t know what it was – not the phrase, and when I explained, it was clear they were not familiar with the concept either. Some (not Sink) at first thought “proportional representation” was about representation of minorities through racial gerrymandering. Even minor-party candidates usually need it explained. I made a presentation on PR to a local Reform Party chapter once, and they seemed to remain perplexed (and I got a definite vibe from the discussion that some thought of PR as a way of giving more representation to racial minorities, some liberal thing for which they were not enthusiastic). Those minor-party candidates who did know about it, such as Ralph Nader, never mentioned it in their speeches; but all who did know about it were for it.

PR does have a history in the U.S. Some cities tried it in the late early 20th Century; the Progressives were for it, as a way around the power of the urban political machines. But it was abandoned in the late 1940s or, put it another way, the powers that be put it down. Since then, it has not been part of our public discourse, not even in the 1960s or '70s, and most Americans don’t seem to have ever heard of PR any more. Even though most of the world’s democracies use it – almost all except for France, Britain, and Britain’s former colonies, including the U.S.

The American media paid no attention when New Zealand moved to the mixed member proportional form of PR in 1996. Why would they? But if the UK does it, they’ll have to cover that. And then, maybe, just maybe, just a bit of public attention on it will ease PR onto the agenda for serious public discussion in America.

And once there, in the Information Age, it will stay there a long time.

But, IMO, to be successful, a PR movement would have to be a trans-ideological movement. All the minor parties – Libertarians, Greens, Constitution, America First, Socialists, Communists, Tea Party – would have to get under one big single-issue tent and work together amicably, even if they are worst enemies on every other issue.

That would be fun to watch.

That would be fun to do!

Join FairVote!

[Bryan_Ekers]

@BrainGlutton

In light of political events over the past two years, I think Lind might have overestimated the unanimity/coherence of the GOP and underestimated the electoral appeal of social-religious conservatism and libertarianism. Still, it’s a good starting point.

It’s interesting, but possibly the Canadian example has some relevance as well. I can picture the emergence of the Texas Fuck Outsiders party, as roughly analogous to our Bloc Quebecois. Then you might end up with a semipermanent block of ~30 seats that joins up with whatever coalition suits it and, well, fucks outsiders.

[Peremensoe]

@Shodan

And it still does not address the issue - 95% of the electorate voted for Somebody Else. Many votes are, in some sense, a vote For as well as a vote Against. I not only want Party A in, I find the ideas of Party B to be stupid and dangerous and offensive. And their candidate is a crook. Under winner-take-all, a win for Good Guy A automatically means that Bad Guy B won’t be there to gum up the works.

That’s applicable to races between two or three candidates. With larger fields, it makes less sense to think of votes as votes against, and more as only votes for.

@Shodan

Voter turnout in the US is low enough as it is. The more complicated the system, the more disenfranchised the voters will feel themselves to be.

Proportional representation needn’t be complicated. For the typical voter, the only difference may be that he has more names on the ballot to choose from, and as Tom Scud suggests, it may well be easier to find a perspective that makes sense to him among that longer list. So he votes for the one he likes. He need not oppose or dislike all the rest as such; his own representatives will likely have to work with some of those people.

[XT]

@BrainGlutton

Nobody talks about it and nobody knows what it is. (And try explaining it on a bumper sticker.)

Or…maybe more people than you think know about it, and maybe their impression could be summed up by the statement ‘meh’. I know about it BG. I’ve seen it discussed. I’ve seen YOU bring it reverently up in multiple threads. Seen it debated. Observed how it’s implemented in other countries.

And, in general, my feelings can be summed up thusly…meh. I’m militantly unimpressed, and don’t see the need for such a system in the US, don’t think it will add anything substantial to our political process, and think it’s a pipe dream by folks like you to try and get their fringe ideas and political parties to have representation well over their actual political noise level here in the US. Ironically, MY political leanings would probably gain a lot more representation under such a system than your own would, since I think that there is a stronger grassroots sympathy for Libertarian principals than is currently represented by either of the big tent parties at this time.

And I STILL think that a PR system would be contrary to the wishes of the majority of my fellow citizens and would muddle up our political process more than it’s currently fucked up state is. I can only imagine the in-fighting, and the political coalitions and deal making that would happen if such a system were implemented here. It would be truly ugly, IMHO.

You assume that people simply don’t get it, BG, and that if they did they would happily leap at the chance to give your fringe leanings the voice you think it deserves. Sadly, I think that you underestimate ‘people’ (especially around here…sheesh man, it’s not like we haven’t seen myriad threads by you on this subject, no??) and over-estimate what such a system would actually give to you here in the US. I think you’d be unpleasantly surprised by what the majority of the splinter groups and pocket 3rd parties would turn out to be, outside of a couple of large population centers. Personally, I think that keeping all the crap under the big two (who will toss out the REALLY psycho types and more radical fringe nutters) is a GOOD thing, and, dysfunctional as our system is today, it would be much more-so under a PR type system.

YMMV, and probably does, but don’t assume that no one has ever heard of this ‘radical’ ‘new’ voting system, ehe?

-XT

[Little_Nemo]

Take a group of a hundred people. Ask them to pick a person to represent them. Sixty of them want Al. Thirty five of them want Bob. Five of them want Chuck. It seems fair to me to have Al be the representative for the group.

Now Bob’s supporters are thinking, “If we can convince just thirteen of Al’s supporters to join us, we can have Bob as our representative.”

And Chuck’s supporters are thinking, “This whole system is unfair. We should change the rules so Chuck gets to be the representative once in a while.”

[XT]

And, sadly, none of them are thinking ‘We should make XT God-King!’…

-XT