REPRESENT!
All representative governments are profoundly undemocratic. To imagine otherwise leaves society blind to history and ignorant of simple math. But real progress is achievable with a fairer voting system.
First, some history, then a deep dive into the challenges of fair representation, and finally two voting suggestions:
Twenty-five hundred years ago the ancient Athenians devised a carefully curated direct-democracy, where random sortition, rigorous accountability and homogenized political associations guaranteed all free male citizens an equal chance to govern. This brilliant innovation assured equal say and voice, with few intermediaries. Except, that is, for the important omission of women and slaves, a majority of the public, whose political power was restricted to cajoling their male representatives.
Incomplete representation is the first warning sign of flawed democracy.
The Founding Fathers considered emulating direct-democracies like Athens or early Rome, but dismissed these models as impractical given our nation’s size and diversity. Athenian democracy, even in a small city-state, requires an intense time commitment and knowledge of an entire nation’s state of affairs. The Founding Father’s also worried the masses could not be trusted to govern judiciously and might usurp their property and position with the waive of the ballot.
So, they pivoted to a compromise “representative democracy”, blending insights from the checks-and-balances devised by Enlightenment thinkers, early experiments in self-rule by colonists and Native Americans, and the Roman Republic’s patrician Senate and direct-democracy General Assembly. Finally settling on a Democratic, Representative Republic controlled by (surprise) people like themselves.
So what does it mean to be a “democratic representative republic”?
The republic part is easy. A republic is a government for the benefit of the people guided by representatives of the citizenry. The exact opposite of an aristocracy or hereditary monarchy whose corruption and self-dealing partially triggered the American Revolution¹.
The “democracy” part is another way of stating that all power ultimately resides in the people (the “demos”), and that all citizens have equal say². If at any time their government or its leaders no longer respects the will of the people, they can be replaced. These foundational rights are enshrined in our constitution via regular elections and the Article V amendment process.
“Equal Say”, of course, remains an elusive democratic goal which slowly, if erratically, has expanded in scope.
Majority rule³ is often trotted out as THE most fundamental of all democratic protections. Why a simple majority? If laws could be approved by less than 50% of the public, a minority could pass legislation binding on the whole- perversely allowing the few to control the many. Majority Rule avoids this trap, though a slim (but persistent) majority is now free to ignore half the population’s views. Effectively disenfranchising half the citizenry. A supermajority criteria, designed to rein in the “tyranny of the majority” is nominally attractive, but re-empowers the “dictatorship of the minority” when parties are almost evenly split- as often happens with Senate filibusters³.
Thus, a slim majority is the pragmatic democratic norm.
This 50% fulcrum point explains why so many recent elections are close- once you slip over the fifty-yard line you gain full control of the field, without the need to grow your fan base. Nor pay attention to anyone outside the Majority. It is a rare politician indeed who embodies Enlightenment virtue and represents all citizens with equanimity.
The representative part implies a small fraction of the public are selected to administer the government. A potential democratic bottleneck. Prudently selecting representatives is a key political design challenge. Fill by lottery? Limit voting to child-bearing parents of the “right” religious views? Elect one representative for every 30,000 or three million people?
As John Addams noted in his Thoughts on Government (1776):
The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed in constituting this Representative Assembly. It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this Assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or in other words equal interest among the people should have equal interest in it. — Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections.
America, which lacks a federal constitutional right to vote, has never agreed on the criteria for choosing its representatives. We first tried “electing” senators by legislative appointment (a patrician nod to Rome), then switched to public ballots in 1913. We continually increased the number of congressional districts to moderate the ratio of citizens to representatives, rising from 65 to 435, then stopped in 1923. Yet since the 1920s, district size stagnated while the population tripled! We waited centuries for “one man, one vote” to partly level the urban/rural voting imbalance, but still suffer under the distortions of the Electoral College. And while much of the population works passionately to expand voting rights, others claim they would gladly cede power to a demagogue or a religious theocracy. Two steps forward, one step back.
In this essay we choose the most expansive definition:
In a representative democracy, political leadership should either mirror a statistical cross-section of the public, or actively reflect their priorities.
And here we fail, miserably.
Let’s start with the numbers.
Even when a majority elects a candidate, do they truly represent YOUR views? Imagine you care about ten issues (taxes, immigration, freedom of speech, farm subsidies, ….) and there are four possible positions on each issue. Leading to 4¹⁰ variations, or over a million alternatives. The tyranny of combinatorics.
There is a miniscule chance your representative exactly reflects your own personal opinions. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. A lesson we rarely teach in Civics class, and one reason why so many people have unreasonable expectations of the democratic process, defaulting to the simplicity of single-issue litmus tests.
Rather than leaving everyone dissatisfied, parties arose to help consolidate the teeming multitudes into manageable chunks of similar desires. In Europe a dozen parties vie for support- in the US, two is the default, with an occasional third party as a disrupter.
Modern parties often choose their voters rather than the other way around. Effectively brainwashing (err, educating) their members to march in lock step on a few key policy points.
Viewpoint aggregation may limit the tyranny of combinatorics, but imagine an election from the perspective of a minority party member. Pretty discouraging to vote Republican in a state where Democrats hold a 60% majority — your vote basically doesn’t count. Once in power, the majority may seek to expand their incumbency by cleverly limiting the other party’s chances in the next election cycle. Permanently enshrining their advantage.
Half live in a self-serving democracy. Half in a dictatorship, hoping to flip the switch.
It’s no wonder many critical expansions of the democratic franchise took place outside the majority-rule representative system. Street protests and strikes directly led to enfranchising women, guaranteeing civil rights for minority groups, and helping to end the Vietnam war. All in lieu of majority elections.
And it gets worse.
Given historically low primary turnout, only 20% of the voting public anoints candidates for the general election. Some with extremist views. So the game is rigged even before casting your vote on the November ballot. The candidate “None” may be your preferred choice for a representative.
That’s assuming you can vote in a fair election. Gerrymandering, winner-take-all and voter suppression effectively disenfranchise tens of millions. Leaving them with zero direct representation.
How can we expand beyond the tyranny of two party majority rule to better serve the democratic goals of a representative republic?
Multi-member proportional races are a proven solution. In the 1800’s multi-member districts were common in the US but employed a majority voting scheme, effectively locking out smaller parties and minorities. Correctly viewed as anti-democratic and racist, old-style multi-member districts were either outlawed or deprecated.
Today there are better methods. Instead of one candidate per district, elect three or more using proportional voting. In proportional voting a minority group can focus all their votes towards one nominee, assuring at least one sympathetic candidate wins and represents their views.
Where do these three new seats come from? Either by expanding the size of the legislature⁴ or merging three smaller districts into one. With three representatives and proportional voting the chance of an independent party winning rises dramatically. As does the possibility of splitting the other two seats between Republican and Democrats. In rough proportion to the party affiliations of district residents.
Represent!
More radically, we can reimagine how single-member elections, which dominate the political landscape, decide on a winner. These races inevitably utilize a “First Past the Post” (FPTP) counting scheme, where the first candidate out of a larger field achieving a plurality (not a majority), wins.
FPTP might just be the worst voting method imaginable.
A plurality winner with 35% of the vote is unrepresentative⁶. Period. Even in a fair election. But it gets worse- parties often run spoiler candidates intended to draw votes away from their opponent. For example, candidates R and D are in a close race, but D is ahead. So R supports a candidate with similar views to D and surreptitiously helps them qualify for the ballot. This mini-D candidate draws votes from D, and suddenly R is the plurality winner! Frustrating the majority-will of the people for a D-style winner.
Spoilers put their thumbs on the scale in tens of thousands of local races, and at least five US presidential elections.
Election wonks offer numerous technical solutions- usually a variation on ranked or preference voting⁵. Here you vote for as many candidates as you desire, but indicate through your rankings your best alternate choices. Then some kind of multi-round mathematical averaging occurs, applying your rankings to derive an inferred majority choice.
The problem is the wonks can’t agree on the best ranked/preference system. Not a good way to start. Voters also have trouble distinguishing between large fields of candidates, or simply refuse to rank, hoping their candidate disproportionately benefits. Many approaches have failed in the field and all techniques can be gamed or undermined with malice aforethought.
Additionally, people may want to change their minds while these consensus systems grind through the math. But they run on automatic. You *should* be able to pre-rank all your choices accurately and let the math output a decision. Though as Samuel Johnson noted ‘Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ Often people vote their emotions, won’t rank logically, and when they finally realize their emotional position led to an idiot winning, regret their passion.
I suggest a simpler, more political, more human alternative. Negotiated Consensus (NC).
With NC, you vote for your preferred candidate, and trust them to reach a consensus on your behalf in real-time. In the absence of a simple majority the candidates themselves negotiate, for a price, to transfer all (or some) of their votes to other candidates. Similar to forming a ruling coalition in parliamentary systems. Any candidate accumulating a majority of the votes, including transfers, wins.
A single pluality winner is never representative, no matter how clever the voting system. But negotiations force compromise, and encourage the candidate’s behavior to become more representative. Perhaps swapping votes for a future cabinet seat. Or agreeing to soften their position on climate adaptation to pick-up support.
In ranked systems your alternate votes are given away, receiving nothing tangible in return. In NC, small parties gain influence for their constituents during negotiations.
What happens if an agreement cannot be reached? Certainly, public pressure will increase, but if after three weeks there is no winner, the top two candidates (after any voter transfers) hold a runoff election.
NC eliminates the spoiler effect, disingenuous clones, plurality winners, mathematic voting aberrations, complexity and wasted votes. Over time it brings a single winner closer to acting like a virtuous representative.
Our chaotic and biased democracy stumbles into the future. Until now our better angels have prevailed while other countries descended into autocracy or theocracy. Yet we are always just one slip away from permanently losing control over our democratic representative republic.
These two voting methods could extend our winning streak.
(For a detailed analysis of Negotiated Consensus vs Ranked Voting, see
[1] A Republic, a form of government guaranteed by Article IV Section 4, is defined by Madison in Federalist 39, while an aristocracy is prohibited by Article I Section 9. Outside the US, a “republic” has other nuanced meanings.
Sadly, lessons from history are quickly forgotten and both Articles prohibitions against aristorcracies are rarely enforced. The human propensity to gravitate towards the familiar is echoed in our legacies of two Adams, two Bushes, two Roosevelts, a jumble of Kennedy’s and numerous state political dynasties. Not to mention wives who assume their late husband’s senate seat. And a Supreme Court which draws its justices from a few elite schools.
A shadow aristocracy is another warning sign of a corrupted democracy.
[2] There are additional democratic criteria, e.g. Political Equality among individuals. Yet religious groups often are written into constitutions with preferences looming over the secular. Many democracies are really nascent theocracies. Equal Outcome and Opportunity in the absence of Equal Voice? Perhaps in a socialist country, but in the US our laws heavily skew to favor the rich and powerful.
[3] The anti-majoritarian option is often a way to slow down decision making, affording the “unruly mob” time to cool off. For example, a 2/3rds supermajority of both houses of Congress is required to send an amendment to the states for ratification. Unanimity for conviction in a criminal trial. 60% to break a Senate filibuster.
[4] District size and many voting rules are set by statute at the federal level. Congress could encourage multi-member districts or increase the number of districts by a simple vote. Surprisingly, there is an active amendment before the states (Madison’s original apportionment amendment) which would quadruple the number of districts.
[5] In Europe STV (Single-transferrable vote) is popular. Most countries “split the baby” with a combination of single-member local districts, combined with national multi-member races. Or some kind of a party list system with proportional allocation. Most Australian elections have used RCV for over a century, but unlike the US, voting and ranking is compulsory, party affiliation is weaker, and there are no primaries. To leverage (and game) RCV, parties distribute cheat-sheets indicating how voters should rank other candidates, and 30–50% of voters take the hint. Thus the Australian RCV experience is not applicable to the US.
Cheat-sheet coordination is a weaker form of negotiated policy concessions than NC.
In the US, FairVote has lobbied for RCV-IR (Ranked Choice Voting with Instant Runoff) for decades. With limited, but a few, notable successes. Election methods wonks identify numerous flaws in classic RCV (with which I concur)- in particular, it tends to prematurely drop consensus candidates. STAR voting (Score, Then Automatic Runoff) appears to be a superior option, but there are literally dozens of alternatives all with their proponents and detractors. Many exhibit theoretical advantages but are far too much complex for real-world implementation. Or can be undermined through nefarious political means.
[6] With only 60% turn-out and 35% of the vote, the winner only represents (at best) 21% of the adult population. Hardly representative. Or particularly democratic.
