Raleigh is director of campaigns and advocacy for the Center of Election Science.
Consider this scenario: It’s election time, and two candidates are facing off against each other in a general election. Candidate A won their party’s primary with 58 percent support. Candidate B won their party’s primary with 30 percent support. Knowing nothing else, who seems to be the most popular? Who seems to have the more unified party? Who do you think has the upper hand in the general election?
The numbers 30 percent and 58 percent are not pulled out of thin air. Those are the levels of support for the same candidate, just four years and one revolutionary innovation apart. The change is in large part due to approval voting, and the party to embrace it first will enjoy a significant electoral advantage for the foreseeable future.
Every year, America’s political parties invest millions in data, staff and advertising for one goal: to win elections. Yet, they have a major issue that undermines all that work – vote-splitting, where similar candidates “steal” votes from one another, letting the candidate with little public support sweep in and win. Within our legacy electoral system, where plurality voting (i.e., choose only candidate) reins supreme, this happens easily during crowded elections.
According to analysis done by the Center for Election Science, the number of candidates running in congressional primaries is steadily growing across America, meaning vote-splitting is almost a guarantee.
It’s what happened to Tishaura Jones, a two-time candidate for mayor of St. Louis, and the candidate mentioned at the beginning of this piece. In 2017, she received 30 percent of the vote in the city’s seven-person primary, coming in second. The winner, with 32 percent support, would become mayor. A vote-split determined who held power in the city.
Faced with the problem of vote-splitting, St. Louis activists chose to innovate and adopt approval voting. Instead of being limited to selecting one candidate on their ballot, as was the case in 2017 and the municipal elections that preceded it, voters could now choose all the candidates they wanted. No ranking, no transfers, no strange ballots. Simply, whoever got the most votes from the most voters would win.
In 2021, Jones again ran for mayor of St. Louis, now with approval voting. This time her true level of support — 58 percent of all voters — was clear, and she came in first in the primary. The only difference was that voters were no longer limited, and could express support for multiple candidates. One person went from 30 percent to 58 percent support — just like that! Tell me a candidate or party who wouldn’t kill for that type of numbers boost? Jones didn’t just magically become more popular. Instead, the system was finally able to capture how popular she actually was.
America’s political parties have the same problem with vote splitting in their federal primaries. Candidates often win these key nominations with less than 40 percent, 35 percent, even 30 percent of the vote. That's not good for democracy, and if you're a political party trying to prove popularity and, in turn, advance the most electable candidate to the general, that's not good for business.
Besides the clear political advantage of winning with a bigger (more accurate) number, approval voting provides a host of advantages to the parties that adopt it. From nominating a broadly popular candidate to minimizing extremists, these factors could prove absolutely decisive in a tightly contested general election.
First, a big approval number says to voters outside your party that your candidate is a serious, broadly appealing winner. Isn’t that the data a party wants their candidate to have going into a general election?
Second, an approval number gives clear legitimacy to the winner, both inside and outside of the party. It’s easy to question whether your nominee represents your party if they win the primary with just 30 percent support, but with 58 percent approval, that argument is harder to make.
Finally, the party’s nominees are less likely to be fringe partisans out of step with their district. To win an approval voting primary, candidates have to appeal to the whole primary electorate and are no longer able to win with just one faction’s support.
It’s only a matter of time before parties adopt approval voting. All it takes is for one of them to recognize the demonstrated electoral advantage of this cost-efficient, easily implemented and politically popular system. Once that first tight race comes and goes, the resistance of the other parties will crumble.
Parties should work in their own self-interest for the benefit of democracy as a whole. Everyday voters are the main victims of vote-splitting. They are the ones who have to choose the "lesser of two evils," and who struggle with issues of "electability." They can’t say who they support, and they have to live with an unrepresentative government that is neither deliberating nor delivering.
Electoral politics is about revolution and counter-revolution. Kennedy pioneered politics on TV. Obama mastered the voter database. Reagan created his own class of supporters. Trump tweeted his message directly to the people. An edge, even a temporary one, can reverberate for decades.
The clock is running for America’s political parties. The first to act will reap the most benefits. The question now is simply: Who will move first?
Old engraved illustration of Ulysses defying the Cyclops.
Odysseus Reimagined: Nolan’s Epic Explores What Makes a True Hero
Who is a hero? More importantly: what is a hero? What attributes are universally admired, inspiring glorious stories, ballads and songs, memorials and movies, all chronicling the hero’s bold adventures?
The Odyssey, a new release written and directed by Christopher Nolan, attempts to answer that question. Based on the ancient tales The Iliad and The Odyssey, written by Homer around 800 BC, the film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, his loyal wife.
Historians have puzzled over the “Homeric question,” that is, who was Homer? We know very little about him, not even when or where he was born; seven Greek cities lay claim to him as their native son. Yet, he is considered the “godfather” of national Greek culture, and his stories are among the earliest masterpieces of literature.
Homer is sometimes romanticized as a blind poet who wandered from town to town reciting his stories. But he, who could express so poignantly the tribulations of Odysseus, was not blind to human nature. He keenly wrote of the attributes as well as the paltriness in his characters and the flaws of his great hero, Odysseus.
The Iliad is the story of the final years of the Trojan War, sparked when Helen, the beautiful wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus, was kidnapped by Paris of Troy. Because the kings had initiated a pact to defend one another, Odysseus was drawn into the fray.
After spending ten years fighting the Trojan War and finally achieving victory, The Odyssey tells of Odysseus’s struggle to return to his kingdom, Ithaca. On his way home, he encounters many dangers and delays. He is pursued by the sea-god Poseidon, must surmount Circe’s spell, and overcome the seductive charms of the enchantress Calypso, and his journey takes him another ten years.
Odysseus’s desires and struggles are universal: his longing for home, yearning for an end to his troubles, for rest after a long and difficult journey. His difficulties reflect the immemorial questions of what it means to be loyal, to belong, what it means “to be” at all. Despite his hubris, which manifests in his propensity to court catastrophe without regard for consequences, Odysseus is an authentic hero, noble and admirable, brave and dedicated.
According to the Greek ideal, a true hero must possess physical excellence and moral virtue. He must, as well, embrace his civic duty. Achieving such status requires “paideia,” a good education; “sophrosyne,” moderation in maintaining physical and emotional balance; and “arete,” an allegiance to the state.
Fictional or real, heroes’ deeds resonate through the centuries and shine a light on what is best in humanity, what matters, what will live on despite our mortality.
Is our digital age really so different from Homer’s Bronze Age? Physical beauty is still adulated, as it was then with Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” (Marlowe) Power is still king, and wealth is still power.
The years of the Trojan War were harsh and violent. But were they more brutal than the times we live in? Although millenniums have passed and we now have different battlefields, Palestine, Ukraine, Iran, etc., the ravages and the wages of war remain the same: death and suffering. Humanity’s currency is the same, and so, too, is our quest for heroes.
Social scientists claim that after three generations most people are forgotten by even their direct progeny, and after four, remembered only by historical records. So, what then does last? What makes a difference? What is truly beautiful and worthwhile in life?
The universal themes embodied and emboldened by our heroes throughout the ages, the faithfulness of their hearts and the courage of their deeds, these last.
The essential qualities of a hero are manifested in Homer’s Odysseus. Steadfast integrity: “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” His deep compassion: “Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for others’ good, and to melt at others’ woes.” (Both quotes from The Odyssey.)
Nolan’s movie may have created a more virtuous hero than Homer’s works, but the core of the nearly 3,000-year-old-story is intact and as crucially relevant today as it was then. It is the stuff of life: trauma, survival, relationships with others, finding oneself, deciding what is right, choosing a path forward, sometimes, ultimately leading to the honing of a hero.
Just as Odysseus braved storms, temptations, and trials in search of home, we too face a modern sea of civic turbulence, polarization, mistrust, and the fraying of our shared story.
As we live, we too will write our defining stories. How then might we become modern heroes?
By instigating the third Greek ideal of “arete”; embracing our civic duty. By becoming citizens who are open to reflection and debate, who are willing to act with purpose for the betterment of our nation.
In this journey, the work of renewing our democracy can be its own Odyssey, a voyage calling for integrity, courage, and steadfast commitment. Not to return home as Odysseus so desired, but to preserve our home, for the grand and worthwhile purpose of working toward an ever-better future for our country.
With others, we can shape the next chapter of our nation’s collective story.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."