• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. authoritarianism>

Election reforms needed to fend off authoritarianism, per new report

David Meyers
https://twitter.com/davidmeyers?lang=en
January 18, 2022
Donald Trump hold a rally in Arizona

Donald Trump may not have been the Republican nominee in 2016 if the party used ranked-choice voting in its primaries, according to a report from Protect Democracy

Mario Tama/Getty Images

While many countries claim to be democracies, none has an electoral structure quite like the one used in the United States — and our unique structure makes authoritarianism a viable and dangerous threat, according to a new report.

Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan advocacy group that fights authoritarianism, found that the use of partisan primaries, over-sized single-member congressional districts and a two-party system make the United States an outlier and susceptible to an authoritarian shift emerging from the fringes of the Republican Party.

“The U.S. electoral system is not only advantaging antidemocratic extremism but is also poorly positioned to combat it,” author Grant Tudor writes in “Advantaging Authoritarianism: The U.S. Electoral System & Antidemocratic Extremism. “Reconfiguring electoral system design is a pathway to help protect democracy against those who would do it harm.”


The report stresses that the right-wing extremist faction represents a minority of Americans, but carries outsized weight thanks to the design of the U.S. electoral system. Tudor notes that more than 80 percent of Americans, including three-quarters of Republicans, disapprove of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“Nonetheless, this faction is poised to experience continued successes; and the Big Lie behind the January 6th insurrection is spreading, not abating, as an increasing number of politicians propagate it,” he wrote.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The report demonstrates how the federal election system in the United States makes possible the emergence of antidemocratic extremism.

For example, the single-member plurality system, in which the candidate who receives the most votes wins the election. This generates electoral biases, “exaggering electoral wins in one party’s favor, wherein the share of seats does not correspond to the share of votes.” This system makes compromise unlikely because it does not take into account complex voter attitudes.

Partisan gerrymandering, by which a political party can design legislative districts virtually guaranteed to be won by that same party, can exacerbate this issue by limiting competition and diluting minority voices.

Over the past three years, state legislatures have made numerous changes to their election systems. And this week Democrats are once again pushing for federal standards, although that effort appears to be stuck in the Senate. Protect Democracy ties changes to elections and the violence of Jan. 6 to authoritarian efforts.

“As antidemocratic extremists continue to secure political power incommensurate with their support, elections will become increasingly prone to abuse in order to consolidate authoritarian gains. Indeed, far-right officials are already manipulating electoral regulations while in power and delegitimizing elections they lose nonetheless — including through violence if necessary,” Tudor wrote.

While acknowledging the broad menu of election reforms that have been proposed, he focuses on a handful that they believe can fend off extremism.

First, he proposed ranked-choice voting as an alternative to the current plurality system, in which the candidate with the most votes wins even without securing a majority of the ballots. In an RCV election, voters rank candidates. If one candidate is named first on a majority of first-place votes, that person wins. But if not, the person with the fewest first place voters is eliminated and those ballots are redistributed to voters’ second choice. This process continues until someone has a majority and is declared the winner.

Protect Democracy and other RCV advocates believe that system decreases the power of factions because candidates must appeal to a wider voter base in order to secure second- and third-place ballot positions.

“Particularly because candidates may require voters to list them as lower-order preferences, they become reciprocally dependent on voters beyond their most partisan constituencies. This may in turn carry implications for mitigating extremism,” states Tudor, who cited the use of RCV in Northern Ireland for pulling Sinn Fein toward more moderate positions.

The report also looked at the 2016 GOP presidential primary and theorized that an RCV primary might have resulted in a candidate other than Donald Trump. “In the 2016 Republican primaries, a majority of voters in a majority of primaries did not prefer Trump,” Tudor wrote, but the ballots did not provide a method for expressing that opinion and instead the anti-Trump vote was split among other candidates.

The report also suggests proportional, or multimember, representation in the House of Representatives. The current system, in which each district is represented by one person, ignores the voice of voters whose preferred candidates do not win. But in a proportional system, multiple winners are declared, based on the parties’ share of the vote.

“Among the most direct implications of more proportional representation is a weakening of the current ‘seat bonus’ that favors one party over the other,” the report reads. “By better bringing total seats in line with total votes, more proportional allocations would significantly lessen the institutionalized bias in legislative elections that exaggerates one party’s electoral wins.”

According to Protect Democracy’s research, such a system would result in more inter- and intraparty competition, as well as create an opportunity for additional political parties to play a significant role:

“For instance, whereas the U.S. electoral system’s strict two-party system by design precludes electorally competitive third (or fourth, or fifth) parties, multi-member districts would permit, say, a new center-right party to contest the far-right and give ‘center-right voters a meaningful home’; or, instead, may create opportunities to restore a pro-democracy Republican Party while relegating the far-right to its own minority party.”

Multimember districts could be coupled with an expansion of the House of Representatives, which would decrease the number of constituents for each lawmaker. According to the report, the United States ratio of lawmakers to constituents is six to seven times larger than other advanced democracies, and only India’s is greater.

“Representatives with larger constituencies are more likely to adopt more extremist positions disfavored by a majority of their constituents; more likely to cater to wealthier constituents; and more likely to be distrusted by constituents,” Tudor wrote. “An expanded House may not only help to minimize these effects, but would also very likely have a salutary effect on other structural issues, such as decreasing the nonproportionality of Electoral College results.”

Break

Additionally, Protect Democracy suggests replacing the standard primary election with a nonpartisan “top four” system, in which the four leading vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation, could reduce polarization and engage more people in the process.

From Your Site Articles
  • Healthy governance requires commitment to these five faiths - The ... ›
  • U.S. rated a 'flawed democracy' for 5th straight year - The Fulcrum ›
  • Uriel Epshtein, combating American authoritarian impulses - The ... ›
  • Democracy is a victim of indifference - The Fulcrum ›
  • Is democracy on the rebound? - The Fulcrum ›
  • Is democracy on the rebound? - The Fulcrum ›
  • Authoritarian rule threatens America’s democracy - The Fulcrum ›
  • Authoritarian rule threatens America’s democracy - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • The Battle of Ideas: Authoritarianism vs Democracy | Human Rights ... ›
  • In coronavirus response, the question isn't democracy or ... ›
  • Do Authoritarian or Democratic Countries Handle Pandemics Better ... ›
  • Democracy vs Authoritarianism: How Ideology Shapes Great- Power ... ›
authoritarianism

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Manhattan grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump, showing he, like all other presidents, is not an imperial king

Shannon Bow O'Brien
3h

Your Take: The federal investigation of former President Trump

Our Staff
9h

I traveled to all 50 states to find solutions to America’s political division: Here’s what I learned on the ground

Ryan Bernsten
9h

COVID created an expanded social safety net; activists are now quietly working to bring it back

Davis Giangiulio
30 March

Banking, democracy & trust

Lawrence Goldstone
30 March

SVB’s newfangled failure fits a century-old pattern of bank runs, with a social media twist

Rodney Ramcharan
30 March
Videos

Video: What is it like to be Black in America? A first conversation about race starts here

Our Staff

Video: Can bipartisanship survive the rise of the independent voter?

Our Staff

Video: Ted Lasso cast at the White House press briefing

Our Staff

Video: The hidden stories in the U.S. Census

Our Staff

Video: We asked conservatives at CPAC what woke means

Our Staff

Video: DeSantis, 18 states to push back against Biden ESG agenda

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: How women are showing up for justice & democracy

Our Staff
30 March

Podcast: Harnessing the power of juries

Our Staff
28 March

Podcast: Partial truths & corporate fables

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
27 March

Podcast: Risky business: More bank collapses ahead?

Our Staff
27 March
Recommended
Manhattan grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump, showing he, like all other presidents, is not an imperial king

Manhattan grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump, showing he, like all other presidents, is not an imperial king

Threats to democracy
Your Take: The federal investigation of former President Trump

Your Take: The federal investigation of former President Trump

Your Take
I traveled to all 50 states to find solutions to America’s political division: Here’s what I learned on the ground

I traveled to all 50 states to find solutions to America’s political division: Here’s what I learned on the ground

Big Picture
Video: What is it like to be Black in America? A first conversation about race starts here

Video: What is it like to be Black in America? A first conversation about race starts here

COVID created an expanded social safety net; activists are now quietly working to bring it back

COVID created an expanded social safety net; activists are now quietly working to bring it back

Government
Banking, democracy & trust

Banking, democracy & trust

Threats to democracy