• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • 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. Voting>
  3. voting>

Revamp House's election method? Consider the last Parliament vote.

Kevin Johnson
January 30, 2020
Revamp House's election method? Consider the last Parliament vote.

A Labour canvasser and a British voter at a polling station near Manchester in December.

Anthony Devlin, Getty Images Europe

Johnson is executive director of Election Reformers Network, a nonprofit founded by international election specialists now supporting reform in the United States.

Our historical cousins in the United Kingdom vote much like we do — in single-member districts, under simple plurality rules — so their elections are worth paying attention to. This is particularly true now that "the duopoly," the dominance of two parties characteristic of single-member-district systems, has become such a source of concern here in the United States.

The recent elections in the U.K. illustrate just how dominant a duopoly can be, even in a country with well-established third parties. More importantly, the elections illustrate that a new form of elections gaining prominence here, ranked-choice voting, will likely have only limited impact on reducing duopoly power, and that more significant reform means changing the single-member-district system itself, to the multimember approach called for in a bill before Congress dubbed the Fair Representation Act.


Single-member districts make life difficult for alternative parties, even those with reasonable support nationwide. A party with, say, an environment-first agenda, or a moderate-centrist platform, could poll relatively well nationally but not have enough supporters in any given district to win elections.

This pattern is clear in the track record of Britain's Liberal Democratic Party, which is the kind of centrist alternative often wished for in the United States. The Lib Dems have fielded candidates in most districts — or "constituencies" — for several decades and in 2010 entered government in coalition with the Conservative Party. What the Lib Dems have not been able to do is translate voter support efficiently into seats in Parliament. In the eight general elections since 1992, the Liberal Democrats' 15 percent aggregate vote share has won only 5 percent of seats.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

By contrast, in the same time period the two dominant parties have claimed more seats than their aggregate share of ballots: The Conservatives have taken 37 percent of the vote but won 42 percent of the seats, while Labor, with 36 percent of the vote, has gained 46 percent of the seats.

In the elections in December, the pattern intensified: The Lib Dems gained only 2 percent of seats despite receiving nearly 12 percent of the vote, and the Conservatives, with 44 percent of the vote, won an absolute majority of 55 percent in Parliament.

Here in America we don't have the same range of parties — in part because our Congress is undersized, with only one-seventh the number of representatives per citizen as Britain. But we do have political groupings that have trouble gaining representation in proportion to their share of the population. This is true of course of ethnic minorities, and it's also true of categories like rural populations, Republicans in New England, Democrats in the Great Plains and many others. Our country is a dense patchwork quilt of significant minorities covered over by the all-too-familiar swaths of red and blue, monochromatic blocks that fundamentally are rounding errors.

Isn't this the problem that ranked-choice voting is designed to fix? Not exactly. RCV can mean different things, but in its well-known form today, it gives voters the opportunity to rank their preferences within single-member-district elections, and thus has limited impact on underrepresentation across a nation of single-member districts.

We can judge whether RCV would have changed the most recent outcome in the UK from exit polls that ask voters for second and third choices. As the chart below illustrates, RCV would give Liberal Democrats more seats on average, but it would not fundamentally address the underrepresentation relative to their share of the vote.

2019 estimate by Election Reformers NetworkSource: Electoral Reform Society


To be clear, ranked-choice voting has a lot to offer to American voters and political parties, and is particularly needed as we experience a major increase in multicandidate elections. RCV almost always ensures the most supported candidate wins and gives voters the freedom to support longshot candidates without "spoiling" the results. Our research has found greater extremism among House members who get to Congress after a low-plurality primary win in a district that's "safe" for their party — an outcome RCV would prevent. RCV tends to encourage cooperation and reduce negative campaigning.

What RCV can't do, however, and although some hope it could, is transform our duopolistic politics by significantly expanding representation. For that, we need a system that gives seats to candidates who have strong but not majority support. And that means moving away from single-member districts.

For Congress, the best alternative is the Fair Representation Act, through which we would elect three to five House members from each district using a form of RCV called single transferable vote. This approach is favored by leading organizations in the U.K. including the prestigious Electoral Reform Society. Analyses show it would have made for much closer correlation between the share of votes and share of seats in prior U.K. elections.

In this country, the proposed Fair Representation Act has the significant added benefit of addressing gerrymandering, both because it calls for district lines to be drawn by independent commissions and because it would entail many fewer districts.

With multimember districts, the country's alternative parties would gain new life. The nature of politics between our dominant parties would change, as a candidate from the minority party would likely gain at least one seat in most districts, revealing the true patchwork quilt hiding behind those blocks of red and blue. And the system would boost diversity, bringing more women and people of color to the Capitol.

Still, the idea has not yet gained the attention it deserves among reform organizations. The relative simplicity and hip appeal of RCV may account for this in part, along with the preference among reform groups for nearer-term achievability.

The Fair Representation Act will not be an easy win. It will require a majority in Congress willing to change a system from which they have benefitted. But the place is dangerously broken and impossible to fix without such a change.

From Your Site Articles
  • Here's a better solution that current redistricting model - The Fulcrum ›
voting

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

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Jeremy Garson

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Jay Paterno

Re-imagining Title IX: An opportunity to flex our civic muscles

Lisa Kay Solomon

'Independent state legislature theory' is unconstitutional

Daniel O. Jamison

How afraid are we?

Debilyn Molineaux

Politicians certifying election results is risky and unnecessary

Kevin Johnson
latest News

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Amanda Becker, The 19th
24 June

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Our Staff
24 June

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

David Meyers
23 June

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Our Staff
23 June

Podcast: Past, present, future

Our Staff
23 June

Video: America's vulnerable elections

Our Staff
22 June
Videos

Video: Memorial Day 2022

Our Staff

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Bridge Alliance intern Sachi Bajaj speaks at the June 12 Civvy Awards.

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Leadership
abortion law historian Mary Ziegler

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Campaign Finance
Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Media
Abortion rights and anti-abortion protestors at the Supreme Court

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Big Picture
Virginia primary voter

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Voting