Government will be more responsive and effective

By mid-2020, the global Covid-19 pandemic had impacted every country in the world, and each reacted differently. Some differences are attributable to geographic, demographic, and cultural differences, but many rested on governance — and specifically the degree to which governments were able to effectively and efficiently identify and coordinate appropriate responses. One key differentiator: Whether the country elected its national legislature with proportional representation.

On May 19, 2020, political scientist Joel Selway published an analysis in The Washington Post entitled “Which kinds of democracies respond more effectively to a pandemic?”[1] As he put it, “The … health systems in proportional representation countries have a wider geographic distribution of hospitals and medical personnel, less waste, and better coordination of the health system across the country.”

When the pandemic hit, these better health systems saved many lives: Winner-take-all countries averaged about 6.6 deaths per 100 cases, while proportional representation countries averaged about 4.6 deaths per 100 cases.

This makes sense. Governments are, in general, more responsive to populations that can hold them accountable in elections. For any position of authority, there is some group of people with the power to remove and replace whoever holds the position, and so that authority generally gets exercised in the interest of that group. With proportional representation, everyone has a roughly equal share of that power. Consequently, governments elected by proportional representation work harder to serve more of their people.

Fuller representation improves governance

The introduction to The Dictator’s Handbook, a book by political scientists Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, begins with an example of rampant corruption in Bell, California, a town where people earn relatively low incomes and are disproportionately of color. Yet Bell’s almost entirely white city council paid themselves and their city manager absurdly large salaries, mostly hidden in the form of bonuses, while also overtaxing and underserving local communities. 

Councilmembers were able to keep this up for a simple reason: The structure of the town’s elections ensured that they did not need to respond to the people to stay in power. Various electoral schemes enabled the whole council to keep their seats with as few as 473 votes — or about 1 percent of the town’s population, 5 percent of its registered voters, or 20 percent of the votes cast.

Later in the book, the authors introduce political scientist Jeff Jensen, who found large discrepancies in governance among the 13 original states. The differences depended on the states’ electoral systems: In states where candidates needed large coalitions to gain political power, governments were more accountable to the constituents. This accountability translated into better services, such as more extensive transportation networks, and stronger societies, as measured by levels of educational attainment. The opposite was true in states where candidates did not depend on large coalitions to gain power.

In other words, government responsiveness depends on what share of the people representatives need to gain and keep power. The quintessential feature of a dictatorship is not the dictator per se but their reliance on a small coalition for power. The individual dictator is the less significant factor: If they have a change of heart and try to act for the benefit of everyone, rather than their small coalition, then the coalition would quickly replace them. 

Democracies, on the other hand, are better for everyone because power relies on approval from many people — as many as possible. In this way, the above dynamic works in reverse: If a leader in a democracy turns to cronyism, the larger populace has the power to replace them with someone more public-spirited.

The essential link between representation and government can be summed up in the pithy adage: “If you don’t have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu.”

The winner-take-all methods used today allow representatives to win elections with only a very small coalition of support, wasting the votes of all others. Consider the election of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whose safe Republican district is home to about 730,000 people. In such a district, winning the GOP primary election effectively wins the seat because there is so little support for Democrats. 

Yet Greene won both her primary and her primary runoff election with fewer than 44,000 supporters in each, about 6 percent of the district’s population. The coalition that elected her is tiny, and neither ideologically nor demographically representative of the district as a whole. Her track record as a representative reflects that; she favors incendiary and extreme rhetoric that excites a small, dedicated group of voters over  building coalitions for effective governance that would help more people.

Proportional representation, on the other hand, is full representation: Every voter, or as close to every voter as possible, can point to an elected representative that they voted for and helped elect. The proportion of effective votes — those that actually elected someone — is far higher under proportional voting than under winner-take-all. And with proportional ranked choice voting in particular, the number of voters who ranked a winner as one of their top choices will be even higher.

To clarify — If a substantial number of voters in a district want to elect a bombastic populist, it is their right to vote for that. Under proportional ranked choice voting, however, a candidate like that would have to win a competitive general election and demonstrate the support of a substantial constituency. It would not be enough to edge out a crowded primary field and then skate through a safe general election. Extremists can win some seats under proportional voting methods too, but the incentives change in a way that tends to moderate government overall.

The two-party winner-take-all method rewards extremism

In 2017, the political far-right gained popularity in many countries across the world. In countries with proportional representation and multi-party systems, this meant far right political parties won more seats than they had previously. For example, Germany’s extreme anti-European Union and anti-immigration “Alternative für Deutschland,” or AfD, won 12.6 percent of the country’s votes, earning  94 out of 631 seats. In the United States, President Donald Trump’s far-right rhetoric and priorities  dominated GOP primary elections. The vast majority of elected Republicans either adopted “Trumpism” — or left office and were replaced by others who would.

The 2017 surge in illiberal populism then receded. In Germany, AfD lost seats. In the United States, Democrats won the presidency alongside narrow majorities in Congress. But unlike Germany, the United States still has a two party system, and Trumpism continues to dominate the Republican Party, with traditional conservatives repeatedly forced out. After a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to disrupt the counting of electoral votes that would certify Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden, only 10 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach the former president for his role in inciting the riot.

Afterward, Trump made punishing those 10 Republicans a top priority. Four retired rather than seek reelection, and another three lost their primary election against a Trump-endorsed challenger.[2] The Republican National Committee even censured two of its own incumbents for their participation in the House investigation into the January 6 attack, claiming that the investigation amounted to “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”[3]

In Germany, conservative voters can vote against left-of-center parties without also supporting the far right. But in the United States, we have only two parties, and that allows the far right to have disproportionate power if it can dominate one of them. Conservative voters have no other party to vote for if they oppose Democrats.

Historically, conventional wisdom held that our two-party system suppressed extremism in government, leading to better and more stable governance. In the past, the two parties were substantially diverse, which buffered against extremism. If a candidate in one party adopted an anti-democratic position, voters could simply vote for their opposition. Voters who generally preferred Republicans could vote for a Democrat, or vice versa, based on that candidate’s individual, local appeal, trusting that they would not simply cast party-line votes once in Congress.

Our current state of political polarization, however, shows that a rigid, two-party system makes us more vulnerable to extremism. When national politics dominates congressional contests, and when many voters view the other major party as an existential threat, voting for a candidate’s opposition is not a viable option. As a result, the buffer against extremism crumbles. To the contrary, candidates perform better in primary elections when they adopt hardline positions, and they don’t have to fear a voter exodus to the opposite party in the general election.

To avoid continued polarization and democratic backsliding, the United States needs an institutional change that can either reduce two-party polarization or create space for more than two political parties. Proportional ranked choice voting would do both. 

Proportional ranked choice voting can give us a government that works

In 2021, political scientist Per F. Andersson identified a surprising pattern: Left-of-center political parties use very different strategies to reduce inequality when in power, depending on whether their country uses proportional representation or a winner-take-all method of election. In countries with majoritarian (winner-take-all) systems, left-of-center parties reduce inequality through progressive taxation, especially income taxes. In countries with proportional systems, left-of-center parties instead expand welfare spending and couple it with more efficient (and more regressive) consumption-based taxes.[4]

Andersson explains the difference in terms of how the parties assess risk. The system favored by left-of-center parties in proportional representation countries is more progressive overall, but less politically expedient. In the volatile politics of winner-take-all countries, left-of-center parties could not afford the risks associated with instituting a regressive tax and coupling it with progressive welfare spending, when the next conservative government could undermine the new welfare programs while keeping the tax in place. Progressive income taxes were less effective, but more politically expedient, so that is the approach they took. On the other hand, countries with proportional representation had a more stable system, where if a conservative government won a majority, the left-of-center minority would still have its fair share of power. As a result, it was more willing to take a political risk and institute a more efficient and effective approach.[5]

Although this finding is specific to the different strategies employed by one side of the aisle in accomplishing a particular goal, it points to an important general principle: With winner-take-all, good policy must take a back seat to political expediency. With proportional representation, governments can instead focus on what actually works.

The history of Illinois’ use of semi-proportional voting from 1870 until 1980 may help to illustrate how even modest proportionality can lead to more effective government. A series of interviews conducted in 1998 with state House legislators who served during the cumulative voting era said the system improved governance.[6] They described the House as “more independent and cooperative;” having “lots more free-wheeling, innovative people;” and as a body that was “much more open to dealing … on the strength of ideas rather than the party relationship.”[7]

The Chicago Republicans and downstate Democrats who were able to win  office under the system created the kind of internal party diversity that prevents extremists from gaining power and ensured that the state House served a greater share of Illinoisians.

Illinois is not known for good governance today. After the repeal of cumulative voting, the state quickly took on the character of a single-party, small coalition government. In 1983, Democrat Mike Madigan was elected Speaker of the House — a position he held until he retired in February of 2021, nearly four decades later. In 2013, Chicago Magazine called him the “King of Illinois.”[8] For much of his reign, Illinois had the third highest rate of federal public corruption convictions in the country, after New York and California.[9]

Proportional ranked choice voting can improve on the system used in Illinois by coupling fair representation of the minority party with opportunities for competition within each party and from outside of the two-party system. Under cumulative voting, parties are incentivized to tactically limit candidate fields to the likely number of winners. Candidates who run outside the two major parties face the same spoiler accusations that plague single-winner elections. Proportional ranked choice voting, in contrast, frees parties to run more candidates — and frees voters to sincerely rank their choices without fear of wasting their votes. 

With proportional ranked choice voting, incumbents seeking reelection do best by zealously representing the interests of enough voters to put them over the threshold for a seat in their district. Because there are no safe districts; because each representative must serve a distinct constituency in the district; and because the system welcomes challengers, the result is one where nearly every voter has a representative working for them. That will create strong incentives for members to find and promote creative solutions to our most intractable issues.  

To be sure, a proportional House would not be a panacea. The Senate will remain a disproportional winner-take-all body, and its approval will still be needed for any legislation. Likewise, the Supreme Court will retain its power to limit or override congressional legislation. However, a proportional House may chip away at polarized politics in a way that affects these institutions too: For example, a Senate minority may retain veto power via the filibuster, but it may be less cohesively opposed to legislation that passed with a bipartisan mandate in the House. And to the extent the powers of these other institutions are abused, a more effective House may help us pass the reforms we need to make our constitutional structure more democratic overall.[10]

In 2020, more effective governance might have meant lives saved during the worst parts of the Covid-19 pandemic. There is no way to calculate what it could mean in the future, but if it moves the needle on climate change, on wealth inequality, on public health, gun safety, or any number of other issues Congress has thus far been deadlocked on due to polarized winner-take-all politics, then the change could be substantial.