Proportional representation and more parties
How some local parties could see their influence rise
The journal Democracy has just published a symposium on proportional representation (or PR). I contributed a chapter to this, but just in general I think this is a very high quality discussion of an important reform idea that could benefit American democracy in a lot of ways, and I encourage you to check it out.
Proportional representation is a different election system than our current one in the United States, and would potentially allow more political parties to enter the system and be competitive. Our typical first-past-the-post elections in the U.S. tend to favor a two-party system; voters don’t want to waste their votes on a third-party candidate who not only can’t win, but might make the election of an even less-desired major party candidate more likely. Under proportional representation, however, a party that gets, say, 25% of the vote in legislative elections could win somewhere around 25% of the seats in a legislature. It wouldn’t be the ruling party, but it would have some influence, and could form coalitions with other parties to govern. (Quite a few democracies outside the U.S. have election systems along these lines.)
My own chapter in this symposium looks at where these newer minor parties might come from. As I note in there, there are already influential local parties in several areas of the United States. For example:
The left-leaning Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights in Southern California dominates city council elections and advocates for affordable housing and enhanced social services.
Progressive Dane is an influential progressive party in municipal elections in Madison, Wisconsin.
The Maine Green Independent Party has several state legislators and local elected officials among its members.
The Alaskan Independence Party has advocated Alaskan secession for decades while pushing for gun rights, home schooling, abortion bans, and more.
There are more! Our current election system means there isn’t much value in these parties getting involved in state and federal elections, where they would easily be defeated by the major party candidates. But in a multi-party system created by proportional representation, it would make sense for them to start fielding and funding more candidates for Congress and state legislature, and they’d likely occasionally win some seats. The existing parties would likely want to accommodate their views to some extent to maintain control of the chamber.
As I note in the piece, we should be modest in our expectations for such reforms; they might produce a few more viable parties but the transformation would likely be slow. And I also note that not every introduction of a new party is inherently a good thing. The Alaskan party I mentioned above advocates secession! Judging from European examples, some new parties could be more extreme than the major ones. And it’s not immediately obvious to me if our political system is better off with someone like Georgia’s Majorie Taylor Greene running an extreme minor party or being a loud backbencher in a major one.
But inserting more parties does give the system a chance to avoid some of the problems of our current two-party gridlock and to address some local issues that are largely being ignored right now.
This symposium has chapters by some top political scholars on the subjects of how such reforms could come about, the impact of proportional representation on the presidency and gerrymandering, how it would affect racial and partisan polarization, and more. I hope you’ll check it out!