Politics

Superb article on primary reform

By Kyle Sammin for Real Clear Pennsylvania. The piece is all about replacing primaries with nomination-by-convention — a proposal that many political scientists likely would support. Here are my favorite lines:

Progressive–Era reformers thought they were returning power to the people by letting states interfere in party business. Instead, they wound up confusing the people, making them think of primary elections as a “first round” that precedes the general election. Returning to a convention system would let parties be parties again, help party members reach consensus instead of shouting past one another, and enable a party collectively to affirm its vision in choosing candidates who share its values.

And if you don’t like a party’s vision? Start your own party.

Also note the list of countries mentioned in the article. Several of them are frequently held up as examples of ranked-choice voting.

Minor parties also use conventions to select their candidates; so does nearly every political party around the world. Rather than spending taxpayer money on an election that benefits only themselves, the parties must pay their own way. And they do! In Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, and nearly any other democracy you can think of, this is how a party’s nominees are chosen.

This piece interestingly was written by a conservative.

Interwar Fabians on ‘instant runoff’

The following is from a 1924 pamphlet on electoral reform by the Fabian Society. The context involves the Labour Party replacing the Liberals as the UK’s main opposition to the Conservatives. The pamphlet itself is about proportional representation, but this excerpt is from a section called “The Alternative Vote.” It is interesting to compare the attendant circumstances with some that now obtain in American nominating primaries.

The method is suggested as a safeguard against minority seats. It is true that the successful candidate would be able to boast of a mathematical majority as proof of his representative quality. But this mathematical majority would not be a majority in the English political sense of the word, i.e., a majority of positive supporters [emphasis in original]. The candidate would be returned partly by the votes given to him to keep other candidates, considered as less desirable, out; and this is no morally decent basis for a Representative Assembly. Moreover, as it is likely that within 15 years the Liberal Party will be electorally defunct, we shall then be troubled with fewer of such multiple-candidate contests. It would be the height of political unwisdom to introduce a new and vicious element into the constitution to counteract a temporary ill.

Missouri, Nevada, and the fate of the Republic

Three things strike me now about American national politics. One is the importance of the Senate for blocking policy change. Another is the Senate’s narrow partisan division. Then there are Missouri and Nevada, where the ranked-choice movement now heads.

This post suggests that one way to save the Republic — by which I mean create a Senate that can block policy change, should the next few elections not go very well — is to get Democratic voters to help elect anti-populist Republicans in key states.

In turn, that could require state Democratic parties to stand down in the respective elections — basically what we have seen in Alaska.

I am not saying that this strategy is good or bad. Nor am I commenting on long-term implications for democratic practice. It may be that there is no other choice.