Cross-endorsement fusion is better than instant runoff (and approval)

I spent a chunk of Memorial Day weekend writing up some thoughts on fusion. They apparently are part of this case (which does not affect my views). Here is the opening paragraph:

I have been asked to share some thoughts on political parties, democratic stability, and the relationship of each to ballot fusion (understood here to mean cross-endorsement). What follows is based on my doctoral education and ongoing research into so-called ‘multiparty reforms.’ A key theme will be that the number of parties matters less than whether the electoral rules facilitate coalition, then make such coalitions unambiguously known to voters. Cross-endorsement fusion has desirable properties on both fronts: promoting coalition, then telling voters on the ballot what coalition they aim to place in control of government.

The ideas in the ‘expert report’ are based partly on material from an early draft of my book, but which I decided to save for stand-alone publication.

That part of the book deals with “making reform work,” especially against the joint backdrop of presidentialism and the Electoral College. I might as well share the language now.

No consideration of multiparty American democracy is complete without attention to the presidential system of government. There are two big problems: the Electoral College unit rule, then the so-called separation of powers. I will suggest ballot fusion as a way to deal with both. The reason is that it promotes more efficient bargaining than the leading alternatives, namely, ranked-choice voting and runoffs.

In the American system of presidential elections, a third-party candidacy poses two big threats. One is that the trailing candidate may win the election — not only because the system advantages low-population states, but also due to spoilers in electorally pivotal states. Another is that there may not be a majority in the Electoral College, throwing the decision to the House of Representatives (where each state delegation votes in block). The strongest institutional explanation for our two-party system is the “unit rule” allocation of a state’s electors to the popular-vote winner in said state. This system solidified in 1836, not accidentally alongside the two-party system itself (E. J. Engstrom 2004). Had we become democratic in the era of multiparty democracy, it is likely we would use some other method to elect the President. Clearly, if we are to have majority rule and multiparty government, there needs to be some new mechanism for presidential elections.

With either problem, the issue is to promote bargaining, leading to some coalition with majority support. One possible option is electoral fusion. Under fusion, two or more parties nominate a single candidate, and voters may support that candidate on as many ballot lines as there are nominating parties.

Fusion is not the same cross-filing, which allows the candidate to choose which party labels appear near their name (Masket 2009) […]

Fans of other systems (e.g., runoffs, single-seat RCV) may counter that their preferred remedies achieve the same result. […] One thing is certain, however. Under fusion, the incentive is for two or more parties to agree on just one candidate. They do not compete for votes: first-choice, second-choice, or otherwise. Rather, they pool effort behind victory for the coalition. Evidence also suggests that fusion increases voter turnout, mainly by mobilizing voters who do not turn out for either major party (Michelson and Susin 2004; Kantack 2017). For more information on fusion, including its history in American elections, see a comprehensive book by Lisa Disch (2002).

At this point, some may note that no proposal deals with the Senate. Even if we can design a system for multiparty coalition within the separation of powers, the Senate still entrenches a minority veto. Further, the critical determinant of this veto — an equal number of Senators per state, regardless of population — cannot be removed from the Constitution.

My expert report only deals indirectly with the presidentialism issues above.

Why I worry about approval voting

Stephen Wolf and a few others have asked me to compile my views. This post is an attempt to do that.

1) For all of their apparent differences, RCV and approval (and derivative ballot reforms) are philosophical bedfellows. Both proceed from the assumption that ‘better rules’ can get us closer to the general will. They therefore presume that such a thing even exists. This presumption is bolstered by inattention to well-known determinants of vote choice (e.g., party identification, cues from preferred candidates).

2) The foregoing philosophical orientation makes either cause a likely ally of those who want to eliminate political parties. Some of those people are frustrated voters (lacking, as they do, leadership to the contrary). Others are would-be elite political actors who want to replace party cues, as determinants of vote choice, with direction from the media and independent expenditures and so forth.

3) RCV may well discredit itself. Its record in the last century is one of failure. Election officials tend to dislike it, and evidence is accumulating that voters are easy to persuade to repeal it.

4) The sorts of elites described in (2) above may therefore have an easier time getting what they want through the ‘cardinal methods’ movement instead. I say “therefore” because approval has not had a chance to show its warts — at least in recent memory — and because it is objectively easier to administer.

5) Cardinal methods will fail, just as ranked ones did in the last century. The approval version of ‘ballot exhaustion’ is ‘approval truncation.’ This is a special version of the spoiler effect in which winning-minded candidates encourage bullet voting. Elite cues matter. Politics is not an unmediated transaction between citizen and state. And the result will be failure of the rule to fulfill its core promise: majority winners.

6) So the question is what other compromises the movement will make in order to get ‘demonstration cases’ of the approval ballot. In other words, what will be left in its wake? The St. Louis experience is a good signal: fully and newly nonpartisan elections.

7) Problems with nonpartisan elections are beyond the scope of this short post. For many readers, they do not need review. Other readers may be so angry at the current party system — rightly so, in my view — that some comment is warranted. I recommend this historical essay.

The one-vote system

Kevin Kosar of the American Enterprise Institute generously invited me to do a Q&A on the ‘one-vote system’ — and candidate-based forms of list PR in general. The Q&A builds on my recent op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer. You can read the Q&A here.

There’s a tendency in reform circles to ask too much of voters. I’m thinking here of elaborate schemes like RCV, STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff), and approval. Ballot reforms like these basically ask voters to pick a better coalition. One-vote flips that around — give voters representation, then have their representatives form the coalition. It’s a lot more realistic.