Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commissions
An independent citizens’ redistricting commission is distinctive insofar as it is populated by ordinary citizens, like a jury, instead of by professional politicians. The goal is to have these citizens draw fair maps that are not gerrymandered in favor of either political party. Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commissions have been implemented in Arizona, California and Michigan as well as other states by ballot initiatives. In Ohio, there is a current effort to adopt this kind of commission after the failure of a previous politician-controlled commission. In California, Governor Schwarzenegger was instrumental in getting that state’s proposal adopted and in Michigan, it was one citizen who instigated a social media campaign in favor of the proposal.
Where adopted, citizen commissions have been successful in removing the power to draw district lines from politicians who have a self-interest in gerrymandering those lines to their advantage. These commissions have been accused of being captured by political interests and not truly independent, but these accusations have tended to come from those who would benefit from partisan gerrymandering and thus oppose the implementation of a fairer system. On balance, there is good reason to believe that these commissions are a net benefit compared to leaving the redistricting power in the hands of self-interested politicians. The specific details of how a citizens’ commission is designed, and its members chosen are important, and any future adoption of this approach should benefit from lessons learned with the experience of existing commissions.
The idea of independent citizens’ redistricting commissions has been gaining momentum in light of public frustration with gerrymandering. Congress came very close to adopting this approach as part of its omnibus “For the People Act” electoral reform, but it failed when Democrats in the Senate refused to negate the filibuster for this type of reform. Had Congress separated this proposal from the rest of the omnibus bill, it is at least conceivable that there would have been 60 votes in the Senate to overcome the filibuster, but that effort was never made. Depending on the outcome of elections for the rest of this decade, there potentially might be the opportunity to try again to enact this proposal in Congress.
“Self-Districting”
“Self-districting” is a system in which voters choose which communities they would like to join for purposes of legislative representation. These communities could be based on geography, like traditional legislative districts, but they also could be organized around other attributes of social affiliation, like occupation, age, ethnicity, or ideology. For example, there could be a “farmers” district, or a “millennials” district, or a Latino district, or a “Constitutional Conservatives” district.
The way the system would work would be, first, for groups to self-organize and to compete for voters to join them. Given the constitutional requirement of equally populated districts, groups with more voters joining them potentially would be entitled to more than one district. If a group had enough voters for three districts, for example, the group would be subdivided by a districting computer program according to strict geographical criteria, like compactness. In order to comply with the constitutional requirement of equally populated districts, voters who did not choose to join any of the self-organized groups plus voters who joined groups that weren’t large enough to form even one district—and also “remainder” voters when a group’s size was large enough for n districts but not large enough for n+1 districts (these “remainder” voters would be randomly selected from all the voters joining the particular group)—would be placed in one or more residual “unaffiliated” districts. If there were more than one unaffiliated district in a state, they too would be drawn by computer according to strict geographical criteria without regard to any partisan considerations.
After all the districts were formed according to this self-districting method, candidates would run in each district, and the election’s winner would represent that district in the legislature (either a state legislature or Congress, depending on whether the self-districting system was adopted for one or the other, or both). This self-districting system would tend to resemble a form of proportional representation, as each group would win a number of seats in the legislature in proportion to the number of voters who joined that group. The elections to fill these self-districted seats would tend to resemble party primaries, insofar as all the voters in the district would be self-affiliated in their group and choosing which individual would best represent the interests of the group in the legislature. A version of ranked-choice voting would be most desirable for these elections, but any electoral method that selects a single winner from a pool of candidates would work. The elections for the residual “unaffiliated” districts would tend to resemble more traditional legislative elections in the United States, since the voters there would not be all self-affiliated according to the same social attribute; presumably, political parties would nominate or endorse candidates to compete in those districts.
This is a new idea, although New Zealand has adopted something similar insofar as its indigenous population gets to choose between two different sets of legislative districts.
A self-districting system would eliminate gerrymandering because the voters, not politicians, would choose which district to join. Geography would be used only to subdivide the groups formed according to the voters’ own preferences (as well as the few residual unaffiliated districts necessary to comply with the requirement of equally populated districts), and even this constrained use of geography would be based on strict computer-implemented nonpartisan criteria and thus would not enable the manipulation of district lines for partisan purposes. Moreover, because the basic self-districting decision would be decentralized, with each voter choosing which group to join, there wouldn’t be the risk of the process being captured by any political party—a risk that inevitably exists even with independent citizens redistricting commissions insofar as the selection of citizens to serve on the commission might be susceptible to partisan manipulation, or the performance of the citizens on the commission might be subjected to partisan influence.
Under the Constitution, each state has the power to adopt this kind of self-districting system if it wishes. Moreover, with respect to congressional districts, there would be no need to repeal the existing statute that requires single-member districts for Congress. Each district in this self-districting system is represented by a single member and thus satisfies this existing statutory requirement. Indeed, self-districting has the attractive attribute of being a way to achieve proportional representation in Congress without eliminating the single-member district requirement.
Multi-Member Districts with Ranked-Choice Voting
Instead of one representative elected in a legislative district, it is possible to design the electoral system so that voters elect several members—for example, four or five—from the same district. When the system combines these multi-member districts with ranked-choice voting, the system can achieve a kind of proportional representation. To illustrate this point, assume a district elects four members and there are a dozen (or more) candidates competing for these four seats. If voters cast ranked-choice ballots, candidates can be eliminated one at a time until only four remain. Candidates do not need to have the support of the majority in order to win a seat; any candidate who receives over 20% of the votes will be sure to get a seat, thus providing representation to this share of voters in the district.
This system is used to elect Australia’s national senate as well as one chamber of Ireland’s national legislature. It’s also used in local elections in New Zealand, some parts of the UK (Scotland and Northern Ireland), and some U.S. cities, including Cambridge, MA. It was used more widely among U.S. cities during the Progressive Era (1896-1917), but it fell on disfavor and was repealed in most places where it had been adopted. It was also used for a period in some local Canadian elections, but also repealed there. In the United States, there was a concerted effort among Progressive Era reformers to adopt this method, as described in Santucci’s book.
Advocates for this reform contend that it would combat polarization and gerrymandering and can point to its success in Australia and Ireland. The widespread repeal of its limited adoption in the U.S., however, is a sobering reminder that what works elsewhere may not necessarily work here. Among those who favor introducing some form of proportional representation into U.S. legislative elections, either for Congress or state legislatures, there is a debate as to whether this particular form of proportional representation would be the best one to adopt. The mathematical properties of this system make it more difficult to form coherent legislative coalitions, according to Santucci’s analysis, which is arguably one reason for its repeal in the U.S. and Canada.
The organization Fair Vote is a zealous advocate for this particular reform, and there is a bill pending in Congress to adopt this method for House of Representatives elections. This bill, however, has little chance of passage in the near future. It would make more sense to experiment with this method in one or more state legislatures, and it is worth observing that despite strenuous advocacy for this reform for decades, it has not yet been adopted for any state legislature. Perhaps that will change: it has recently been adopted in Portland, Oregon, and Oregon’s voters will have the opportunity to vote on the system in a statewide ballot initiative in 2024.
Nineteenth-Century-Style Fusion Voting
Fusion voting is the practice where a candidate can be nominated by more than one party and voters can vote for the candidate as the nominee of whichever party they prefer. The practice originated in the nineteenth century, at a time when each party printed its own ballots, before the United States adopted the policy of a government-printed ballot. If more than one party nominated the same candidate, then more than one party would print their own ballots with the same candidate. All the ballots cast for the same candidate would count towards the candidate’s overall total, although each party could tell how much it contributed to the candidate’s total.
After the adoption of the government-printed ballot, some states permitted the practice of fusion voting to continue, whereby the same candidate’s name would be printed separately for each party nomination the candidate received. The U.S. Supreme Court has permitted the abandonment of this practice. Nonetheless, New York and Connecticut continue to use it. (Oregon uses an alternative form of fusion voting, which lists with the candidate’s name all the parties that have nominated the candidate; but this alternative form does not permit voters to distinguish which party they wish to support when the vote for the candidate, and thus also does not permit knowing how much each party contributed to the candidate’s total.)
Advocates for reviving fusion voting contend that it would facilitate the development of a “Moderate Party” that could decide in each election whether to co-nominate either the Democrat or the Republican. In doing so, the theory goes, this Moderate Party could pull some votes for a Democrat whom Republican voters would be reluctant to support (and vice versa). If these voters cast their ballots for the candidate as the nominee of the Moderate Party, they don’t have to “pull the lever” for a “Democrat” if doing so is distasteful to them.
There are reasons, however, to be skeptical of this argument. For one thing, a Moderate Party has not developed in either New York or Connecticut, where fusion voting is currently permitted. Instead, fusion voting has facilitated the development of more “extreme” parties that flank the Democrats and Republicans on either side of the ideological divide. Moreover, there is little evidence that significant numbers of Republican voters currently unwilling to vote for a Democrat would be willing to vote for the same candidate if that individual were also nominated by the Moderate Party. Finally, any anti-polarization benefit that might be obtained by fusion voting could be achieved more effectively by a form of ranked choice voting, where voters could cast their ballot for their most preferred candidate and then also indicate second-choice support for a Moderate Party candidate. In this context, the Moderate Party could form an alliance with one of the other parties in an effort to secure such second-choice support, and voters predisposed to support a Moderate Party candidate might in turn be willing to support whichever other party the Moderates made an alliance.
It seems unlikely that voters would be inclined to support fusion voting, which tends to result in a more complicated and confusing ballot without significant perceived benefits from the voter’s perspective. There is an effort underway to convince state courts that fusion voting is required by state constitutional provisions requiring free and fair elections. This litigation effort also faces an uphill battle and applied to congressional elections, potentially risks invalidation by the U.S. Supreme Court under the so-called “independent state legislature” doctrine (which was rejected in its most extreme form but remains as a constraint against interpretations of state constitutions by state courts that lack a sufficiently judicial character).
Consensus Voting for Presidential Elections
Some American voters are clamoring for a meaningful third-party option in the 2024 presidential election, but the existing electoral system is not structured to enable that. It would be necessary to incorporate Consensus Voting into the presidential election system, either in a RCV form or the direct “top-three” alternative to RCV, in order to make feasible a competitive third-party presidential candidate.
Given the Constitutional provisions establishing the Electoral College, however, it is difficult to incorporate Consensus Voting within presidential elections. States currently have the power to adopt Consensus Voting for the appointment of their presidential electors. But if they did this, they would significantly increase the risk of producing a three-way split in the Electoral College, causing no candidate to receive an Electoral College majority, thus sending the presidential election to the House of Representatives under a procedure that gives each state’s House delegation a single vote regardless of population. California, in other words, would have the same single vote as Wyoming. This procedure was last used in 1824, long before California and Wyoming were added to the union. Most observers think it would be disastrous for another presidential election to end up in the House with this archaic procedure in force.
There are two possible ways to adopt Consensus Voting for presidential elections without risking this antiquated House procedure. The first would be a constitutional amendment. The second would be a variation of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which would be a coordinated reform among states with at least 270 Electoral College votes and therefore capable of controlling the outcome of the presidential election without sending it to the House. Currently, NPVIC has been adopted by 16 states (plus DC) with 205 electoral votes, 65 short of the 270 necessary for it to take effect.
The existing version of NPVIC would award all the compacting states’ electoral votes to the plurality winner of the national popular vote. But a Consensus Voting variation on the same idea would award all the compacting states’ electoral votes to the Consensus Voting winner among all ballots cast in the compacting states. Thus, a candidate who was the consensus choice among all the voters of these states necessarily would win an Electoral College majority and thus the presidency. Once enough states joined the compact to control 270 votes, the rest of the states would need to join as well in order to make sure that their voters were not shut out of any chance to influence the outcome of presidential elections. A map of where the existing version of NPVIC has been adopted can be seen here. NPVIC was proposed after Bush won the Electoral College in 2000 while losing the national popular vote.
A Consensus Voting variation on NPVIC would transform presidential elections, making it possible to elect a president who truly is the consensus choice—and thus most representative—of all voters. Depending on what happens in the 2024 presidential election, there might be significant appetite for reform.
Survivor-style Presidential Elections
The TV show Survivor involves dropping contestants one by one until only the winner remains. The key to this procedure is that each round of voting is based on which contestant should be eliminated, not which contestant should win. This same concept could be used in presidential elections, either in the form of RCV or in a series of separate votes (or both, at the option of each voter). While not exactly the same as Consensus Voting, under conditions of polarization Survivor-style voting would have much the same anti-polarization effect. Polarizing candidates strongly opposed by voters on the opposite side would tend to be the first candidates eliminated in a Survivor-style system, leaving more common-ground candidates in the race for voters to choose among. Like a Consensus Voting system for presidential elections, a Survivor-style system would need to be adopted either by constitutional amendment or a variation on the NPVIC plan.
As indicated above, it would depolarize presidential elections. Also, the participatory nature of voting each presidential candidate off the stage, one by one, potentially could increase civic participation and enthusiasm for presidential elections. The immense popularity of the TV Show Survivor, plus the familiarity of Americans with its voting method, suggests that there is a good chance the public could be persuaded that this makes sense for presidential elections.
European-Style Proportional Representation
In many countries, voters elect members of a legislature by voting for a party, and the party receives a number of seats in the legislature in proportion to the number of votes it receives. There are different specific versions of this party-based approach. In “closed” versions, the party alone chooses which of its candidates receive seats in the legislature, depending upon how many seats the party earns from the vote. In “open” versions of the system, voters choose which of the party’s candidates receive the seats the party earns from its proportion of the overall vote. Given the historically candidate-centered, rather than party-centered, nature of elections in the US, it is highly unlikely that Americans would want to adopt a “closed” version of this system. But it is conceivable that Americans could be persuaded to adopt an “open” version of proportional representation. Indeed, the “self-districting” system described above can be understood as an even more “America-tailored” variation on a “open” party-based proportional representation system. Rather than voting for parties without there being any specific electoral districts whatsoever, self-districting enables a measure of proportional representation insofar as parties attempt to compete for districts within the system. A pure proportional representation system, like those in some European countries, abandons electoral districts altogether; even in “open” versions of the system, voters do not choose a specific representative for their own district, but rather contribute to the choice of which candidates form a party’s overall share of the legislature. The connection between representative and constituent is thus “severed” in a pure proportional representation system, even an “open” one, whereas the connection between representative and constituent is maintained in the self-districting system.
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria are among the many European countries that use some variation of a party-based proportional representation system.
There is a debate among political scientists and other scholars about the extent to which the adoption of proportional representation in the US, were it to occur, would ameliorate existing levels of polarization and improve the functioning of government. Many political scientists strongly advocate in favor of proportional representation, arguing that it would isolate extremist elements of American politics, liberating moderate conservatives from the dominance of the “MAGA movement” within the Republican party. Others argue that proportional representation tends to destabilize government, as legislative coalitions fail to form or break apart quickly. There is also the concern about an extremist party earning enough seats in a proportional representation legislature to extract concessions to become part of a majority coalition. Another point of debate is how proportional representation would function in the context of America’s overall constitutional system, which necessarily includes a president and US senate (as well as state-level gubernatorial elections) that structurally cannot be subject to any form of PR.
Even if a European-style proportional representation system is thought to have desirable attributes, it would seem more likely that Congress or states would adopt a version of proportional representation, like self-districting, with features more familiar to American elections.
Jury-Style Citizen Assemblies
Today, when Americans think of democracy, they think of elections. But there are other forms of democracy beside government by elected representatives. A New England town meeting, in which each adult citizen participates, is one form of direct democracy. Other is the ancient Athenian idea of “sortition”—which is a fancy term for government by means of randomly selected ordinary citizens. A jury is an example of government by sortition, but currently we use juries for factfinding in connect with the judicial process. It is conceivable, however, to populate legislative assemblies with lawmaking authority by means of sortition—randomly selecting ordinary citizens to serve in a lawmaking body.
Given the problems afflicting elections in recent years—from the distortions of campaign finance to gerrymandering—there has been growing interest among political theorists about the possibility of using sortition rather than elections as the means to populate legislative assemblies that would be representative of the body politic as a whole. Some of this interest has been confined to consider citizen assemblies, with members chosen randomly, to be advisory or supplementary to existing traditional elected legislatures. But the more ambitious of these proposals would be to have a citizens assembly chosen by lot replace one or more branches of the traditional bicameral legislature.
Citizen assemblies have been used in Canada, Scotland, and elsewhere with varying degrees of success for the purpose of proposing government reform and other major policy changes. Private-sector advisory citizen assemblies, in the form of “deliberative public opinion polls,” have been conducted in the United States, based on the work of Stanford political scientists Larry Diamond and James Fishkin.
Depending on how ambitious the particular form of this proposal might take, its impact potentially could be enormous. If elected legislatures were entirely replaced by jury-like citizen assemblies, the effect would be transformative. Election campaigns would disappear (at least for those offices to which this reform applied). The relationship between citizens and their randomly selected representatives would be altogether different as well. If citizens were unhappy with the public policies chosen by the randomly selected representatives, they would have to hope that the next term’s random selection would produce better outcomes.
Even if citizen assemblies did not entirely replace elected legislatures, their impact could be hugely significant. Imagine if a state legislature were composed of two chambers, one traditional elected and the other chosen by sortition. Insofar as the two chambers diverged on the public policies they pursued for the state, the public as a whole would have the opportunity to assess which of the two better served its interest. The sortition-selected chamber thus would serve as a check on distortions caused by flaws in the electoral process, while at the same time the elected chamber could attempt to convince the public that it had a better understanding of the public’s needs that the randomly chosen citizens assembly.
This proposal is obviously “radical” (in the basic sense of term) insofar it has the potential to change the way government works all the way down to its roots. Therefore, it necessarily is less likely to be adopted, at least on a widespread basis anytime soon. Even so, given how deep the sense is that government currently is not working, there may be opportunities for at least some exploration of this very different alternative. Even if there was only a more sustained use of citizen assemblies as advisory to existing legislatures—imagine a “shadow Congress” composed of randomly chosen ordinary citizens who proposed legislation for the actual Congress to consider—this idea has the potential for paving the way to improve government decision making.
Australia-Style Compulsory Voting
This one is simple: instead of permitting citizens to vote, the government could require citizens to vote—obligating them to pay a modest fine if they don’t. The justification for this idea is that voting should be viewed as a duty of citizenship as well as a right. Australia is the most prominent country to have adopted compulsory voting but there are other countries that have done so as well. In Australia it was enacted by legislation and was sponsored by individuals concerned by the previous drop in voter turnout.
If adopted in the United States, compulsory voting would have a dramatic effect on voter turnout, especially in nonpresidential elections, which tend to have low turnout. Moreover, if voting were compulsory, debates over facilitating access to the ballot would be transformed, as the government would be obligated to make it easy for voters to fulfill this civic duty. Also, because turnout rates differ significantly among different socioeconomic groups, compulsory voting would equalize the electorate across all groups.
The United States historically has had a libertarian streak to its national culture, and thus the idea of compulsory voting has been viewed as contrary to the American character. But the change in perspective on the functioning of democracy would be so significant if this reform were adopted that perhaps it is worth considering.