The editors of the Tampa Bay Times identify the solution to our polarized politics as ranked-choice voting:
As this Editorial Board argued last year, Florida should consider ranked choice voting, perhaps modeled on Alaska’s system, where primary elections are open to all candidates regardless of party affiliation. The top four vote-getters go through to the general election, held weeks later. Voters then use ranked choice voting to select a winner from the final four. The basic idea is that voters don’t have to select only their top candidate — they can rank some or all of the candidates if they want. Either way, if no candidate receives a majority of the first-place votes on the initial tally, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. When a voter’s first-choice vote is eliminated, then their second-choice vote is counted. It goes on until there is a winner with the majority of the votes.
Frankly, I’m skeptical. I doubt it’s that simple. I think that gerrymandering, too few representatives, and too much power being placed in the hands of party leaders all play roles in how undemocratic our system is. For one thing what good would representatives who espouse more moderate views when running do when they follow the party line in Washington?
Maybe ranked-choice voting would be a good step. I think we need to ban gerrymandering outright, increase the size of the House by at least 50%, and impose term limits or some other strategy for reducing the power of party leaders to have notionally more moderate representatives mean anything. That could only happen through a Constitutional Convention which is a risky strategy.
I’m lukewarmish on RCV, and it has tradeoffs, like anything else. But considering how broken our primary system is, I think it’s worth trying in more places and circumstances.
I am skeptical. Might help at the margins. On your point about moderate representatives I knew our former congressman a bit and know the current one a bit better. She used to do malpractice litigation for our hospital. The former (R) guy was actually pretty moderate. In private conversation he hated the Tea Party folks and believed in working across the aisle. However, when it came down to voting if it was close he had to fall in line and vote the party preference. He got tired of that, plus dealing with he crazies, so he left.
Our current congressperson is much the same. She just sighs if you mention the names of the radical progressives. She took input from our medical community and has pushed for policies affecting us that align more with GOP policies. However, if it’s close, and it’s almost always close, she has to support the party.
Gerrymandering. Ha. The SCOTUS supports gerrymandering for Republicans, mostly, so dont expect that to change much.
Steve
My point precisely.
which is why it would only change via a Constitutional Convention.
My preference is to uncap the House. Many of the political problems we have today would be much diminished or eliminated if the House was much bigger. And that’s something that wouldn’t take a Constitutional amendment.
The Founders thought that 50,000 in a district were too many. At present the average population of a Congressional district is 760,000. It is frequently claimed that 250,000 per Congressional district, effectively tripling the size of the present Congress, would be unmanageably large.
IMO the size of the Congress should be at least trebled. Sadly, I suspect that even at that absent an end to gerrymandering, term limits, and reduction in the power of the party leaders, we would be left with a larger Congress with all of the same problems.