Americans agree politics is broken: Here are 5 ideas to solve key problems | Opinion

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Aauthor: Ismar Volich, Wellesley College

Now that the election is over, you may be left feeling exhausted, despondent and disappointed—whether your preferred candidate won or not. You are not alone.

Poll after poll shows that Americans agree that the political system is not serving them.

Americans say they are frustrated by political dysfunction, disgusted by divisive rhetoric, tired of a lack of options and feeling unheard and unrepresented. I am a mathematician who studies the quantitative aspects of democracy, and in my opinion, the reason for this widespread dissatisfaction is obvious: the mechanisms of American democracy are broken at a fundamental level.

Research shows that there are clear mathematical solutions to these failures that will enable sound democratic practices backed by evidence. They will not solve all the problems of American democracy: for example, changing Supreme Court rulings or expanding access to voting are more political or administrative in nature than based on mathematics. However, each of these changes—especially in combination with each other—could make American democracy more responsive to its citizens.

Problem: Multiple Voting

Multiple voting, or winner-take-all, is how nearly all of the nation’s 520,000 elected officials are elected. This is also the worst option from a mathematical point of view, since it may give victory to a candidate who does not have majority support. This method is riddled with mathematical problems such as vote splitting and the spoiler effect, which both ensure victory for less popular candidates.

Solution: Ranked Voting

Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank their preferences rather than simply register their top choice.

Used in Australia, New Zealand and other countries around the world, as well as in more than 50 U.S. jurisdictions, including Alaska, New York and Minneapolis, the system selects a candidate with broad support. Because voters don’t worry about losing their votes, this method allows people to show support for third-party candidates even if they don’t win. This method also penalizes negative campaigning, since candidates can win even if they are some voters’ second or third choice, not just their first choice.

Issue: Electoral College

The Electoral College is a unique and uniquely archaic mechanism that no country in the world wants anything to do with. The legacy of slavery and the Framers of the Constitution’s skepticism that the public was smart enough to make good decisions for themselves are only compounded by the numerous mathematical problems that give voters in some states more power than others in electing the president.

Decision: Popular Vote

Evidence shows that moving to a popular vote will eliminate these biases. But even if 63% of Americans support eliminating the Electoral College, history shows that the required constitutional amendment is unlikely to happen.

A way to avoid the need for constitutional changes would be the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is currently supported by 17 states, including California and Illinois, as well as Washington, DC. popular vote. But it won’t take effect until enough states join so that their combined electoral votes reach the victory threshold of 270. For now, states with a total of 209 electoral votes support the measure.

Problem: Single Winner Districts

Because of winner-take-all voting, congressional and state officeholders do not necessarily reflect the party makeup of a district, ensuring disproportionate representation of one party.

Solution: Multiple Winner Counties

Most democracies in the world have geographically larger constituencies in which multiple candidates are elected at the same time. Multiple-winner districts are designed to achieve proportional representation. Currently, all nine Massachusetts House representatives are Democrats, although a third of the state’s voters typically favor Republican candidates. But if Massachusetts had three congressional districts instead of nine, each electing three members of the House of Representatives, one-third of the seats would go to Republicans, which would be commensurate with the share of Republican voters in the state. Multi-winner districts are also effective at eliminating gerrymandering.

Issue: party primaries

About 10% of eligible voters cast ballots in congressional primaries. These voters often represent a vocal base that can lift up fringe or fringe candidates who continue to compete in general races that are often not competitive due to a confluence of factors such as pluralistic voting and single-winner districts.

Final numbers for 2024 are not yet available, but this one-tenth of voters actually determined 83% of congressional seats in 2020. Representatives shape their policies to pander to the demands of this base and can keep their jobs for decades without much effort. .

Presidential primaries have their own mathematical flaws that skew voters’ preferences and reward polarizing candidates who are likely to gain support.

Solution: open primaries or no primaries at all

The system of open, nonpartisan primaries is used in California, Colorado and Nevada. The top three or four candidates advance to the general election, which is then conducted using ranked-choice voting. This structure increases voter participation and ensures more representative results.

A simpler solution would be to abolish primary elections and hold a single open general election with ranked-choice voting.

The problem: the size of the House of Representatives

The very first amendment proposed by the framers of the Constitution required that the size of the House of Representatives increase as the country’s population increased. For close contact between officials and voters, they liked the ratio of 30,000 to 50,000 people per member of the House of Representatives. Their amendment was never ratified.

The ratio today is 760 thousand people per representative. The size of the Chamber is fixed by law and has been 435 members since 1913. It is difficult to imagine that a representative can speak knowledgeably to so many constituents or understand their collective needs and preferences.

Solution: make it bigger

To reduce this ratio, the Chamber must be larger. With a population of more than 337 million, James Madison’s preference would require more than 6,700 House members. It’s cumbersome. Most democracies either deliberately follow or seem to naturally settle on a different formula, in which the size of the legislature is roughly equal to the cube root of the country’s population.

In the US, that number is currently almost 700, which means the population to representative ratio is 475,000 to 1. This would still upset Madison, but it is much more representative than the current state of affairs.

Will the Capitol be able to handle this expansion?

Architectural studies indicate that this will not be a problem.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/americans-agree-politics-is-broken-here-are-5-ideas-for-fixing-key-problems-243553.