Proportional Representation as the key to free and fair democratic elections

"But how will you win?" is a common question I've been hearing lately about the prospect of running as a third-party candidate, or even simply voting for third-party candidates. "Our members are a skeptical group that expects results", one representative of an organization told me (paraphrased) when I inquired about Green party support from the group, "and so you will need to convince our membership that you can win elections before we can endorse your candidates."

It is a frustrating response to hear when clearly, for decades now, the strategy of "changing" the two major parties to reflect the will of the people has produced only very small concessions and wins at best. While the inclusion of gay rights, for example, has been a huge win (and notice that win was largely in the courts and through citizen action, not from action of politicians in either party -- in fact, Obama and Clinton both famously were against gay marriage during the 2008 primaries), we have economically slid backward as both Democratic and Republican administrations continue their assault on working class Americans and the classic institutions that protected our human rights. Budgets are slashed, social programs are cut, regulations that protected us dismantled, all while the American people pick up the tab for the worldwide economic crash caused by those very same loosening of regulations. We now see decades of neoliberal policy culminating in the GOP's new tax plan that is obviously weighted toward the most wealthy at the expense of the poor, and it is very near passage. All of this is happening with a backdrop of constant war and involvement in the Middle East, with an ever-growing budget funding the military-industrial complex.

It is clear to me that not only is the status quo of the two parties no longer tenable, but the status quo of the "resistance" -- the idea that we can win over the establishment with a couple of hour-long marches and running progressives in the primaries under establishment rules -- is also no longer tenable. Progressives have for years been calling for change within the Democratic Party, and have failed as the party dragged those voices further and further right. For evidence, only look at past party leaders like Howard Dean, who once championed a progressive agenda including single payer, which now make arguments for further pro-corporate policy as they take massive donations from those very industries.

We have to change our tactics and strategy to make long-term progress and not just short-lived victories that are quickly crushed. And yet, I can't entirely blame the objections over third-party politics. In a sense, they are exactly right -- our electoral system has evolved to reinforce exactly this dilemma, to make it hard to break out of the establishment bubble. While it certainly can happen when people join together and demand it -- look at the DSA-backed independents and third-party members that won elections this year, as well as the Greens that won 44 new seats and counting, on top of past wins -- it is also foolish to say that there is not a significant road block. This road block is a multi-part road block, consisting of a legal system that discriminates against third parties, a media that ignores or even demonizes third parties, and the plain ol' "psychological inertia" of voters that are afraid of "wasting the vote" due to the intense long-term propaganda. The question isn't whether there is a road block (there is), but rather what to do about it.

Most of the objections over "winning" and "results" narrow down to objections over how easy (or hard) it is to convince people to vote third-party in a two-party duopoly. Our two-party duopoly is maintained by several factors, as I outlined in the previous paragraph, but one of the largest is the way we actually we vote. I heard over and over from voters, as I petitioned for signatures for Green candidates last summer, that if Greens ran more candidates they would be registered Green; the only reason they remained registered Democratic was to be able to vote in Pennsylvania's closed primaries. Important Pittsburgh positions like mayor are effectively determined in the primaries because the city is effectively a one-party Democratic town; if there is no Republican or Green or Libertarian challenger (and typically there isn't, in recent history) in the general, the Democratic primary winner is elected. Because of gerrymandering and our voting system, we have a city that is on paper "Democratic" by necessity, but many of its citizens are ready for an alternative. Democratic rule has not been effective at confronting many of Pittsburgh's problems. We still don't have a $15 living minimum wage, areas of the city are gentrifying out its citizens (while poorer districts are ignored by officials), parts of the city have lead pipes that the administration has been slow to combat (while even hiring consultants to make the argument of privatizing the public water supply, which is a very Republican thing to suggest), and many other problems.

While it's certainly possible for Greens to win elections if a majority stopped being afraid of voting third party (there's no law that stops Greens from winning in the general election, it's just the willpower of voters), there is a lot of mental resistance from voters for doing so, for fear of "splitting the vote". Some voters' concerns of "splitting the vote" are not entirely wrong, but I believe the concept focuses on the wrong aspect of the problem.

So what is "splitting the vote"? The United States and Pennsylvania in particular use plurality voting, which means whoever wins the most (a plurality) of votes wins the election. On the surface this seems perfectly fair, most votes is the winner, but when more than two candidates are on the ballot, it can lead to tactical voting. Voters become afraid to support anyone but one of the two perceived front-runners, for concern that the vote split across many candidates lowers the amount needed to win. For example, a four-way election in which three candidates get 24% of the vote and the fourth gets 28% of the vote declares the fourth candidate as the winner. 28% was the plurality, but something is clearly wrong with a system that allows someone with such a small vote total to win the election and pretend to represent the people. You aren't very representative if the overwhelming majority (72%!) voted against you! 2016 actually showed this, where both Trump and Clinton received less than a majority (50%) of the vote. Most Americans actually opposed both candidates by a slight majority, and Trump won despite having less votes than Clinton because our Electoral College hurts our voting methods for president even more. In fact, the same happened in the GOP primaries, where Trump won early states with only 20% or so of the vote; 18 candidates meant a very small threshold was required to win. When every presidential election in recent history is nearly an even split, it's not hard to see how plurality voting leads to our current angry partisan situation. And really, can you blame voters? Roughly half of the country is angry they lost because effectively they had no impact on the results of the elections. Either you "win" with "your" party, or you lose with the exact opposite party you least wanted to see win, there's no middle ground. And the corporate media is more than happy to take advantage and over-hype these contests and frame the debate toward supporting "realistic" corporate-backed candidates, leading to further corruption in the system.

So one strategy for Greens may be to run Greens in gerrymandered districts where it is unlikely that the other major party will offer an alternative -- in this way, there is no "vote splitting". I think this can work, but requires us to recruit candidates in those districts to run, which can sometimes be difficult when so many are afraid to leave the two major parties. While there is a lot of progressive interest in running for office, the recent DSA victories seem to have many progressives confident that running in the Democratic primaries is sufficient; while I'm not confident they will be able to repeat the successes at the state and federal level, even if they do, we leave open the door for a corporate re-take-over of the party until we change the system upon which our politics is based. We as Greens clearly need better outreach to candidates to convince them of our approach and the necessity for the third party politics.

Alongside the electoral approach, which can educate the voters about issues such as our voting system even if our candidates do not win, we need to also build a coalition for activism. We must acknowledge that our voting system needs to change, not just for Greens and third parties, but even just to improve the major parties' primary process. Voters from across the political spectrum must work to give up on archaic voting methods and join the modern world if we wish to be a strong democracy. We need a better system that promotes real debate on issues, rather than gerrymandering and voting for the "lesser of two evils" simply to avoid "splitting the vote".

To build a coalition, we need plan. Our current voting system is bad, most realize this. But what do we replace it with?

An alternative to plurality voting is called ranked choice voting, where voters select not just one candidate (which leads to the tactical "lesser of two evils" voting, as above) but rank ALL of the choices in order from most preferred to least. If the most preferred candidate does not have enough votes to win in the first round of vote counting, those votes are transferred to their second choice candidate, and the votes are re-tallied. This method is much more fair because now there is no concern about "splitting the vote", you can vote your conscience knowing that if your favorite candidate cannot mathematically win, your vote is transferred to the next best option, and so on. This method obviously results in the candidate with the broadest consensus being the winner; even if the winner is not everyone's top choice, it elects candidates with broad appeal rather than those with narrow minority support (which we saw before in the case of Trump in the 2016 primaries, for example), so voters are generally much more agreeable to the results of this voting method.

When electing a legislature (Congress or a state assembly of representatives), we encounter the same problem. Voters are split into districts and told to vote for a single candidate. Again, many voters are reluctant to vote for a third or fourth choice for fear that the other major party candidate will win. Districts themselves are often "gerrymandered", drawn in such a way as to group together all of the votes for one major party or the other in a single district, with the effect that the aggregate winners across all districts do not actually reflect the interests of individual voters across the districts. We see this in Pennsylvania where despite a clear majority of voters voting for Democratic candidates statewide, Republicans control a majority of state representative seats. Gerrymandering "dilutes" Democratic votes by pushing them into a small number of districts where they have less impact overall (e.g., they can't elect very many representatives since there aren't many districts). To be fair, Democrats have done the same to Republicans in other states and other points in time; the two major parties constantly swing back and forth in power, abusing the re-districting process and plurality vote to gain majority control of government.

For legislative bodies, the fix is known as proportional representation (PR), which is basically ranked choice when you need to pick more than one person. Rather than using districts, we let voters choose their preferred candidate(s) from a list of ALL candidates. For example, rather than Pittsburgh splitting itself into small wards, we let everyone in Pittsburgh vote from a list of candidates that may come from anywhere in the city. Voters rank their preferences, so we again lose any worry of "splitting the vote". As votes are tallied, we set a threshold that anyone reaching an agreed minimum number of votes wins a seat. This means the election is about getting the correct number of votes needed to be elected, rather than a percentage of the overall, which tends to have the effect that candidates focus more on winning votes rather than attacking opponents (too much attacking and you will likely scare off some of your own voters). As we count votes and determine winners, we transfer votes from losing candidates (that have no possibility of getting the required number of votes) onto other candidates, and keep recounting until we get the appropriate number of winners. In fact, we can even transfer votes from winning candidates onto second choice candidates, and therein lies the beauty of PR. As we transfer votes, we settle on the most popular candidates that were ranked the highest by the largest number of people, and thus settle on winners that reflect the majority of the voters, all while providing a small number of seats to minority groups (smaller groups still have a good chance at winning even just one seat, since they need only gather up the minimum number of votes to win, they don't need to necessary "beat" any other candidate). In this way, the final set of winners that make up the legislative body are diverse, the majority of them elected by the majority, while ensuring smaller groups have at least some say in the debate by being able to elect at least one person. This method is known as the single transferable vote (STV) since voters simply rank their preferences, and their votes are automatically transferred to the next highest candidate that needs the vote to win. Some countries use an alternative version of PR known as "party list" where voters vote for a party rather than an individual, but this is less desirable as it puts some control of elections and candidates in party hands rather than the people's hands. The STV PR method ensures a truly representative body that was elected by focusing on issues and winning votes rather than scaring voters with attack ads and "lesser evil" arguments. It also allows lesser known candidates a fair shot at getting the required minimum of votes, even against more well-known establishment candidates, since votes are automatically transferred as needed.

There's a lot of detail in here about exactly how to count the votes in an STV PR system, but hopefully this argument has at least shown why we should even be considering adopting such a system.

Greens already support PR in the Green platform. Locally, I think we need to run as many candidates as we can -- the more the better! Every campaign is an opportunity for voter outreach and education on the issues, and when we win, we can use what clout we win to push even more for PR from within government. However, that said, I think a successful campaign for PR will also take some activism from outside electoral politics.

Since the post is already fairly long, I'll pause here and plan a follow up post about the specifics of exactly how PR works, as well as some responses to common objections to PR, based on an interesting book I recently picked up. I'll also have some thoughts on how we can work toward PR in the Pittsburgh area and beyond using a combination of electoral politics and activism. Stay tuned!