 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
| Part of thePolitics series |
| Elections |
|---|
.svg) |
Lists |
 Politics portal |
Electoral reform in the United States refers to the efforts of change forAmerican elections and theelectoral system used in theUS.
Most elections in the U.S. today select one person; elections of multiple members in a district are less common. Elections where members are elected through majoritarianinstant-runoff voting orproportional representation are relatively rare. Examples of single-winner elections include theHouse of Representatives, where all members are elected byFirst-past-the-post voting,instant-runoff voting, or thetwo-round system. The use of single-member districts means any increase in or decrease in the number of members means redistricting. The number of representatives from each state is set in proportion to each state's population in the most recentdecennial census.District boundaries are usually redrawn after each such census. This process often produces "gerrymandered" district boundaries designed to increase and secure a majority of seats to the party already in power, sometimes by dispersing opposition party voters and sometimes by concentrating opposition party voters into just one district. This and other institutional features give an advantage to incumbents seeking reelection.
TheSenate and thepresident are also elected by plurality. However, these elections are not affected bygerrymandering (with the possible exception of presidential races inMaine andNebraska, whose electoral votes are partially allocated by vote tallies in Congressional districts). Aside from exceptions in Maine and Nebraska and the single-seat states, the presidential election uses multi-member districts (each state's electoral college seats) elected in state-wide contests, but there is no proportionality of representation because each state gives its EC seats as a block to the party with plurality of votes in the state.
Currently the only place in the U.S. where proportional representation is used to elect government members is at the city level. Cambridge, Minneapolis andPortland, Oregon are among the cities that use a P.R. system to elect their councils, specificallysingle transferable voting.[1]
Proposals for electoral reform have included overturning theSupreme Court's decision inCitizens United v. FEC, public and citizen funding of elections, limits and transparency in funding,ranked-choice voting (RCV) (single transferable voting orinstant-runoff voting), redistricting to make multi-member districts, abolishing theElectoral College or nullifying its impact through theNational Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and improvingballot access for third parties, among others. The U.S. Constitution gives states wide latitude to determine how elections are conducted, although some rules, such as the ban onpoll taxes, are mandated at the federal level.
The drive for proportional representation in the U.S. has a long history. PR activists from the 19th and 20th centuries includePennsylvania Senator Buckalew,Annie Denton Cridge (and husband Alfred),William R. Ware at M.I.T., and many more. George Hoag wrote books on PR and STV.[2] Illinois usedcumulative voting in state elections for a hundred years to ensure that smaller minority groups had a chance to elect a representative.[3] New York and more than 29 other U.S. cities usedSTV between 1915 and 1950, with Cambridge,Portland, Oregon and others using it today.[4]
Most of the proposed reforms can be achieved at least in part by legislation, though some require amending theU.S. Constitution. TheSupreme Court ruling inCitizens United v. FEC and related decisions would require a constitutional amendment to permanently change, and several have been proposed. Similarly, some proposed systems for campaign finance or restrictions on campaign contributions have been declared unconstitutional; implementation of those changes could require a constitutional amendment.
However, many other reforms can seemingly be achieved without a constitutional amendment. These include various forms of public financing of political campaigns, disclosure requirements andinstant-runoff voting. TheAmerican Anti-Corruption Act (AACA) is one collection of reforms that appear to be consistent with existing US Supreme Court rulings, developed by RepublicanTrevor Potter, who had previously served as head of the US Federal Elections Commission under Democratic PresidentBill Clinton. Local versions of the AACA are being promoted byRepresentUs.[5]
Lawrence Lessig said, "On January 20, 2010, the day before Citizens United was decided, our democracy was already broken. Citizens United may have shot the body, but the body was already cold. And any response to Citizens United must also respond to that more fundamental corruption. We must find a way to restore a government 'dependent upon the People alone,' so that we give 'the People' a reason again to have confidence in their government."[6]
Lessig favors systems that share as broadly as possible the decisions about which candidates or initiatives get the funding needed to get their message to the voters. FollowingBruce Ackerman, Lessig recommends giving each eligible voter a "democracy voucher" worth, e.g., $100 each election year that can only be spent on political candidates or issues. The amount would be fixed at roughly double the amount of private money spent in the previous election cycle. Unlike the currentPresidential election campaign fund checkoff, the decisions regarding who gets that money would be made by individual citizens.
Lessig also supports systems to provide tax rebates for such contributions or to match small dollar contributions such as the system in New York City that provides a 5-to-1 match for contributions up to $250.[7] To be eligible for money from vouchers, rebates or matching funds, candidates must accept certain limits on the amounts of money raised from individual contributors.
Vouchers, tax rebates, and small dollar matching are called "citizen funding" as opposed to more traditional "public funding", which tasks a public agency with deciding how much money each candidate receives from the government. While theSupreme Court of the United States has already struck down many forms of public funding of political campaigns, there are forms of public and especially citizen financing that seem consistent with the constitution as so far interpreted by the courts and could therefore be secured by standard legislative processes not requiring amending the constitution.
One bill that proposes such a system for U.S. congressional elections is "The Grassroots Democracy Act". It was introduced September 14, 2012, by U.S. RepresentativeJohn Sarbanes as H.R. 6426[8] and reintroduced on January 15, 2013, as H. R. 268.[9]
TheCitizens United v. FEC decision, January 21, 2010, of theU.S. Supreme Court has received substantial notoriety, pushing many people to work for a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Key provisions of that decision assert in essence that money is speech and subject to first amendment protections.Move to Amend began organizing to oppose that decision in September 2009. By June 2013, they had at least 164 local affiliates in 36 states plus the District of Columbia. They had obtained roughly 300,000 individual signatures for their Motion to Amend and had secured the passage of 367 local resolutions and ordinances.[10]United for the People is consortium of some 144 organizations supporting a constitutional amendment to overturnCitizens United.[11] The web site ofUnited for the People lists 17 constitutional amendments introduced in the112th United States Congress and 12 introduced by March 13, 2013, in the113th proposing to overturnCitizens United in different ways.[12]
The libertarian think-tank theCato Institute is concerned that most proposed responses toCitizens United will give "Congress unchecked new power over spending on political speech, power that will be certainly abused."[13]
Terms like "clean elections" and "clean money" are sometimes used inconsistently. Clean elections typically refers to systems where candidates receive a fixed sum of money from the government to run their campaigns after qualifying by collecting small dollar contributions (e.g., $5) from a large enough group of citizens. Systems of this nature have been tried in Maine, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, Vermont, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere; some of these have been disqualified at least in part by the courts.
"Clean money" is sometimes used as a synonym for clean elections; at other times, it refers to aDISCLOSE Act, requiring disclosure of the sources of campaign funds. The DISCLOSE Act bill in the U.S. Congress seeks "to prohibit foreign influence in Federal elections, to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections, and to establish additional disclosure requirements with respect to spending in such elections, and for other purposes."
The California Clean Money Campaign[14] is pushing theCalifornia DISCLOSE act, which differs substantially from the federal DISCLOSE Act. The California bill would strengthen disclosure requirements for political advertisements. Among other provisions, it requires the top three contributors for any political ad to be identified by name on the ad.[15]
Ackerman and Ayres propose a "secret donation booth", the exact opposite of full disclosure. This system would require that all campaign contributions be anonymously given through a government agency. Their system would give donors a few days to change their minds and withdraw or change the recipient of a donation; it would also add a random time delay to ensure that the recipients of donations could never know for sure the source of the funds they receive.[16]
The implementation of term limits and elections forSupreme Court justices has been proposed as an alternative to the currentSenate confirmation system, which has become more partisan in recent years due topolitical polarisation.[17] This proposed system would mirror the current way 33 states select theirstate supreme court justices. William Watkins Jr., a constitutional scholar from theIndependent Institute onNational Public Radio stated his proposal for a justice to serve a single 8 to 10-year term, with the one term limit intended to reduce reliance on campaign donors. A hypotheticalSecond Constitutional Convention of the states toamend the Constitution has been suggested as a way for this reform to proceed.[18][19][20][21][22]
There have long been concerns about problems with theElectoral College method of selecting the president and vice president. Under this system, the party that wins a plurality in a given state gets all that state's electoral votes. (In Maine and Nebraska, the plurality rule applies to each congressional district.)
Modern polling has allowed presidential campaigns to determine which states are "swing states" (also called "battleground states") and which will provide near-certain victories for either theRepublican orDemocratic candidates. The campaigns then increase their chances of winning by focusing primarily on the swing states. This effectively disenfranchises voters in other states to the extent that their concerns differ from those of voters in swing states.
Officially abolishing the Electoral College would require amending theU.S. Constitution. However, the same effect could be achieved if the Electoral College representatives from states with a majority of the electoral votes were all committed to voting for the presidential slate that achieves a national plurality (or the majority afterinstant-runoff voting): Presidential candidates would then have to compete for votes in all 50 states, not just the typically less than a dozen swing states.
This is the idea behind theNational Popular Vote Interstate Compact. As of April 2024, seventeen states and DC with combined electoral votes totaling 209 had approved the compact. To take effect it must be approved by states with electoral votes totaling 270, just over half of the 538 current total electoral votes.[23]
Approval voting is system in which voters may select all candidates that meet the voter's approval. The candidate with the highest approval score (i.e. approved by the most voters) wins the election. In elections with three or more candidates, voters may indicate approval of more than one candidate. Approval voting is the voting method which received the highest approval in a 2021 poll of electoral systems experts.[24]
Approval voting is promoted byThe Center for Election Science.[25]
In 2017, the Colorado legislature considered approval voting. If the bill had passed, Colorado would have been the first state to approve approval voting legislation,[26] but the bill was postponed indefinitely.[27]
In 2018,Fargo, North Dakota, passed a local ballot initiative adopting approval voting for the city's local elections, and it was used to elect officials in June 2020, becoming the first United States city and jurisdiction to adopt approval voting.[28][29][30] In 2023, theNorth Dakota Legislative Assembly introduced Bill HB 1273, which would ban approval voting statewide. The bill passed both the house and senate before being vetoed by GovernorDoug Burgum.[31] The veto was overridden by two-thirds majority in the house[32] but upheld in the senate,[33] leaving approval voting as Fargo's voting method.
In November 2020,St. Louis passed Proposition D to authorize a variant of approval voting (asunified primary) for municipal offices.[34] In a primary field of four candidates,St. LouisTreasurerTishaura Jones andAlderwoman Cara Spencer advanced to the general election.[35] The two women defeated President of theSt. Louis Board of AldermenLewis E. Reed as well as utility manager Andrew Jones.[36] The election was the first in the nation to useapproval voting for a primary.[37] Jones defeated Spencer in the general election by nearly 4% of votes cast, becoming the first African-American woman elected St. Louis mayor.[38]
Ranked voting allows each voter to list their candidates from favorite to least-favorite. One popular variant in the United States isinstant-runoff voting, where the candidate with the fewest votes is repeatedly eliminated, at which point their supporters are reassigned to less-preferred candidates.
IRV is being promoted in the U.S. by numerous individuals and organizations. One of these isFairVote, which provides a long list of endorsers of IRV, includingPresident Obama, SenatorsJohn McCain andBernie Sanders, five U.S. Representatives, policy analystMichael E. Arth [de;es;fr;ja;zh], theGreen,Libertarian, andSocialist parties, a dozen state chapters of theLeague of Women Voters, four state chapters of theDemocratic Party, theRepublican Party of Alaska, and many others.[39]It is currently being used in some jurisdictions in the U.S., including the state ofMaine and, since November 2020, the state ofAlaska.
The Institute for Political Innovation, along with organizations such as Unite America and Nevada Voters, supports "final five voting" which consists of a combination of general primaries to elect the top five candidates, with instant-runoff voting to decide the winner.[40] A similar system was approved in Alaska via a 2020 ballot measure.[41]
Fair Representation Act proposes to introduce STV, along with the multi-member districts, for elections to the House of Representatives.
.gif)
In theUnited States House of Representatives and many other legislative bodies such ascity councils, members are elected from districts, whose boundaries are changed periodically through a process known asredistricting. When this process is manipulated to benefit a particular political party or incumbent, the result is known asgerrymandering. TheOpen Our Democracy Act & theFor the People Act are bills designed to end gerrymandering.[42][43] TheFor the People Act passed theUnited States House of Representatives on March 3, 2020.[44] As of June 2021, it has not been passed by theUnited States Senate.[45] Due to theUniform Congressional District Act of 1967, it is illegal for a state with more than one representative to elect its representatives inmulti-member districts or in anat-large election, whether the election method used isproportional or not.
Hurdles to redistricting reform
With 37 out of 50 U.S. states leaving the responsibility of redistricting, and redrawing state boundaries, to their politicians and legislators; districts remain vulnerable to distortion of voter representation. Partisan gerrymandering is considered to occur when the legislator in office, redraws state election districts in a way that secures their own political agenda over the opposing party.[46]Cracking andPacking are both strategies used in the act of gerrymandering,cracking is seen as voters are spread across as many districts as possible to ensure tight majorities in each whilepacking is shown as unfavorable voters are clustered into larger districts that dilute their vote.[47]
Voting is not required of citizens in any state, so elections are decided by those who show up. Politicians target their message at getting their own supporters out to the polls, rather than winning over undecided voters or apathetic citizens. One solution to this problem iscompulsory voting.
Compulsory voting has been criticized as "vaguely un-American" but potentially beneficial to democracy.[48]
Compulsory voting has been proposed as a solution to make the pool of voters better represent the American population, particularly to make it more representative racially and socioeconomically.[49]
Early voting allows voters to cast their ballots before election day, allowing for more flexibility and accessibility in this process. This can take place in two forms: in-person or mail-in voting.
From 2016 to 2020, 14 states adopted both early in-person and mail-in voting as an option to vote before election day.[50] Mail-in voting was especially adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These became widely popularized in the states that offered these methods, with 38 states in the 2020 election having over half of their ballots cast early.[50] Proponents of the expansion of early voting argue for its ability to increase voter turnout and reduce long lines at polls.[51]
Other proposals intended to make elections and political leaders more effective include:
Notable organizations that support some variant of at least one of the reforms mentioned above include:
... Represent.Us says its goal is to pass the American Anti-Corruption Act...
_US_House_of_Representatives.svg)
