Lost amid the cacophony over the bitter presidential campaign and the rampant concerns about the poor health of U.S. democracy is a set of initiatives on state ballots that are likely to have far more impact on the path ahead for the way politics is practiced than the outcome of the presidential election — no matter who wins.
Never before have voters in more than one state in one year adopted a brand-spanking-new election system that promises to erode the bitter hyper-partisanship fostered by the dysfunctional current election systems. This fall they can do so in five states. Georgia doesn’t allow citizen-initiated initiatives on the ballot, but advocates of a variation of this new election system have created a beachhead in the Peach State.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
There are variations in these ballot initiatives, but all are premised on the belief that how candidates are elected is every bit as important as who is elected. That’s not news to political scientists, but voters rarely pay much attention to election systems. And when they do, it’s often because minor changes are being proposed.
Not this fall.
The most popular system on state ballot this time would transform the way politics is conducted, ushering in a generation of new candidates, kneecapping negative campaigning, giving voters vastly more choices and different types of choices, and empowering elected leaders to enact sweeping changes in public policy without fear of running afoul of what the extremists in their parties demand.
Almost every state uses an election system in which candidates compete in a preliminary round of primaries in which party members nominate candidates and the top finisher in each party advances to the general election.
Primary elections have long been snooze-fests for voters, with turnout typically in the range of 20% to 25% of eligible voters. As a result, the most aggressively partisan members dominate. That, in turns, means that primary election candidates are incentivized to appeal to what election reform advocate Nick Troiano of Unite America and the author of “The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes” calls the “paltry yet passionate partisan base.”
It also means that primary election winners are likely to be from the outer quarter of their party’s ideological spectrum. Which means that on the general election ballot, the two viable candidates tend to be fringe candidates, leaving a gaping hole in the middle.
The new system, backed by a growing army of well-funded advocates, allows political parties to nominate candidates on their own, getting government out of what should be a decision controlled entirely and solely by party members. It also allows members of any party to petition its way onto a first-round ballot, along with independents.
In the first-round balloting, all candidates compete against each other no matter how they qualified for the ballot, with all voters eligible to vote for any candidate, no matter what party they — or the candidate — affiliates with. The top four finishers — regardless of party affiliation or non-affiliation — advance to the general election.
In the general elections, voters rank the four candidates in order of preference, and no candidate would win until he or she secures the support of a majority of the voters, with the winner determined in a series of instant runoffs.
Under this system, the parties would benefit because they would no longer be controlled by the tiny fraction of their members on the political fringes. Party-nominated candidates would no longer have to do the “etch-a-sketch” dance in which they have one set of policy positions for the primary and another for the general election. And party members would have, for the first time ever, a path to getting elected without having to appeal to the most radical of their party’s members.
Voters who favor independents or minor party candidates wouldn’t have to worry about wasting their vote in the general election. They could declare their first choice, knowing that if their first-choice candidate doesn’t get a majority, the selection of their second or third choices can make the difference between which candidates win and which lose.
In 2016, Maine became the first state to adopt ranked choice voting for statewide offices. In 2020, Alaska was the first state to adopt the “top-four plus ranked-choice” system. This fall, it’s on the ballot in Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and Montana. South Dakota voters can adopt the top-four system without ranked choice voting. Oregon voters can adopt ranked choice voting without the top-four component.
In Georgia, Margaret Head of Chamblee registered a nonprofit in 2022 to push for top-five final voting. Georgia voters can press their legislators to put a new voting system on the ballot for them.
So on election night, if the results intensity your fears about the future of U.S. democracy, don’t despair. Try paying attention to the votes on the initiatives for new election systems. Voters can ensure that the cavalry is on the horizon — in the nick of time.
Ryan Ross of Denver is the director of the Coalition for a New Colorado Election System and the designer in 2012 of the first “top-four plus ranked choice voting” election system to secure permission from ballot-access regulators to circulate petitions for placement on a state ballot.
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