RCV and Multiparty Democracy

No one has managed to get elected to the U.S. Congress with a label other than “Democrat” or “Republican” for 72 years. Yet virtually every other democracy has more than two political parties represented in the national legislature— even countries using the same electoral system as the US.

Electoral reform has become part of the American political dialogue, and ranked choice voting is the favorite fix. In Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop, Lee Drutman argues that RCV will lead to the development of a multiparty system, and is therefore an essential step in overcoming today’s “toxic” politics.

Certainly the development of multiple political parties would, by definition, eliminate binary, polarized politics. And changing the rules to permit new and stronger political parties is, in my opinion, an essential reform. But the history of electoral reform shows that first you need multiple parties to promote changes to voting rules. That sounds like a paradox, but there is a way forward. America’s onerous and discriminatory “ballot access” rules and mandatory party primaries prevent the development of parties. Eliminating them is a necessary first step.

Drutman’s argument, widely shared by voting reformers, is that America is a two-party system because it has single-member districts with plurality winners: only one elected official per district, and whoever has the most votes is elected, even if a majority of voters have picked another candidate. Drutman ultimately recommends RCV in multimember districts, which is a form of proportional representation used in Ireland and Australia.