The Case for Electoral Reform

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Many Americans thought President Biden’s election in 2020 marked the beginning of a new era, a symbolic turn away from the daily controversies and global embarrassment of Trump’s term as president. But this underlying public hope was shattered one peaceful morning by a brick sailing through a Capitol Building window. A crowd teeming with “Make America Great Again” flags, armed figures, and self-proclaimed patriots surrounded Capitol Hill to protest the recent election results. The protest escalated when rioters breached the walls of the building, occupying the Congress floor and legislators’ offices. The increasingly tense environment reached its climax when a Capitol police officer shot and killed Ashley Babbitt. This explosive act of violence, compounded by the precedent-setting domestic assault on the Capitol, permanently cemented the day’s events in the mind of the public. The January 6th riot was branded as a direct attack on democracy by liberals and as a patriotic necessity by conservatives. But this highly visible incident, the most extreme of many such protests, was not itself the problem; rather, it was simply the latest symptom of structural flaws in America’s electoral system. The real attack on democracy was, and still is, a systemic and insidious failure of our voting procedures. Extreme gerrymandering, discrepancies between the electoral college and popular votes, restrictive voter ID laws, and winner-take-all voting districts all lead to a fundamental disconnect between the public and their elected representatives. This disconnect, fueled by increasing party polarization, breeds resentment and manifests in violent incidents like the January 6th riots. Targeted reforms to our election system are the key to addressing these tensions and better linking the interests of the public to representation in the U.S. government.

The problems with America’s current system of representation are numerous and varied, dating back to the Founding Fathers’ vision for the Constitution. Voting districts for both state and federal legislators were designed to be winner-take-all, which means a single member for each determined district takes office based on a majority rule vote. As a result, every citizen who chose to vote for a different official is afforded no representation at all during that term. The two main political parties utilize gerrymandering to manipulate the boundaries of political districts and ensure that no votes are wasted. Both Republicans and Democrats have historically used gerrymandering to maintain strong bases of power in rural and urban areas, respectively, and often along racial lines. For example, the GOP recently extended a rural district near Raleigh, North Carolina, to include regions with more white voters, effectively diminishing the power of the local Black vote. The mutually reinforcing twin evils of winner-take-all voting and gerrymandering are inherently undemocratic. These structures predetermine the outcome of elections, enshrine party influence in specific geographic locations, and reduce the political power of voters, especially racial minorities.

The highly contentious presidential elections of 2016 and 2020 revealed the pernicious effects of these failings. In 2016, most mainstream polls predicted Hillary Clinton’s assured victory. She even secured the national popular vote by nearly 3 million, yet Trump flipped a few key battleground states—Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—and clinched the victory. The majority will of the whole American populace had little effect on election results. Instead, it was solely decided by a small number of voters in just four states, an obviously undemocratic method of representation. Four years later, Biden’s presidential victory was called into question on the right’s vague claims of mail-in voting fraud, indicating widespread populist distrust in federal election integrity. These public fears infected state politics as well; Glenn Youngkin’s recent gubernatorial campaign placed election integrity as a central issue. By playing on the frustrations of Virginia voters about modes of representation in government, he was able to eke out a victory over incumbent Terry McAuliffe to win the candidacy. When U.S. voters are questioning not just the candidates but the results of an election, it becomes clear that reform is necessary.

All of these problems lead to a necessary conversation: how to repair the broken trust between voter and lawmaker. A shift to more proportional representation would have three main positive impacts: increased political power for the average voter, prevention of gerrymandering’s harmful effects, and the possibility of third-party formation. Under a system of proportional representation, legislatives seats are awarded to parties based on the proportion of votes within a much larger district. For example, in a five-seat district, if 40% of citizens vote Republican and 60% vote Democrat, two seats are awarded to Republicans and the other three go to Democrats. This method of voting would give more political representation to citizens that are currently disenfranchised by current systems of majority-vote and gerrymandering. Elected officials wouldn’t be able to draw politically advantageous districts for their own selfish gain. Additionally, if parties with low vote numbers can still earn legislative seats, historically underrepresented parties like Green or Libertarian will be able to get members elected. As third parties form and grow, there will be more options for voters to choose candidates whose politics more closely match their own, therefore connecting the public to their elected representatives. Proportional representation could help create a multiparty system, steering us away from the stifling grip of the two-party system and rising party polarization.

Politicians often frame salient events using rhetoric about blatant assaults on democracy but fail to address the real underlying issues that plague our system of government. Winner-take-all voting, gerrymandering, the two-party system, and the electoral college all serve to fracture the link between voters and elected representatives. Emotional protests, anti-voter ID law activism, and unexpected Republican victories show that large swaths of the American populace—on both sides of the aisle—are fed up with the status quo. To wrest control from the hands of power-hungry politicians, we must advocate for a transition to a system of proportional representation, to give weight back to the vote, to give power back to the voter. Biden’s return to the status quo of detached presidential professionalism won’t erase the harms of the Trump presidency; only structural change will help the plight of the U.S. voter.