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Electoral reform in the United States refers to the efforts of change for American elections and the electoral system used in the US.
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Most elections in the U.S. select one person; elections with multiple members elected through proportional representation are relatively rare. Typical examples include the House of Representatives, where all members are elected in single-member districts, by First-past-the-post voting, instant-runoff voting, or by the two-round system. The number of representatives from each state is set in proportion to each state's population in the most recent decennial 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.
The Senate and the president are also elected by plurality. However, these elections are not affected by gerrymandering (with the possible exception of presidential races in Maine and Nebraska, whose electoral votes are partially allocated by Congressional district). 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 and Portland are among the cities that use a P.R. system to elect their councils.[1]
Proposals for electoral reform have included overturning the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, public and citizen funding of elections, limits and transparency in funding, ranked-choice voting (RCV), abolishing the Electoral College or nullifying its impact through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and improving ballot 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 on poll taxes, are mandated at the federal level.
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Most of the proposed reforms can be achieved at least in part by legislation, though some require amending the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens 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 and instant-runoff voting. The American Anti-Corruption Act (AACA) is one collection of reforms that appear to be consistent with existing US Supreme Court rulings, developed by Republican Trevor Potter, who had previously served as head of the US Federal Elections Commission under Democratic President Bill Clinton. Local versions of the AACA are being promoted by RepresentUs.[2]
Campaign finance reform
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."[3]
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. Following Bruce 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 current Presidential 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.[4] 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 the Supreme 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. Representative John Sarbanes as H.R. 6426[5] and reintroduced on January 15, 2013, as H. R. 268.[6]
Overturning Citizens United
The Citizens United v. FEC decision, January 21, 2010, of the U.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.[7] United for the People is consortium of some 144 organizations supporting a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.[8] The web site of United for the People lists 17 constitutional amendments introduced in the 112th United States Congress and 12 introduced by March 13, 2013, in the 113th proposing to overturn Citizens United in different ways.[9]
The libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute is concerned that most proposed responses to Citizens United will give "Congress unchecked new power over spending on political speech, power that will be certainly abused."[10]
Clean elections, clean money, and disclosure
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 a DISCLOSE 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[11] is pushing the California 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.[12]
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.[13]
Electing Supreme Court Justices
The implementation of term limits and elections for Supreme Court Justices has been proposed as an alternative to the current Senate confirmation system, which has become more partisan in recent years due to political polarisation.[14] This proposed system would mirror the current way 33 states select their State Supreme Court Justices. William Watkins Jr., a constitutional scholar from the Independent Institute on National 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 hypothetical Second Constitutional Convention of the States to amend the Constitution has been suggested as a way for this reform to proceed.[15][16][17][18][19]
Abolishing the Electoral College
There have long been concerns about problems with the Electoral 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 the Republican or Democratic 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 the U.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 after instant-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 the National 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.[20]
Proposed improvements or replacements to the current voting system
Approval voting
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.[21]
Approval voting is promoted by The Center for Election Science.[22]
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,[23] but the bill was postponed indefinitely.[24]
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.[25][26][27] In 2023, the North 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 Governor Doug Burgum.[28] The veto was overridden by two-thirds majority in the house[29] but upheld in the senate,[30] leaving approval voting as Fargo's voting method.
In November 2020, St. Louis passed Proposition D to authorize a variant of approval voting (as unified primary) for municipal offices.[31] In a primary field of four candidates, St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones and Alderwoman Cara Spencer advanced to the general election.[32] The two women defeated President of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen Lewis E. Reed as well as utility manager Andrew Jones.[33] The election was the first in the nation to use approval voting for a primary.[34] Jones defeated Spencer in the general election by nearly 4% of votes cast, becoming the first African-American woman elected St. Louis mayor.[35]
Ranked Choice Voting
Ranked voting allows each voter to list their candidates from favorite to least-favorite. One popular variant in the United States is instant-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 is FairVote, which provides a long list of endorsers of IRV, including President Obama, Senators John McCain and Bernie Sanders, five U.S. Representatives, policy analyst Michael E. Arth, the Green, Libertarian, and Socialist parties, a dozen state chapters of the League of Women Voters, four state chapters of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party of Alaska, and many others.[36] It is currently being used in some jurisdictions in the U.S., including the state of Maine and, since November 2020, the state of Alaska.
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.[37] A similar system was approved in Alaska via a 2020 ballot measure.[38]
Fair Representation Act proposes to introduce STV, along with the multi-member districts, for elections to the House of Representatives.
Redistricting
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In the United States House of Representatives and many other legislative bodies such as city councils, members are elected from districts, whose boundaries are changed periodically through a process known as redistricting. When this process is manipulated to benefit a particular political party or incumbent, the result is known as gerrymandering. The Open Our Democracy Act & the For the People Act are bills designed to end gerrymandering.[39][40] The For the People Act passed the United States House of Representatives on March 3, 2020.[41] As of June 2021, it has not been passed by the United States Senate.[42] Due to the Uniform Congressional District Act, it is illegal for a state with more than one representative to elect its representatives proportionally in several multi-member districts or in an at-large election.
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.[43] Cracking and Packing 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 while packing is shown as unfavorable voters are clustered into larger districts that dilute their vote.[44]
Compulsory voting
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 is compulsory voting.
Compulsory voting has been criticized as "vaguely un-American" but potentially beneficial to democracy.[45] If the
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.[46]
Other proposals
Other proposals intended to make elections and political leaders more effective include:
- Move Election Day to a weekend to make it easier for workers to attend,[47] or allow early voting on weekend days
- Provide voters better information on the consequences of ballot questions[47]
- Higher salaries to reduce the influence of money in politics[47]
- Longer terms in office to better match economic cycles, but with term limits[47]
- Require candidates to have qualification in terms of education, profession, or life experience[47]
- Weigh voters differently according to qualifications, such as passing a civics test or being in a profession that implies expertise on a topic related to a ballot question[47]
- Federal restrictions or enforcement against voter suppression techniques
- Amend the Constitution to guarantee the right to vote in general, rather than only prohibiting certain forms of discrimination.[48][49] Voting in state and Congressional elections can be severely restricted by state laws, and Electoral College votes can be made by state legislatures alone if they so choose. Congress often does not use its power to enforce the existing Constitutional protections; an amendment could require courts to do so more directly.
- Automatic universal voter registration[49]
- Increase access to mail-in voting
- End felony disenfranchisement in the United States for those who have completed their sentences[49]
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Notable organizations that support some variant of at least one of the reforms mentioned above include:
- Ackerman, Bruce (May 6, 2013), "Reviving Democratic Citizenship?", Politics & Society, 41 (2), Sage: 309–317, doi:10.1177/0032329213483103, S2CID 144487013, retrieved June 16, 2013
- Ackerman, Bruce; Ayres, Ian (2002). Voting with Dollars: A New Paradigm for Campaign Finance. Yale U. Pr. ISBN 0-300-09262-8.
- Hind, Dan (2010). The Return of the Public. Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-594-4.
- Lessig, Lawrence (2011). Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress -- and a Plan to Stop It. Twelve. ISBN 978-0-446-57643-7.
- McChesney, Robert W. (2004). The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century. NYU Press. ISBN 1-58367-105-6.
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