Previously I wrote a detailed about the rise of affective partisan in America. This polarization impacts , , and politics and to the dysfunction of government that Americans . A question I鈥檝e gotten since that post is 鈥渨ell what do we do about it?!鈥� It鈥檚 a massive, complicated, question with researchers pointing at different solutions. So naturally, I鈥檓 going to try to summarize some solutions in a brief (I promise!) blog post. To keep things short, I will only focus on three institutional solutions to this problem people have proposed.
Electoral competition:聽
Researchers find that quite consistently聽. Also,聽, including the one they lean towards, and聽. Even self-identified independents are often聽. So, Americans have this attachment to one of the two major parties that massively shapes who they are, but they don鈥檛 like parties all that much and seem to want them to face more competition. That鈥檚 a fun combination. Research has found that perhaps competition is exactly what is needed to lower partisan temperatures. Particularly,聽. When there are two viable options this seems to trigger an us-vs-them, good-vs-evil, thinking and drives, in the context of politics, hatred towards the political 鈥渙ther鈥� that is more limited in a multi-group situation. From this,聽聽who are trying to address issues in America鈥檚 system suggest that increased electoral competition could cool down temperatures between partisans. Further, research has found that a move to more major parties may more聽.
Increasing the Number of Elected Officials:聽
Another argument essentially amounts to the idea that elected officials are out of touch with the electorate due to the large number of people they represent. Focusing for now on the U.S. House of Representatives, previously every 10 years the House added additional seats to accommodate the growing US population. However, this process was not required (despite James Madison and other founders advocating for it when drafting the Constitution). This process last occurred in 1911,聽. At the time, this meant that a member of the House represented about 200,000 people, on average. In 2022, that number has nearly quadrupled. This is important as the larger the district the higher the likelihood that the representative takes positions opposite of聽, and聽聽which tend to be more聽.
There are debates about what size the expanded house should be. Following a pattern (importantly, ) found in the national legislative branches of other democracies (and something the US largely followed as well until 1911), some suggest that the House be expanded to the of the US population, this would expand the House to approximately 593 members, keeping the 100-member US Senate. Other numbers put forward by supporters of this idea are , , , and many more.
For those interested in the context of Illinois, the cube root formula would mean the General Assembly expands to roughly 234 members. Interestingly, this is nearly the number of seats Illinois had in the General Assembly before the 1980 Cutback Amendment. To be clear, I鈥檓 not advocating for expanding the General Assembly, just giving a local example.
Changing the Electoral System:聽
Perhaps the most 鈥渞adical鈥� idea for addressing the increased polarization is changing the聽. In fact, some argue you can鈥檛 get the first solution, more parties, without it. Former CSPL student researcher Nolan Flaherty explained some of these proposed changes聽. In addition to ranked-choice voting (RCV), approval voting, and points scoring which focus on ballot structure, advocates suggest that America should move to a system of聽, similar to many other democracies. A party reaching a threshold of percent of votes would get that percent (or some other formula) of seats in the legislative branch. I won鈥檛 go into more detail today, but others聽. This proposal is often聽聽where each congressional district, for example, would have multiple representatives instead of just one. Multi-member districts are used in聽.听聽and the聽聽used these previously. The last solution is a move towards so-called 鈥渏ungle鈥� primaries, where all candidates for an office are fielded on one ballot for the primary. Regardless of partisan affiliation, everyone gets the same list of candidates to vote from. The top finishing candidates (the number varies), regardless of party affiliation, face off in a general election. Jungle primaries are聽, like in Alaska.
The CSPL isn鈥檛 advocating for any of these actions. We are beginning to research them though. A recently published by CSPL staff and faculty finds that the electoral performance of third-party candidates would have doubled (based on the initial 鈥渇irst round鈥� tally) in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election if ranked-choice voting had been used. of ours also suggests that supporters of candidates who lose the election may be more accepting of defeat in RCV compared to our current system. This finding has important implications considering the reactions of the losing side in recent U.S. elections. We also have in-progress works covering additional areas discussed here that we will share in the future. With that, keep an eye on this space and on the Center鈥檚 mailing list for future research, webinars, and other features on the topic of polarization and potential solutions. Thanks for reading.
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By far, Ranked-Choice Voting is the most common electoral reform with multiple major cities, Alaska, and Maine using it for general elections. A handful of states and other localities that also use it for some of their presidential primaries.
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Author biography: AJ Simmons is the Research Director of the Center for State Policy and Leadership at UIS. He holds a PhD from the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. He likes bowling and discussing politics with people he disagrees with.