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Here is something that will either depress you or radicalize you, depending on your disposition: almost every problem we treat as an inevitable feature of American democracy has been solved somewhere else. The spoiler effect, the two-party stranglehold, the gerrymandering, the pathetic turnout, the winner-take-all distortions that lets a party with 45 percent of votes control 60 percent of seats. Other countries looked at these problems, said "that seems bad," and fixed them. Sometimes decades ago. We were told our system was the gold standard, the shining city on a hill, the model everyone else aspired to. That was always a lie, but it was a useful lie for the people who benefit from the dysfunction. So here are six alternatives that exist in the world right now, functioning in real democracies, solving problems we have been told are unsolvable. The Existentialist Republic is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Ranked Choice VotingInstead of picking one candidate, you rank them: first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on. If no one gets a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate gets eliminated and their voters' second choices get redistributed. This continues until someone crosses 50 percent. The practical effect is that you can vote for exactly who you want without worrying about "wasting" your vote. If your first choice loses, your vote transfers to your backup. No more strategic voting. No more guilt. No more lesser-evil calculus. Alaska uses it for state and federal elections. Maine uses it for primaries and federal races. New York City used it for primaries. Over 50 American jurisdictions have adopted some form of RCV. Early research suggests it reduces negative campaigning because candidates want to be your second choice even if they cannot be your first, which means they have incentives not to trash their opponents too aggressively. Proportional RepresentationWinner-take-all elections mean that if a party gets 51 percent of votes in every district, they get 100 percent of seats and the 49 percent who voted differently get nothing. This is mathematically absurd and produces legislatures that do not remotely reflect what voters actually want. Proportional representation fixes this by allocating seats based on vote share. If a party gets 30 percent of the vote, they get roughly 30 percent of the seats. Simple. Obvious. The way most democracies actually work. More than 80 countries use some form of proportional representation. Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa. The list goes on. These countries have multi-party systems where coalition-building is normal, where smaller parties can win real representation, and where the legislature actually reflects the diversity of political opinion in the population. The Fair Representation Act would bring this to the US House. It has been introduced multiple times. Both major parties have quietly killed it every time, because both major parties benefit from a system that locks out competition. Mixed-Member Proportional RepresentationThis is the "why not both" approach. You keep local district representatives so people have a specific person accountable to their area, but you add additional seats allocated proportionally to make the overall legislature reflect actual vote shares. Germany invented this system after World War II. Here is how it works: you cast two votes. One for a local representative in your district, winner-take-all style. One for a party. The local votes fill some seats. Then additional seats get allocated from party lists to make the overall composition of the legislature match the party vote percentages. New Zealand adopted this system by referendum in 1993 and held its first MMP election in 1996. Representation of smaller parties went up. In a 2011 retention referendum, 57 percent of voters chose to keep it. This approach addresses a legitimate concern about pure proportional systems, which is that people like having a local representative they can theoretically hold accountable. Mixed-member proportional lets you keep that while still fixing the mathematical absurdity of winner-take-all outcomes at the legislative level. Mandatory VotingAmerican voter turnout is embarrassing. Midterm elections routinely see turnout in the 40s. Presidential elections hover around 60 percent. This means a huge portion of the population has simply opted out of the democratic process, which makes it much easier for organized but small groups to dominate outcomes. Australia solved this in 1924 by making voting compulsory. The fine for not voting is about 20 Australian dollars. It is rarely enforced. But turnout has exceeded 90 percent in nearly every election since. Elections happen on Saturdays. Communities treat them as civic festivals rather than inconveniences to be minimized. Democracy functions better when everyone participates rather than just the highly motivated and the highly manipulated. Over 20 countries have some form of compulsory voting. Belgium, Brazil, Argentina, Singapore, and others. The implementation varies. But the basic insight is the same: if you want a democracy that reflects the will of the people, you need the people to actually show up. Semi-Presidential SystemsThe American founders were terrified of monarchy. They accidentally created something close to an elected one. The American presidency is bizarre by global standards. We concentrate an enormous amount of power in one person who serves as head of state, head of government, commander in chief, chief diplomat, and party leader simultaneously. This made more sense when the federal government was tiny and mostly handled foreign affairs. It makes less sense now. Many democracies split these roles. In a semi-presidential system, you have a president who handles foreign policy and represents the nation symbolically, and a prime minister who runs the domestic government and answers to the legislature. France uses this model. So do Finland, Portugal, Poland, and others. The president focuses on diplomacy and national security. The prime minister handles the day-to-day business of governance and can be removed by parliament if they lose confidence. Power gets distributed. Accountability gets built with greater resilience. Citizens' AssembliesThis one will break your brain a little if you have only ever thought about democracy as "we elect people who make decisions for us." What if, instead, we randomly selected ordinary citizens to deliberate on major issues and make recommendations? This is called sortition, and it is how ancient Athens actually ran significant portions of its government. The idea is that elected representatives are not necessarily representative. They skew wealthy, educated, connected, and ideologically extreme enough to survive primary elections. A randomly selected group of citizens would actually look like the population. Ireland used a citizens' assembly to break decades of political deadlock on abortion. They randomly selected 99 citizens, had them hear expert testimony and deliberate over months, and produced recommendations that the government then enacted through referendum. It worked. A polarized society found a path forward that elected politicians had been unable or unwilling to create. France, the UK, and Belgium have all used citizens' assemblies on issues from climate policy to constitutional reform. The results suggest that ordinary people, given time and good information, make thoughtful decisions. Oftentimes more thoughtful than the professional politicians. One thing worth noticing: these reforms did not happen because politicians woke up one day and decided to surrender power. New Zealand adopted MMP because citizens forced a binding referendum after years of unrepresentative election outcomes. Ireland used a citizens' assembly specifically to bypass a legislature that had proven incapable of addressing abortion for decades. The reforms happened when public pressure created windows that the usual gatekeepers could not close. That is the pattern. That is also the playbook. The American system is not the product of timeless wisdom handed down by genius founders. It is a set of choices made in the 18th century, modified occasionally since then, and calcified into something we now treat as natural and inevitable. It is neither. Every one of these systems exists right now, in functioning democracies, producing measurably better outcomes than what we have. The only thing stopping us from adopting any of them is the people who benefit from the current dysfunction. Knowing these alternatives exist is the first step toward demanding them. Want to make it happen? Go hassle your city council members, state representatives, mayor, and governor. Tell them on every social media platform, call their office, email them, schedule meetings, and tell others about you doing all of these things! Electoral reform is just the beginning. The same principle that let Alaska and Maine fix their voting systems applies across the board: cities and states do not need federal permission to build better institutions. We can take power away from MAGA and put it into the hands of rational and good-hearted folks. The playbook exists. Blue states already have the authority to stop funding federal dysfunction and start building independent systems that actually serve their residents. Get started by picking up our booklet Introduction to Soft Secession, available now by clicking anywhere on this sentence. |
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