The Two-Party System is Killing our Democracy
There is nothing inevitable about our dysfunctional government.
There is no good reason why our national political institutions should descend into zero-sum hyper-partisan trench warfare, or why we should experience yet another year of existential political dread, fearing that if our side loses the 2020 election, America will be irrevocably broken.
The reason we are in this mess is because we now have, for the first time, a genuine two-party system…
America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared
…America has gone through several waves of political reform throughout its history. Today’s high levels of discontent and frustration suggest it may be on the verge of another. But the course of reform is always uncertain, and the key is understanding the problem that needs to be solved. In this case, the future of American democracy depends on heeding the warning of the past. The country must break the binary hyper-partisanship so at odds with its governing institutions, and so dangerous for self-governance. It must become a multiparty democracy.
Trump’s Election May Have Been the Shock We Needed
As impeachment mania grips Washington, it is easy to descend into an ever-deepening political pessimism. But as odd as it may seem, for the first time in years, I’m optimistic about the future of American democracy. It might be because I’ve been reading more history and less news. And from the long arc of American political history, I see the bright flashing arrows of a new age of reform and renewal ahead…
Let a Thousand Parties Bloom: The only way to prevent America’s two-party system from succumbing to extremism is to scrap it altogether.
Somewhere in the multiverse, the United States took a slightly different turn on Nov. 8, 2016. Hillary Clinton narrowly won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan and became the 45th president of the United States. This version of Earth—let’s call it Earth 2—is a safer, less polluted planet than our own. But U.S. democracy in this alternate reality is no less precarious…
The Moderate Middle Is A Myth
FiveThirtyEight, September 2019
…Moderate, independent and undecided voters are not the same, and none of these groups are reliably centrist. They are ideologically diverse, so there is no simple policy solution that will appeal to all of them…
Ranked choice voting could be the future of elections in America
…But the national stage is where RCV has its greatest promise. The zero-sum, binary nature of our two-party elections rewards negative campaigning, where winning comes from disqualifying the opponent. It pushes politicians into us-against-them rhetoric so many now decry. Ranked-choice voting would make space for political alternatives to emerge without being spoilers, potentially reorienting our stuck partisan division….
How much longer can the two-party system hold?
Two-thirds of Americans think there ought to be a third party in the United States. This number is now at a record high. But just because Americans are dissatisfied with the current two-party system doesn’t mean it’s about to change…
The Best Way to Fix Gerrymandering Is to Make It Useless
…If there’s a silver lining to the justices’ punt on gerrymandering, it may be this: Perhaps it can motivate reformers to look beyond both the Supreme Court and past the single-winner district.
The Case for Proportional Voting
…Changing the nation's electoral system would be a gamble, but not pursuing change may be even riskier. Certainly, one can hope that the fever will break, that Trump's takeover of the Republican Party will lose steam, that the Democrats will moderate, that a new center will emerge. But our electoral laws make these possibilities very unlikely. Changing our electoral laws may be our best hope for finding a new center.
We need political parties. But their rabid partisanship could destroy American democracy.
…We need partisan conflict to organize politics. Without political parties, there is no meaningful democracy. But we are deep into a self-reinforcing cycle of doom-loop partisanship. We need to think hard about how to escape this trap, before it is too late.
This voting reform solves 2 of America’s biggest political problems
…Sure, committed advocates could physically move to Iowa (or the few other closely contested places) to make their votes count. But it would be far better if the entire nation shifted to an electoral system where everyone’s vote matters, regardless of where they live. To a system in which the incentives did not push political parties into zero-sum trench warfare, but toward compromise and coordination that would solve pressing public problems.
In short: Don’t move to the Midwest, young hipster. Become an advocate for proportional voting. It wouldn’t just be young people, or just Democrats, who would benefit from the reform.