A new Congress, a new case for ranked choice voting
Update 10/4/23: The House may soon be embroiled in another round of votes for Speaker of the House, after they voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the role. The process would be faster and better with ranked choice voting.
He was posing with a bag of popcorn.
In the late morning of January 3, I led a group of FairVote staffers through U.S. House office buildings to welcome new Members of Congress, reconnect with returning ones, and discuss what we can do to help reform and revitalize our democracy over the next two years, especially through the use of ranked choice voting (RCV).
We were on the Hill for the first time since the twin unprecedented events of the COVID-19 pandemic and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Together, those events morphed the Hill into a closed, unwelcoming, and sparsely populated complex of Neoclassical buildings with a suddenly unclear future. Two or so years later, for better or worse, Capitol Hill was fully open again and celebrating the new Congress like it was 2019.
But early in the visit was that bag of popcorn. Those who have been on the Hill enough grow accustomed to seeing things that don’t make sense, so I moved on. But I remembered it; a Congressman directing someone with a camera while he stood in front of his own office door holding a bag of popcorn. Perhaps an inside joke, I thought.
As the Hill meetings progressed and we knocked on over two dozen office doors, the Speaker vote began to unfold – amid a clear sense of uncertainty among staffers, but also a sense of theater. “Get ready for the circus,” one staffer predicted. “Are you here for the show?” another asked.
The circus, of course, was the multiple rounds of voting in which Members of Congress attempted to elect the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, the first time such a vote needed multiple rounds in one hundred years. More than simply counting votes, though, was the politicking, jockeying, in-fighting, and general palace intrigue which took place throughout the day and amid the rounds of voting.
The reaction to all of this within the nearby Congressional office buildings was gallows humor from the underpaid employees who have worked through disease and assault. But there was also an unspoken but unmistakable lamentation – a feeling that the beginning of a new Congress should not be a circus, and should not be a show. The Speaker of the House is a powerful office that sets the legislative agenda of the chamber. Yet its occupant is being decided by petty, personal squabbles.
And so, just as FairVote staff were making the case for RCV across House offices, the Speaker’s race was demonstrating yet another case for RCV. As FairVote pointed out, both in those Hill offices and on Twitter, RCV could have prevented the House of Representatives from becoming a mockery of governance. In one vote, a consensus candidate with some level of support from a majority of the body would have emerged – a candidate who could quickly begin the act of governing through compromise.
After all, the Speaker will be decided by Members’ backup choices – just with a painstaking, tooth-pulling slowness that could be avoided completely with RCV. Perhaps the 20 Republican holdouts will give in and vote for Representative Kevin McCarthy as their next choice. Or the majority of the Republicans will move on from McCarthy and settle for their next choice. Or maybe some combination of Democrats and Republicans will realize that neither Representative Hakeem Jeffries nor Kevin McCarthy can win, and coalesce around their next choice. Regardless, Members of Congress will have to settle upon the same majority outcome they could have with RCV – just days later and with more drama and negativity.
So as it stands, we have Members of Congress posing with popcorn, now well into a second day of an electoral soap opera instead of governance. Next time around, maybe we can use RCV to elect the Speaker of the House – and skip the popcorn.
Image: FairVote staff members at the U.S. Capitol
