Book Review: “More Parties or No Parties: The Politics of Electoral Reform in America” by Jack Santucci
A tour de force of the history of proportional ranked choice voting in the United States, Jack Santucci’s “More Parties or No Parties” offers important lessons for contemporary reformers.
Philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Remembering the past is an important first step, but learning the correct lessons from history is a challenge in its own right. For supporters of proportional ranked choice voting (PRCV), an important question is: Why was PRCV adopted by two dozen American cities in the 20th century and then repealed by all of them except Cambridge, MA?
In “A Brief History of Proportional Representation in the United States,” Douglas J. Amy writes for FairVote, “While the repeal of proportional representation in these American cities is taken by opponents as evidence that this voting system failed, proponents argue that it is more accurate to conclude that this system was rejected because it worked too well.” Working “too well” meant that PRCV successfully limited the power of party bosses and provided fair representation for racial, ethnic, and ideological minorities, ultimately provoking a backlash.
Jack Santucci’s More Parties or No Parties offers a fresh take on the history. While the optics of minority representation mattered, he acknowledges, the more fundamental factor was a breakdown in the ability of a majority to control government. Both the political left and right in a given city could become frustrated by unreliable “centrists” on the council, deciding it was ultimately easier to go back to a winner-take-all system.
Santucci makes this case by analyzing spatial maps of council members’ voting records, tracking the rate of RCV transfers between coalitions, and calculating “roll rates” – i.e. when the majority of a majority coalition fails to get its way. His other important contribution is providing a typology of reform coalitions: coalition-insulating, coalition re-aligning, and polarizing. Insulating coalitions protect the incumbents, re-aligning ones create a new coalition, and polarizing ones force centrists to pick sides. PRCV adoptions, he argues, were driven by re-aligning coalitions, while an eventual frustration with centrists led to polarizing repeals.
What lessons should contemporary reformers learn from Santucci’s work? He would have them look beyond PRCV in favor of open-list proportional representation (see this blog post for more details). Under this view, cohesive political parties are a virtue in politics, so parties should be strengthened by ensuring a vote for a candidate is also a vote for their party. However, he does not completely dismiss the Fair Representation Act, acknowledging that it “may be our best hope for more democratic congressional elections” (p. 2).
Supporters of proportional representation should be wary of internal bickering that ultimately leaves the failed status quo winner-take-all system intact. Ultimately, there are answers to Santucci’s concerns with PRCV. As argued by Rob Richie, PRCV may be the best fit for the United States’ political traditions and culture. It allows candidates to continue to have some independence from party leaders, while creating incentives for cooperation.
There are other points in PRCV’s favor. For one, it is fairer to independent and third-party candidates than open-list systems. In an open-list system, if a voter’s preferred party does not reach the threshold for representation, they lose out on representation. With PRCV, they can have a back-up choice if their first choice cannot win. As for Santucci’s concerns about non-partisan elections and obstructionist centrists, there is good reason to believe the Fair Representation Act would work well in practice. Most candidates would run under a party label, sending a clear ideological signal to voters. And enough centrist, bridge-building candidates should be elected that, if any given one tries to gum up the works, others can step in to strike a deal.
Regardless of which proportional system one supports, it is important to try to account for the lessons of history. Readers may disagree on what exactly those lessons are, but they would do well to grapple with Santucci’s work.