By Madeleine Kando
The year 2024 will be the year of elections: four billion people will cast a vote in over 60 countries, which is about half of the world’s population. 900 million in India, 200 million in Indonesia, 160 million in the US and so on.
But the election that the entire world is most anxious about is the US Presidential election. If we elect a leader that encourages Russia to attack those NATO nations that fall short on defence-spending and admires dictators, many countries will think twice about their allegiance to America.
Many foreigners think that if a Democrat wins the White House, the whole country must have voted for that candidate. Vice-versa, if a Republican wins the Presidency, it means that the whole country is Republican. That is because the two-party system is a foreign concept for countries that do not have our voting system.
In America, every district elects a single representative. Voters cast a vote for a candidate, one candidate wins, and all the others lose. This makes our elections “winner-take-all” — if a candidate wins 51 percent of the vote, she wins 100 percent of the representation. Any voters who did not back the winning candidate are not represented in government.
First Past the Post vs Proportional Representation
The First Past the Post system is one of the least democratic systems by global standards. In fact, some political scientists wonder if it qualifies as democratic at all. But clearly some people think this is the best way to organize elections.
With a Proportional Representation system, on the other hand, the percentage of seats reflects the percentage of votes. If a party wins 40% of the vote, it will receive 40% of the seats. It is the most widely used system in the world and can be found in almost every country.
The Single Member District system, part of the First Past the Post scenario, guarantees that a large portion of voters will not be represented. The laws are vague on whether the single-member district system is Constitutionally locked in, or whether States have overriding authority on how to select their representatives.
But the problem with an established voting system is that it is resistant to change. Our two-party system has been in place since Thomas Jefferson and Madison disagreed on whether a central government was necessary and how much power it should have. Ever since then, partisan polarization pulled the parties further apart by a bunch of ideologists, like a piece of chewing gum, to the point of breaking.
But either way, using ranked-choice voting—which doesn’t require constitutional changes—would do much to dissolve the zero-sum partisanship.
Ranked Choice Voting
Here in New England and in many other states, efforts are underway to make this happen under the banner of Ranked Choice Voting. Especially the Single Transferable Vote, which would add a Proportional Representation element to an existing FPTP system. Since then, seven sister communities: Acton, Amherst, Arlington, Brookline, Concord and Lexington and Northampton have sent RCV home rule petitions to the Statehouse, waiting for approval.
Cambridge, Massachusetts has used STV for decades, and 19 communities around Boston, including Boston proper, have now submitted or are in the process of submitting Home Rule petitions to the Massachusetts State Legislature.
It is tragic that the richest and most powerful nation on earth, the country that is the source of the post-1945 international order, often called Pax Americana, is based on a voting system that is truly undemocratic. Much of the rest of the world’s future is dependent on what is going to happen here, at home.
The message is clear. We need to change America’s plurality voting system. We, the citizens, are the ‘will of the people’, and it is up to us to MAKE AMERICA DEMOCRATIC AGAIN. leave comment here
