We Deserve Great Candidates: Five Reforms to Get Them

Regardless of where they fall on the liberal-conservative spectrum, many of my friends face a choice between a candidate they find deeply flawed and one they find completely unacceptable. They differ on which candidate they will vote for with gritted teeth and a hope for a better future vs. the one they see must be stopped at all costs—but fundamentally, it’s the same question. And I know plenty who find neither candidate acceptable and will either vote third-party or skip that line on the ballot.

The US presidential election has become a shambles. As a country, we deserve better.

And we can get better!  Proof is as close as this coming Tuesday’s primary election in my own Hampshire County, Massachusetts.

One district over from me, much-loved State Representative Ellen Story is giving up the seat she was first elected to in 1992. Six candidates are on the ballot to replace her, and all six bring impressive credentials, endorsements, and a track record of community service. Ellen herself has no major enemies—pretty remarkable in 24 years in state politics, especially in a fractious town where even Town Meeting takes two weeks. In my town, we do Town Meeting in one night, twice a year.

I’ve listed a few simple reforms in bold, below. Adopting them throughout the US would go a long way toward reclaiming our democracy.

Reform #1: IRV
The state rep election is a perfect case study of why we need ranked voting (a/k/a Instant Runoff voting). You name your first choice, and if your candidate is eliminated, your vote goes to your second choice. If that candidate is eliminated, the vote goes to your third choice, and so on down the line until there’s a clear victor. We need this locally, and we need it nationally. Several other countries use it, as do a few cities in the US. For the first time in a US national election, people would be able to vote their consciences without feeling they were throwing their support to the worst candidate if they picked someone unlikely to win.

I don’t vote in that election, but I’ll be happy with whoever wins. And I do get to vote in two county-wide races. I consider two of the three candidates for Sheriff highly qualified, as are both of the candidates for Governor’s Council (an obscure Massachusetts office that helps select judges). I’m voting for Melissa Perry and Jeff Morneau, but I don’t think I’ll be badly served as a voter if my first choices don’t win.

The Key Difference Between Local and National Elections

Reform #2: Undo Citizens United and Change the Way We Finance Campaigns
Why did these races draw so many strong candidates while at the national level, we have to scratch our heads and hold our noses?

I believe we can sum up the answer in just two words: CAMPAIGN FINANCE. These local campaigns are cheap to run and use little paid advertising. So the candidates are not beholden to any special interest.

On the national level, campaigns cost billions and special interests hold major sway over the candidates they fund. It’s not a coincidence that the only candidate who was able to galvanize progressives was also the only candidate to fund his candidacy through direct populist appeal to small individual donors. Nobody thought a year ago that Bernie Sanders would be any kind of serious candidate. Yet he won numerous primaries and—for the first time in decades—proved that you can run a national campaign without becoming a puppet of your funders. As the devastating effects of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowing essentially unlimited corporate money to flow to campaigns become palpable, this is key for the future direction of American politics.

It’s also not a coincidence that Trump originally garnered support by claiming he was too rich to be influenced by those special interests and he would self-fund his campaign. That turned out to be just another Trump lie, but it was the public line through most of the primary season. However, in this ABC News link, it’s obvious that this was a sham even as far back as January.

Reform #3: Hand-Countable Paper Ballots
We will never know who really won the US presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. In both cases, the decision hung on a single state, and in both states, the outcome was highly suspect. These are only the most dramatic among many elections that were very close. In far too many, the use of electronic voting machines without paper ballots means there’s no way to tell if the votes were counted accurately. This is simply unacceptable. Electronic voting machines and regional tabulation machines are far too easy for a hacker to flip—or to simply go out of alignment and count votes for people the voter didn’t vote for. The law should mandate that an electronic total is preliminary, and that election officials will hand-count within the week if the margin of victory is narrow or if there are any reports of irregularities. And those ballots should be properly archived so they can be checked later if accusations surface on the basis of new information.

Reform #4: Parliamentary Allocation
Most of the world uses a parliamentary system in the legislature. If a party gets enough votes to pass a threshold (many countries use 5%), it gets a share of the seats in the legislature. This is another way to make sure minority viewpoints are represented.

Reform #5: Eliminate Winner-Take-All Electoral College
Nebraska and Maine have been apportioning electoral votes by who wins each Congressional District. Why are the other 48 states still using the weird 18th-century throwback of giving all electoral votes to the person with the most? This disenfranchises any of us who live in a “safe” state. Our vote doesn’t really count unless we live in a swing state. Isn’t that crazy?

Left and Right can agree on these and a few other reforms. Let’s join forces and get this done.