Rethinking "First Past the Post"

Is it time to consider "proportional representation" or "ranked choice" voting over "first past the post" elections? And bravo to the UK's Monster Raving Loony Party. Make politics fun again!

One hallmark of elections in most English-speaking nations—primarily the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia—is their “first-past-the-post” election systems.

However, there are exceptions in the US since state and local jurisdictions decide “time, manner, and place” under our Constitution. We seem to be home to every election system under the sun. As for how well they’re administered and the corrupt ways jurisdictions manipulate the results, that’s a topic for another day.

First-past-the-post means the person who wins the most votes when the ballots are first counted wins, regardless of the margin of victory.

Turnout reached an all-time low for elections of the past 70 years

We have learned (again) from last week’s British elections that such elections don’t always produce the most fair-minded results. The Labor party, out of power for 14 years, won just 33.8 percent of the popular vote yet captured nearly two-thirds or 412 of 650 seats in the UK’s parliament. This is largely due to the center-right - the incumbent Conservatives coupled with the months-old Reform Party (“Britain Needs Reform”), splitting their vote.

It reminded me of the 1992 presidential election when Bill Clinton won the presidency with 43% of the popular vote but a big majority of the electoral college (370 votes). Incumbent President George H. W. Bush won about 37%, with future Reform Party founder and Independent candidate Ross Perot capturing almost 19%.

Most of Perot’s voters were disaffected conservatives looking for a home, and Bush didn’t give them one.

Conservatives lost over 250 seats in the UK and will enter the new parliament with 121 members. Ouch. Even former Prime Minister Liz Truss - the last Prime Minister to meet with Queen Elizabeth II the day before she died - lost her seat. Fortunately, rising conservative star and future leader Kemi Badenoch won hers. She’s one to watch.

In a fair system, Reform, led by former EU parliamentarian Nigel Farage, whose nascent party won 14% of the national vote, would be awarded about 90 seats. They won four (maybe five). Farage won a seat in parliament on his eighth try. He aspires to become the main opposition leader (someday), replacing the Conservatives. The fourth-place Liberal Democrats won 11 percent of the vote but captured 71 seats as the third-place party in parliament. The logic escapes me.

Interestingly, nearly 28 percent of British voters (including Northern Ireland and Scotland) voted for candidates from parties other than the top two, an all-time high. My favorite political party there is the Monster Raving Loony Party, which garnered nearly 6,000 votes but, sadly, no seats in parliament. It’s actually been around since 1982. I love British democracy, and I bet the MRLP put on quite the election night party. No one does political satire better than the Brits.

In all, it wasn’t a ringing endorsement of a mandate for Labor, led by the bland and uninspiring former human rights lawyer, Sir Keir Starmer, but a swift boot to the arse of the incompetent, wayward Conservatives, who desperately need a Thatcherite reboot. Incumbent Rishi Sunak was an unmitigated disaster with his two predecessors, the tone-deaf Truss and the wildly undisciplined but brilliant Boris Johnson. Other strong future leaders lurk alongside Badenoch, including former defense minister Ben Wallace—names to watch from our strongest European ally across the pond.

Tom Tughendhat, the former Minister of State for Security, is another favorite of mine in the parliament. A military veteran, he gave the best speech anywhere in Parliament or Congress on Joe Biden’s despicable and shameful Afghanistan withdrawal. It’s worth watching. I find Britain’s conservatives, and not a few Canadian and Australian ones, put ours to shame when it comes to erudite articulation and persuasion.

Canada’s Conservative Party remembers the 2019 elections too well. They won about 230,000 more votes for Parliament than the Liberals, about 35 percent of the national vote. Still, they had 36 fewer seats than the Liberals, led by the execrable Justin Trudeau. How’s that working out for you, Canada?

Canada’s conservatives do better nationally than capturing individual “ridings,” as districts are called there, because conservatives are more concentrated, especially in the western jurisdictions of Alberta and Saskatchewan, among other more rural areas.

But it’s time to reconsider whether “first past the post” is the best way to elect legislators, at least in parliamentary democracies. Is there a better way?

Possibly, but no one has discovered it yet or figured out how to make it work cleanly, fairly, and simply.

The two options are “proportional representation,” where seats are allocated by the percentage of the total vote, or “ranked choice voting,” which we’ve discussed before. Maine has instituted ranked choice voting for general elections, and courts have found it constitutional (thus far). Virginia Republicans instituted it and nominated Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2021. It seems to work for party primaries, but it is so complicated that even some deep-blue jurisdictions have declined to adopt it because of voter confusion. Many voters just cast one vote, leaving many second and third-round votes on the table.

If used for general elections, RCV, as it's called, would allocate votes for third-party or independent candidates to others but make it less likely they would win an election. It clearly would favor the major party nominees. I believe it violates our constitutional one-person-one-vote principle for general elections, but federal judges opine differently thus far.

How would proportional voting work?

First, it would require multi-candidate districts like New Jersey’s General Assembly. The top two legislative candidates are elected in a seat designed for one state senator. But it’s not proportional representation. It’s the “first two past the post.”

Another example is Ireland, which mixes proportional representation with ranked-choice voting. Very confusing.

When you vote in an election in Ireland, you are asked to give your vote in order of preference. This is because Ireland uses an electoral system called proportional representation with a single transferrable vote (PR–STV, or PR for short).

The names of candidates appear in alphabetical order on the ballot paper, along with their photographs and their party emblem (if they wish).

You vote by writing “1” opposite your first choice candidate, “2” opposite your second choice, “3” opposite your third choice, and so on.

You can stop after indicating your first choice candidate or you can continue to give a preferential vote to as many candidates on the ballot paper as you wish.

The left-leaning Project Democracy describes it this way:

In contrast, proportional representation uses multi-seat districts with representation allocated in proportion to votes. For example, in a six-seat district, if a party’s candidates win 51 percent of the vote, they would be expected to win three of the six seats — rather than 100 percent. Unlike with winner-take-all, under proportional representation, most groups tend to have at least one elected official representing their viewpoint in government.

This may also violate another basic American ethos: voting for individuals and not for parties, per se. But the fact is that we have political parties, and nothing is stopping an independent candidate or two from being allocated a seat if they win enough votes.

Do you see American voters giving up their Members of Congress—or Members of Congress giving up their sole seats and running in a large, multi-member district, with all the fundraising that would require? Me neither. First, it would require an act of Congress to change the 1967 Uniform Congressional District Act, which provides for “at large” members only in states that qualify for a single seat (e.g., Wyoming, Delaware, Alaska, etc.).

But frankly, I love the idea of my region in deep blue northern Virginia combining into a multi-member district. If I can get one Republican out of four or five in this crazy region, I will finally have someone representing me. My current US Senators and US Representative certainly do not.

Nigel Farage, the closest thing to Donald Trump in the UK (he attended Trump’s inauguration in 2016), won a seat in Parliament on his eighth try as leader of the Reform Party. He aims to make it the official opposition and then take on Labor.

From what I can tell, there’s nothing unconstitutional about proportional voting. When state legislatures can’t agree on new congressional districts after a decennial census, voters statewide cast votes for the top candidates. It would be like me voting for 11 “At-large” Members of Congress to represent the Commonwealth of Virginia statewide. The top 11 vote-getters win. The Congressional Research Service provides a little history:

Prior to 1967, some states with multiple House seats, at times, used at-large districts. In the 1st Congress (1789-1791), for example, 7 of the 11 states with multiple House seats divided representatives into geographic districts, and 4 states elected their representatives at-large (Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). In addition, there was also a system used briefly by Georgia and Maryland in the 1700s whereby candidates ran in a specific district, but were elected by the entire state electorate, who could vote for a candidate in each of the state’s districts. The high-water mark of at-large representation was the 16th Congress, which seated 41 members elected at large.

So, while Congress could return to multi-member districts and institute proportional representation, the likelihood is infinitesimal. While it might make redistricting seats much easier and result in more fair-minded representation (deep blue northern Virginia might get a Republican Member of Congress; conversely, southside Virginia would likely get a Democrat or two), there’s no groundswell for it. It would also spur the growth of minor parties, which may or may not be a good thing.

I might make an exception for a Monster Raving Loony Party. I know people who could lead it here. I’m unsure if I understand all their platform's planks, but it is interesting. At least they’re returning the term “party” to its original meaning. I do love satire.

Yes, you can join the party. For a small fee.

Many states and jurisdictions employ runoff elections where no candidate wins 50% plus one for party nominations and general elections. This is especially true in states where all candidates run together in a “jungle” primary, regardless of party. Louisiana and California are two good examples. Georgia’s runoff elections for two US Senate seats after the 2020 general election tipped the balance of that chamber with the Democrats, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff, winning.

There’s plenty of dissatisfaction with our current two-party system, at least in Congress. Recent third-party movements have fizzled, from George Wallace’s American Party (which won electoral votes from 6 states in 1968) to Ross Perot’s Reform Party (zero electoral votes from 1992 or 1996. But others persist, including the Jill Stein-led Green Party and the openly gay and pro-Hamas Chase Oliver-led Libertarians.

Libertarians, at least what’s left of the party of Roger McBride and Michael Rectanwald, are more popular out west, where they can get double digits in general elections. In a proportional election system, I could see them winning a few congressional seats. But since they’ve become pro-drug, pro-prostitution, and for sex without limits, from polyamory to worse, I no longer recognize or respect them. They’re nuts.

Keep an eye on the UK because, after their July 4th election, there’s plenty of talk in favor of proportional representation. But don’t expect the party in power, Labor, to entertain it anytime soon.

On this side of the pond, ranked-choice voting is the one to watch. And whether our own Monster Raving Loony Party will emerge. Some say it already has. Perhaps I should offer to lead it. Make politics fun again.