Imagine there is a Congress in Washington with no single party having a majority. Senators and Congressmen would, in significant numbers, belong to each of three or more different political parties. And imagine further that this is not just a temporary aberration; in fact, it is now the norm. To pass any legislation, Congress must form coalitions composed of colleagues from various parties. Friendships that cross party lines are becoming common again.
Congress functioned much like this in the middle of the last century even though, like now, there being only two viable parties. But unlike today, neither of those two parties could direct their members how to vote. Senators and Representatives felt free to make their own decisions about how to vote.
Too often in this country, only the two candidates from the two dominant parties have any realistic hope of winning an election. Consequently, there is a toxic polarization that explains why Congressional votes so often fall strictly along party lines. Making matters even worse, party leaders often exert considerable control over selecting candidates in elections. It is small wonder that support among voters for either candidate so frequently falls well short of being enthusiastic.
A healthy democracy requires competition. If we could increase the number of viable candidates for voters to choose from, the power of voters would be greater and stronger support for the government may follow.
But displacing the entrenched duopoly may seem like an impossible dream. Prospective candidates who belong to neither the Republican nor the Democratic only rarely can even to get their names on a ballot. This is no accident. Placing someone's name on the ballot was intentionally made difficult to limit elections to only two candidates. This was considered important because plurality voting can fail miserably when faced with more than two viable candidates (but notice how this observation should raise alarm about our primary elections, which often do pit several candidates against one-another).
This tail-wagging-a-dog reasoning was transparently misguided, but it did serve the interests of the two dominant political parties. Rather than limiting the number of candidates to accommodate an inadequate voting system, common sense would dictate that we adopt a better voting system? Then we could encourage more candidates to participate in elections.
Plurality voting is nothing but a bad habit, one that our society needs to break. Alternative voting systems exist, and many are better choices to use for elections with multiple candidates. Our elections and our politics could be much better.
Adopting a more capable voting system might permit us to relax the state laws that now restrict ballot access; we could enjoy having more parties, more candidates and so more competition. We can do this, and if we want a better functioning democracy then we surely should.
Unfortunately, the Electoral College creates difficulties for changing the voting system for presidential elections. But primary elections problems (even for choosing presidential candidates) face no such and an improved voting system in primaries would be of benefit even for electing even the President. Elections of state or local officials are unconstrained in their choice of voting system.
Perhaps most important, states are free to choose their system for electing Senators or Congressmen. And the Constitution provided for a Congress to be the most powerful of the three branches. But today, Congress seems clearly to be the weakest sister, not leading now but mostly following the whims of the other two branches.
But Congress could again become dominant if Congress were reinvigorated by increased competition. Such a Congress might find the courage to reclaim the many important powers under the Constitution that, over the years, Congress has surrendered to the judicial and executive branches.
But in choosing a better voting system, merely accommodating multiple candidates is insufficient. That does not promise an end to duopoly. But Balanced Approval Voting (BAV) is especially well suited for this task; moreover, it is a simple system that makes voting particularly easy.
BAV voters only need to decide and report how they feel about the individual candidates. The voters will find no advantage to be gained from guessing who might win a horse-race or to somehow compare candidates against one-another.
A BAV ballot lists all the candidates (ideally, perhaps five to eight candidates). Next to each candidate's name are two boxes, one labeled SUPPORT and the other OPPOSE. Voters can check
either box. Moreover, voters have yet another option; a voter who neither supports nor opposes a candidate can (and should) simply leave both boxes unchecked.
To tally the votes in a BAV election, the number of opposition votes for each candidate is subtracted from the number of support votes; that difference is the candidate's net vote. Not surprisingly, the winner of the election is the candidate with the largest net vote.
It is possible, indeed likely, for a net vote to be a negative number; that is not a flaw, it is a significant feature of BAV. A negative net vote is a condition that pollsters frequently report as "being under-water". It describes the candidate as quit unpopular, having greater opposition than support. BAV voting merely lets voters know when this is the case.
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