How To Resist A Coup

Adrienne: Why can’t we get rid of the two party (dems and repubs) system and just vote for the best person for the job? Candidates would have to list their qualifications and what changes they recommend. If they don’t follow through, then vote them out. Or we can shorten term limits and no one could serve twice in a row!

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I imagine this question is born of frustration more than anything, but the answer resides in the realm of political science. Game theory, really.

In short, we can’t rid ourselves of the two-party duopoly without first making major structural reforms to our political system. At the presidential level it would likely entail amending the Constitution.

The U.S. hasn’t been divided between Democrats and Republicans since the founding. Parties have formed and reformed and collapsed; famously today’s Democrats are the heirs of the Civil War-era’s Republicans and vice versa. Despite all this churn, we keep evolving back toward two-party rule.

This is because each of our districts is represented by a single member of Congress, who must win a plurality of the vote to be elected. The way we elect the president is a bit different, but it reduces to something very similar: We vote for one person to be president, and the winner is whoever gets 270 electoral votes first.

So imagine we abolished the parties tomorrow, and threw open a general election for the House. In your district 10 people run, no party affiliation, just résumés and policy platforms. A local loud mouth named Johnny Lawrence with an expensive education, trust fund, and family connections wins with 20 percent of the vote. He crows about meritocracy—under the two-party system, he never would’ve stood a chance. When we threw it open to competition, the best man won.

At the same time… 80 percent of the people in your district preferred someone else. Progressives and liberals divided their votes up among nine other candidates. Religious conservatives among six. Fascists among four. Most people are pretty unhappy.

To make matters worse, Johnny turns out to be corrupt as hell, sweeping the leg out from under the independent production teams trying to compete with his stepfather. But he’s the incumbent now, and a shoo-in against another crowded field. So, on the advice of a wise Okinawan mentor figure, a local transplant named Daniel Laruso gathers all the progressive candidates together and says, “look, we all want to serve in Congress, but we’re spoiling each other’s chances by dividing the left-of-center vote.” What if, instead, we scheduled a convention, conducted a straw poll, and agreed that the winner would run as the sole progressive, representing the Miyagi-do Party. If anyone else enters the race claiming to be the true progressive, we’ll all agree to call him an imposter. This is the way we’ll get Rep. Lawrence out of office, and replace him with someone who shares at least some of our values.

The plan works! Daniel wins the straw poll. He runs against a divided field comprising Johnny (the incumbent) and sundry right-wingers, and is off to Congress. But he’s always getting himself into trouble, and somewhat culturally out of step with his constituents. So, next cycle, Johnny assembles the Christians and the fascists at a convention of their own. They run the same play, and the Cobra Kai party is born.

Welp! We’re back to two parties. Basically the same as the old ones. And, as before, everyone’s learned the hard way that third-party candidates are spoilers.

The silly hypothetical is mine, but the incentives are well understood by theorists. In academia it’s known as Duverger’s Law.

The term-limits question is a bit different. Term limits would also produce a lot of frustration, I fear. It’s true they would increase variance. But they’d also starve the legislature of expertise and productive partnerships. And they’d incentivize other kinds of corruption. If everyone knew members of Congress could only serve one or two terms, elections would attract candidates who intended to use office not to advance the interests of all constituents but, the interests of particularly wealthy or powerful constituents, in anticipation of lucrative payouts on the other side of the term limit.

Creating a real multi-party system at the congressional level would require a big change, like enacting multi-member districts with ranked-choice voting. Or a political revolution establishing parliamentary democracy. The former would make a ton of sense. But there’s a reason members of Congress are more interested in nonpartisan districting than in creating multimember districts. A better, more radical reform would cost many more of them their jobs!

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