Rob Richie is the co-founder and senior advisor to FairVote, a sister organisation to the Electoral Reform Society. FairVote is a nonpartisan organisation in America, campaigning for better elections for all, working to make ‘Ranked Choice Voting’ (RCV) – what is known as the Alternative Vote in the UK – the voting system for all American elections. They have succeeded in changing the voting system for some public elections in 50 cities, counties, and states to date.
It was an astounding summer in American politics. We witnessed the conviction of Republican candidate Donald Trump in a New York court, as well as his attempted assassination, and President Joe Biden announced that he would drop his re-election bid after a faltering debate performance. Vice President Kamala Harris then locked down what could have been an open process to pick a nominee at the party’s convention. Democrats quickly nominated her in virtual vote of delegates to their national convention.
What this means for the American system, and for election reform advocates, is complicated. Let’s walk through the lessons from this experience.
The Party Still Decides – But Barely
Unlike the international norm, American parties generally turn over their nomination processes to voters through primary elections. For presidential nominations, it involves contests across 57 states and territories that select delegates who, in turn, pick the nominee at a summer convention.
Throughout the 20th century, both parties reformed their nominating processes to infuse new energy and provide opportunities for voters to participate directly through primaries funded and administered by the government. Over time, though, the primary system has broken down badly. Participation is low, voters are increasingly polarized, and most candidates need only focus on their party base at the expense of swing voters – the opposite of the UK’s problem where parties solely focus on “marginal constituencies” and not those in “safe seats.” A constitutional system designed to promote compromise now clashes with an electoral system that discourages it.
Trump’s capture of the Republican Party is instructive. As the businessman and television personality entered the Republican presidential primary in 2016, he had never run for office, and had a long history of giving donations to candidates from both parties – including Kamala Harris. But tied to his celebrity and populist agenda reminiscent of Brexit, Trump dominated media coverage in a fractured field. With less than half the vote in the primaries, he became the presumptive nominee. Despite controversies, talk of a convention rebellion went nowhere.
With Trump’s win against Hillary Clinton in the general election, Republicans’ decision to accept Trump’s takeover seemed validated even though Trump lost the popular vote. Then in 2018, Republicans lost control of the U.S. House, and in 2020, they lost the presidency and Senate as well. In 2022, they lost even more ground in the Senate.
Unsurprisingly, many Republicans were interested in a new nominee to lead their party in 2024, but their leaders were too weak to stop the Trump movement. The party’s base rallied around Trump even as he faced numerous criminal indictments.
The Democrats acted differently – but just barely. In 2020, their version of a Trump takeover was embodied by Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent U.S. Senator who briefly became the frontrunner after early primary wins. Influential Democrats pressured several moderate candidates to drop out and consolidate around Biden – rescuing Biden’s candidacy, which had faltered badly in the opening contests. Biden won the South Carolina primary, then nearly swept the “Super Tuesday” contests after the withdrawals of similarly moderate candidates – and won in November.
Biden initially sought re-election this year, and despite concerns about his age and favorability (which was never above 45% after August 2021), potential challengers held back. It was only Biden’s debate performance that turned party activists, donors, and elected officials against him – and even then, the decision was seen as being up to Biden.
How America Compares to the UK
Parties tossing out unpopular leaders and picking new ones is more common in Britain than in the U.S. The UK only has primaries to the extent that parties let members participate in leadership contests, with far lower rates of participation and a much heavier hand of party leaders. Yet a shift like the one from Biden to Harris in barely 24 hours would be inconceivable.
What Reformers Did – and Plans for the Future
The American focus on executive offices makes election reform of single-winner offices important, even for reformers like FairVote that ultimately seek proportional representation. FairVote has elevated ranked choice voting (RCV), the American name for the Alternative Vote. Although still facing hurdles, RCV is the nation’s fastest-growing electoral reform, winning in two states and 27 straight city ballot measures. This November, RCV will be on the ballot in four states and Washington, D.C.
Presidential elections draw attention to the value of RCV due to increasing odds of crowded fields in primaries and “spoiler” third parties in November. This summer’s upheaval in the Democratic Party created new opportunities. FairVote conducted polling of swing state voters, using RCV to gauge their preferred alternatives to Biden, which drew great interest among Democrats and the press. Backers of a “blitz primary”, and FairVote in my widely-published commentary, suggested that using RCV in an open convention would be the best way to avoid a long, drawn-out series of repeated votes. Harris’s quick consolidation of the field has put an end to such hypothesizing, yet there is now greater interest in using RCV to nominate future candidates for president.
What comes next
Barring more surprises, Harris will have a tight race against Trump. The contest will likely revert to focus on only seven “swing states”. Similarly, control of the U.S. Senate will come down to only seven contests that mostly overlap with the presidential swing states, and control of the U.S. House will come down to just 40 races out of 435.
In this era of polarized politics, winner-take-all voting rules make most Americans nervous spectators and symbolic participants in the choice of their government’s leaders – despite these elections’ great implications for democracy in the United States and the world.
Become a member of the Electoral Reform Society today from just £2 a month