Where All Else Fails, Change the Rules

Democracy is great — when it works, which is far less often than advertised. The history of U.S. war policy since World War I ended has largely been attempts to clean up the mess from failed democracies.

First there was Russia. Then Germany. Then Vietnam. Then Iraq and Afghanistan. And mixed in you have democracy failures for most of Latin America and decolonized Africa. And now in the 21^stCentury, the United States is well on the way to joining the Club of Failed Democracies—

Wait a moment! I see someone waving their hand frantically in the back of the audience. What's that? "The United States is not a democracy; it's a republic!?"

Irrelevant. I'm lumping representative democracies with direct democracies here. The key factor is The People being able to vote on laws, either directly or indirectly. Our republic was closer to democracy than most other modern republics, once you factor in the People's Republics and Islamic Republics.

Constitution? Let's get serious. Even in Chicago only the recently dead get to vote. The U.S. Constitution was voted on over two centuries ago — by a minority of the U.S. populace of the time. The Constitution was respected in the early years of our republic because it represented the consensus of the day (For those allowed to vote, that is.) Today, only a die hard minority truly want to be governed by the original Constitution, or even the Constitution as officially amended. And I mean minority of Republicans as well. The Constitution has no provision for Social Security, Medicare, or a federal war on drugs.

Today, it is up in the air whether direct democracy or indirect democracy is failing worse. Yes, California has some pretty goofy initiatives turned into law. But Californians also voted directly against affirmative action and gay marriage. And Proposition 13 acts as a financial Wall. Meanwhile, we have near zombies holding seats in Congress, and an incontinent old wet fart as President. I believe the directly democratic towns of New Hampshire and Vermont are doing better than the federal government these days.

Democracy, representative or direct, has many failure modes. An incomplete list:

1. Spoils systems lead to dictatorship.

2. Civil service systems lead to rule by the Deep State.

3. Those in power use their power to run for reelection.

4. The People can be too dumb or deluded to self govern.

5. Open voting leads to voter intimidation and vote buying.

6. Secret voting leads to voter fraud.

7. Tribalism leads to oppression of the out group(s).

8. Deep division leads to failure to achieve consensus.

9. Too many people voting on a candidate or issue leads to rational apathy.

The first three can be dealt with by term limits, if we include some kind of term limits for civil servants as well as elected politicians. And by civil servants, I include the military, the CIA, the FBI, and other such agencies. Democracy and secrecy don't mix. But secrecy is militarily useful. A compromise would be to have a significant pool of voters who used to have a security clearance. That way you have enough voters who know roughly what is going on but are not on the government payroll.

I have already posted Rules on how to deal with Problem 4, and will post more in the future.

Today, I want to focus on failure modes 5-8. When there is a reasonable amount of consensus, a bit of voter fraud or vote buying can be lived with. The difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 wasn't all that big. Electing the wrong candidate due to hanging chads, zombie votes in Chicago, or absentee votes by illegal space aliens from the Orion colony was no big deal. But when the vote is between communism or kill all Jews and declare war on most of the world, as it was in Germany, getting the vote count right makes a huge difference.

But really, it's more important to have a voting system which avoids such stark choices in the first place. When a nation is divided, you really really really need a voting system which favors compromise candidates.

Given how today's Democrats are advocating Modern Monetary Theory and playing MadLibs with Nazi propaganda, we are in a situation scarily similar to the failed Weimar Republic. Only this time it is the internationalists who have a lust for genocide.

Our voting system was good enough for white male Christian voters in the day when people were educated by either reality or Western classics. It is not good enough for a a multi ethnic/multi gender voting base of people additionally tribalized by the Internet and dumbed down by Progressive Education, Equity, and broken homes.

Achieving Consensus

When defining Democracy, we must ask the question: What do we mean by The Will of the People?

1. The will of the biggest faction?

2. The happiness of the victors?

3. Or minimizing unhappiness overall?

In a high trust cohesive society, with few issues under consideration, the three options above are pretty much equivalent. But with a divided society and government meddling in all aspects of life, the differences are huge, with the first two easily leading to dictatorship or civil war.

I prefer Option 3. Civil war is unpleasant. Indeed, one of the better arguments for democracy over aristocratic alternatives is the possibility of peaceful transition. But when the election choice is between mean tweets and vs. the genocide of my progeny, civil war doesn't look as bad as it used to.

But it is still really bad. So let's fix the system. And the fix is Range voting.

The Lesser of Three Evils

Back in Rule 8, I suggested that Republicans need to either run RINOs in far left districts or bow out and let a third party which has some redeeming qualities run against the Democrat. The more "principle" the opposition has, the more license the Democrats have to run a complete whackdoodle.

I then suggested a few possible third parties (or Republican factions) that could give the Democrats some real competition in Blue areas. I suspect the thought of third parties set off some alarm bells. There is, after all, the possibility of splitting the sane vote, thereby allowing the Democrats to run even nuttier candidates.

Well, I have bad news for you. The populist vote is going to be split in 2020 unless Trump gets RFK Jr. to be his running mate.

I have not fully researched RFK Jr.'s positions or record, but what little I have read and listened to, sounds pretty good. He's definitely the best candidate to make some progress on Rule 4.

But my opinion is irrelevant. What is relevant are the opinions of those who would otherwise be Trump voters. Among blue collar conservatives and libertarians whom I know on social media, I see quite a bit of interest and even enthusiasm for RFK Jr. -- far more than I see for Ron DeSantis (who is generally dismissed as being Deep State). And the national polls I have heard quoted on talk radio tell a similar story: Kennedy "steals" more votes from Trump than from Biden.

The usual solution pushed by third party advocates is Ranked Choice voting — or, to be more precise, Instant Runoff. Let voters give their second favorite candidate along with their favorite candidate in a three way race.

For a race between Trump, Biden, and Kennedy any state that adopts Ranked Choice would indeed fix the spoiler problem. RFK supporters from the Left can give Joe Biden as their second favorite, and those from the populist Right can list Trump as their second favorite. We get to see the count of those who like the independent candidate, and then we throw those votes away and get to the serious business of deciding between Trump and Biden.

Ranked Choice fixes the spoiler problem in many scenarios, but it doesn't fix the divided factions problem. Compromise candidates get still get squeezed out by those with the strongest factions.

How about a voting system which allows voters to express their opinion on all the candidates? And let's have a system which uses all that information.

This, dear readers, is Range Voting. Instead of picking your favorite candidate, you rate each candidate on a 0-10 scale. The blue collar conservative populist who loves RFK can give him a 10 and then give Trump an 8. A voter who wants anyone but Trump can give both RFK and Biden a 10. A Trump supporter who fears Biden more than RFK can give Trump a 10 and RFK a 5. And so on.

Since both Trump and Biden are truly hated by the other side, there is a good chance that RFK Jr. could win by being the least hated candidate.

Yes, I know that the idea of RFK Jr. being the centrist is rather weird. But these are weird times. Biden is senile and Trump might well be campaigning from prison. And while RFK Jr.'s voice is incredibly grating, he looks presidential.

Of course, if we had Range Voting in place, there would be some more normal candidates on the ballot. Indeed, we could easily get a glut of hair gelled squishes, remoras, and beautified celebrities. So we next turn to making sure that the roster of candidates are the favorite of somebody.

A Nomination Round

The upside of having political parties is that you have the politically interested screening the candidates. It is good to have idealists having some say in the matter. Indeed, much of the corruption of our current system is due to the fact that political consultants and fundraisers have more clout than local party affiliates.

On the other hand, when the parties get too ideological, the country splits and/or performs dangerous experiments such a legalizing shoplifting.

So, what I propose is a nomination round where the ideologues and parties can vet candidates. For the nomination round, getting on the ballot should be easy—none of this business of gathering mass quantities of signatures.

For the nomination round voters just pick one candidate off the possibly long list. Those who get enough votes in the nomination round go on the ballot for the general election. There are several possible criteria. You could limit the general election ballot to a manageable number of candidates -- somewhere in the 5-7 range. You might also require candidates to get a minimum number of first round votes -- say five percent.

The nomination round should happen in the spring, like political primaries today. And, like primaries, most voters will stay home. This round is for the political junkies.

Political parties would still exist. They could fund their own primaries or hold caucuses and conventions to decide whom to back. But it would then be up to party members to show up and vote -- and have enough discipline to abide by their caucus' decision.

Incumbents and celebrities could bypass parties.

And yes, a well disciplined fringe party could get their candidate past the first round. However, they would have an incentive to run someone other than a purist whackdoodle if they want to win the Range Voting round.

The real winners of such a system would be new political parties which bring fresh ideas to the debate while still staying withing the Overton Window. For example, you could have a Christian Democrat party which is pro life, pro gun, but also pro union and pro social safety net. Such a party could give the Democrats real competition in the Midwest. For the Left Coast, perhaps a Conservation Party is the way to go. Such a party could be for streets safe enough for bicyclists and pedestrians, anti immigration, pro nuclear, and pro Pigovian taxes on pollutants.

Where to Apply

Unfortunately, the system I just described won't work very well at the U.S. presidential level. The Electoral College has to do a plurality vote. A system for choosing electors which is too third party friendly would lead to the House choosing the president — voting by state.

True, having the House choose the President by state favors Republicans bigly. But we can expect the Left to cry foul with good reason if we choose too many presidents this way.

The real opportunity for election reform is for choosing Congress, state legislators, city councils and mayors.

And there is one other huge opportunity: other countries. If we are going to impose democracy on other countries, let's do it right. In any deeply divided country, plurality-take-all is a recipe for minority oppression and/or civil war. Emperors and evil dictators generally have more incentive to protect despised minorities than democratically elected leaders. Hated minorities make for trustworthy lieutenants.

Suppose we had imposed Range Voting in Iraq. There, the major factions were Sunni Arab extremists, Shiite extremists, and Kurdish separatists. The three factions hated each other. But since these were the biggest factions, any conciliatory candidate would get squeezed out in any kind of plurality-take-all or elimination round system.

But under Range Voting, a more conciliatory candidate would likely win, by being less hated.

Now I am not advocating nation building. I'd rather just set a good example for other nations to try out.

But if the U.S. is going to do nation-building, let's do it right. And the only way that's going to happen is we adopt Range Voting here at home.

More Benefits

Ranked Choice has more momentum than Range Voting. But for those interested in election reform, it's still worth educating people on the benefits of Range over Rank.

It's a proven system. You have seen Range Voting in action many times. It's how judges choose best figure skater, best gymnast, or best high diver. It's also how high schools choose valedictorian. GPA is a form of Range Vote. It's how movies are rated on IMDB.

It's easy to count. OK, it's not as easy to count as plurality-take-all, but Range Vote elections are far easier to tally than Ranked Choice votes. For Ranked Choice you have to count all the the first place votes and then determine which candidate to eliminate. Then you have to go back to all the ballots for those who voted for the eliminated candidate to find their second favorite candidate. And so on. There is no way to combine precinct subtotals.

For a Range Vote, you count the number of stars given each candidate. Subtotals from individual precincts can be added together just like for plurality votes. This is thus far more transparent than a Ranked Choice vote. And given the uncertainties over vote counting of late, transparency is a very good thing.

Money and incumbency become less powerful. Once a candidate makes it to the Range Voting round, the wasted vote dilemma goes away. You can safely give your favorite candidate a ten even if he has a small campaign war chest. You might still give a high rating for the favored RINO as a defensive move, but at least the principled upstart isn't squeezed out from the start.

But, of course, your favored candidate still needs to be inoffensive enough to win enough normies — just like ideologues on the Left. Range dampens extremists on the basis of ideas, competence, and attitude vs. the ability to raise special interest money.

Up and comers are seen. Under plurality-take-all, new factions are not seen in the vote totals due to the Lesser of Two Evils Dilemma. Under Ranked Choice, the second favorite choices can be thrown out before ever being counted. A Range Vote tally gives a far better account of voter sentiment. (It's not perfect, as there will be some strategic voting, but it's about as good as possible.)

Worth Pursuing?

Once upon a time the Progressive Left was seriously into Democracy. Better voting systems were very interesting to them. After all, if you believe in Big Government, you really want to make it work. Boiling down your options down to two choices isn't exactly pro choice.

Many of the Blue areas of our country already have creative voting systems. And they change from time to time, especially at the city level. California has a significant amount of direct democracy. A push for Range Voting might be a good initiative.

And there is bound to be a Quiet Majority in many Blue states who want a choice other than Republicans or whackdoodles.

If I lived in a Blue area, I believe I would focus most of my political efforts on changing the voting system. If you live in a Blue area or work at a Woke workplace, try pitching Range Voting instead of talking issues. Show your neighbors and coworkers this demo of different voting systems in action. Let the rest of us know in the comments if you get any traction.