Many countries operate with a parliamentary system where the prime minister is selected by the majority party or coalition of parties in the legislature rather than elected directly. Voters therefore often choose their local delegate by the delegate’s party affiliation rather than the delegate’s personal qualities so as to obtain the voter’s preferred prime minister.
This system makes it easier for the prime minister to pass their preferred legislation since at least initially they have the support of a majority of delegates.
The U.S. has a different system in which the president and Congress are elected separately, so it is not unusual for the president to lack majority support in one or more houses of Congress and fail to implement some of their legislative goals. Whether you consider this horrible gridlock or designed checks and balances may depend on whether you support the president’s goals.
The U.S. Constitution requires that seats in the U.S. House of Representatives be apportioned fairly among states but allows states to draw up their own electoral districts. The party in control of a state may try to shape districts in a way to obtain more seats for their party, a process known as gerrymandering after former Vice President Elbridge Gerry who practiced although he may not have invented this process.
Various courts have vetoed some egregious maps, although courts have actually required gerrymandering to obtain more minority representatives. But how to obtain minority representation if (in what some see as an ideal world) the minority is evenly distributed across the state? Consider for example Republicans in the city of Concord who are more than one-third of voters but hold none of the city’s 12 seats in the NH legislature. (Note that while Republicans may be a minority in Concord they are not a protected minority.)
The U.S. Constitution (in what may be a surprise to many) does not require that states be divided into districts or that Congresspeople reside in their districts. The idea has been floated that states could create multi-member Congressional districts with each voter getting one vote in a ranked-choice system.
In a five-member district, any group of 20% or more that stuck together could elect a representative instead of the present system in which the majority could elect all five. If New Hampshire adopted this system, any party that got over a third of the votes could elect a U.S. Representative, hence there would nearly always be one Democrat and one Republican.
A similar system could be used for presidential electors. At present, most states use a winner-take-all system in which the highest vote-getter obtains all the electoral votes from that state leading to a few votes in a few states being decisive in close elections.
An agreement has been proposed that all states agree to support the majority vote-getter nationwide, but that removes the small-state protection of two extra electoral votes and any necessary recounts might have to be done nationally. Two states have modified the customary system by awarding one electoral vote to the winner of each Congressional district with the remaining two votes going to the statewide winner.
A more even distribution has been proposed in New Hampshire with little-noticed HB 1324, with New Hampshire’s four electoral votes being apportioned (rounded) on the basis of New Hampshire’s popular vote for president.
Since a party that got 38% of the vote would get two electors, in any but the most lopsided elections there would be two Democratic and two Republican electors. This would more fairly represent New Hampshire’s votes, but as it would in effect make the state’s presidential vote meaningless it has little chance of being favored by politicians.
Winner-take-all will probably be with us for a while.
(Roy Schweiker lives in Concord.)