The Structure of the US Winner Take All Voting System Guarantees a Binary Divide in the Voting Population
by John Lawrence
Every election in the US is a contest between two candidates. Third party candidates take votes away from the party they are closest to ideologically. This holds not only for the election of President, but for every other election due to the districting system itself. For candidates for Congress there is one winner per district. For election to the Senate the state is the district with two Senators from each state. However, each Senate seat is voted upon separately so that each seat represents a winner take all election. Senators are elected to six-year terms by the people of each state. Senators’ terms are staggered so that about one-third of the Senate is up for reelection every two years. Because of all the US winner take all elections, the nation is almost predetermined to create a two party system. The two party system almost predetermines that the country will be divided into two groups. So complaining that US citizens are divided is futile, and that any candidate will "bring us altogether" is next to impossible. Other countries which have proportional representation voting systems result in the fact that they are not so bitterly divided.
The US needs to change the structure of the voting system itself in order to create a nation which is not so divided between two sets of people. With proportional representation, third parties can get representatives elected more easily. With a different system than winner take all for President, it would be possible to vote for a third party candidate without that candidate being a "spoiler" who takes votes away from the party she is closest to ideologically. If districts were larger so that more representatives per district were elected at the same time, it would be possible for representatives from multiple parties to be elected simultaneously. Proportional representation is an electoral system that elects multiple representatives in each district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them. If one third of voters back a political party, the party’s candidates win roughly one-third of the seats. The key is that multiple representatives per district means that multiple viewpoints have a chance of being represented in a representative body.
The main reason for America's majoritarian character is the electoral system for Congress. Members of Congress are elected in single-member districts according to the "first-past-the-post" (FPTP) principle, meaning that the candidate with the plurality of votes is the winner of the congressional seat. The losing party or parties win no representation at all. The first-past-the-post election tends to produce a small number of major parties, perhaps just two, a principle known in political science as Duverger's Law. Smaller parties are trampled in first-past-the-post elections. The US seems stuck with an antiquated voting system which may be dooming it as a democracy. Other types of voting systems take into account a voter's second and third place choices not just their first place choice. In this way a better compromise which could be accepted by more people is possible. With a two party system, if one party takes over and refuses to play fair, a democracy can turn into a dictatorship. The US is teetering on the brink of such a scenario. When the nation becomes sclerotic in the sense that the voting system is not easily updated, it could break altogether much like a brittle, aged bone. Problems include the electoral college, the winner take all voting system, gerrymandering and the filibuster. The US seems incapable of changing any of these aspects. A new empire might have to be created in order for an updated, more fair and intelligent voting system to be implemented.
