This is the sixth installment of Chredon's analysis of the making of the Constitution, and where the Founders went wrong. For background, see the previous issues:
Issue I: The Founders' World - Historical context of the
Constitution
Issue II: The Confederate Period - The failure of the Articles of
Confederation
Issue III: Washington and Madison - The Father of our Country and the
Father of the Constitution
Issue IV: The Constitutional Convention - The Primary Issues at Philadelphia
Convention
Other Topics of Discussion:
Issue V: Bobbing for Senators - Was the Seventeenth Amendment Really a
Good Idea?
A Google search of the phrase 'the US two-party system' returns
approximate 286 million hits. A search of 'the loch ness monster' returns only
3 million. I mention this because, like Nessie, the US two-party system doesn't
really exist.
Except that it does. Sort of.
There is no Constitutional mandate that our government have only
two parties. It has merely worked out that way. And oddly, it has worked out
that way for over two hundred years. So the question for the Constitutional
scholar is this - is the de facto two party system merely the inevitable result
of the all-too-human proclivity to choose sides? Or is it inherent in the very
fabric of our Constitution and the institutions that surround it?
Historically, we have always divided into two camps here in
America. When Thomas Jefferson proposed a smaller Committee of the States, he lamented that the new
group “quarreled very soon, split into two
parties, and abandoned their post.” While writing the Constitution, Madison
commented that when it came to determining the size and method of electing the
two houses of Congress, the states split into two camps, large states and
small. But when it came time to discuss the powers that the states would give
up to the Federal government, the convention split along north-south lines.
During the period in which the
Constitution was being ratified, we had Federalists and Anti-Federalists.
After it was ratified, we had the
Federalist Party (led by John Adams) and the Democratic-Republican Party (led
by Thomas Jefferson).
Throughout the history of the United States, though parties have
come and gone upon occasion, we have almost always had two, and usually only
two, significant political parties. There have been, on very rare occasions, a
third-party candidate who received a few Electoral College votes for President.
But none of them lasted longer than a single Presidential election cycle. The
Populist movement had a brief but unsuccessful heyday between 1880 and 1912,
and an anti-Civil Right movement in the South saw a couple of third parties win
a handful of electoral college votes in the 1950s and 1960s. The last third
party to win any electoral college votes for President was the Libertarian
Party in 1972, when John Hospers got a single vote.
Duverger's Law tells us that the two-party system is
inherent in the way our political structures are formed. Two fundamental
elements of our voting system are the one-person, one-vote idea, and the idea
of majority rule. In that sort of an environment, people must band together to
try to get a little more than 50% of any vote in order to win. Thus, weak
parties will merge with more powerful ones in order to get the votes needed for
victory, or voters will flee smaller parties with no chance of victory and join
larger parties capable of achieving the 50% requirement.
Of course, not all elections require a majority. Some are
first-past-the-post, meaning that the person with the most votes wins, even if
they have less than a majority. Some places would require a run-off in these
cases, but some don't - sort of like the way Mitt Romney was winning the GOP
primary getting 35% of the vote (to his opponents' 25% or less).
A moment of reflection on this concept will convince you that the
two-party system is inevitable. But it is inevitable because of the way we
vote.
Imagine that your state is voting for a Senator. You have five
candidates from five different parties, the Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians,
Green, and Constitution Parties. Imagine that the Democratic and Republican
candidates have the support of 35% of the voters each, and the other three
parties have 10% each. Unsure of the victory, what would the Democrats and
Republicans do? Obviously, they would reach out to the other three parties and
try to form a coalition to get to 50%. The major party that is able to get two
of the minor parties on board would be the winner. Seeing that their own
candidate has no chance at victory, would the supporters of the three minor
parties vote their preference anyway? Or would they opt not to 'waste' their
vote on a lost cause and instead support the major party candidate whose views
most closely match their own? After all, to stay with your own party would be
to risk splitting the vote such that the viewpoint you most oppose has the
greater chance of victory. Few will risk that.
So how could we possibly get viable smaller parties in the United
States? We would have to change how elections work - specifically, we would
have to change BACK to the ways the Founders designed it.
If you read the Constitution, it says nothing about dividing the
states into Congressional districts and having one representative from each. It
says, simply "The
House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year
by the people of the several states." So as long as they were chosen by
direct popular election, there was no limit to how that choice could be made.
In the early years of the Republic, Representatives were generally chosen by
at-large voting (no districts), though each office would have only two
candidates. Congress eventually mandated single-member districts by rules
passed in 1842. But those rules changed back and forth for over 100 years. A 1967
law required congressional districts and outlawed any sort of at-large voting.
(This was done over fear that southern states might revert to at-large voting
as a way to suppress minority votes.)
Since this law was passed, there has
never been more than one member of a third party serving in Congress at any
time, nor more than one or two Independents.
Today, many groups are advocating
new voting systems, like Range Voting or Instant Runoff Voting in an
attempt to give voters more choices in their representation, or to at least get
around the wasted vote issue, or the problem of a first-past-the-post election
being won by someone with only 25% of the vote. But while these methods will
make it easier to get a third-party candidate onto the ballot and convince
people to make them their top selection, it still doesn't end the process of
having to choose only one person for one office. To really get third-party
options into the House (and eventually the Senate and higher), you have to get
rid of the single-district vote and go back to at-large votes for larger pools
of people.
Imagine, if you will, a state with
three House members. Instead of having three contests, one for each seat, with
most contests having just two contestants and a couple of third-party
candidate, all contestants go into one pool. Using Instant Runoff Voting, all
the voters rank the 8 candidates in order of preference. Count up how many #1
votes each candidate got and rank them in order.
Now, take the person who came in eighth. Eliminate that candidate
and distribute his votes to the voters' #2 choice. Now take the candidate who
came in seventh and do the same, then sixth, and so on until there are only
three left - these are the three winners.
The results are much more likely to reflect the will of the
people. A third-party candidate could potentially take one of the seats (and
even more likely in a state with more Representatives). And the distribution
along party lines is more likely to be consistent with the party affiliation of
the voters (as opposed to the results of voting in gerrymandered districts).
Once that was in place, we would begin to see changes in the
makeup of Congress. Changes that might make it necessary to build coalitions
inside the House, a wider range of ideologies represented, and potentially a
return to bipartisan agreements instead of stubborn party-line votes.
Until then, we're stuck with an entrenched two-party system that
does more to entrench itself every day.
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