A powerful Democratic-leaning group throws its weight behind election reform

Lee Drutman was quoted on an Yahoo News article on electoral reforms to combat political polarization.

Proponents of electoral reform argue that it is the best way to fight political polarization and pressure lawmakers to better reflect the views of their constituents. The basic idea behind reform proposals is that a mere sliver of hyperpartisan voters hold too much power in many U.S. elections by deciding the winner of party primaries.

Primary voters tend to be much more ideologically rigid than the broader electorate of a given area. As a result, they usually reward more extreme candidates with their votes. And because so much of the country is either solidly Democratic or reliably Republican, those candidates often face little more than token opposition in general elections.

“This represents the increasingly widespread conclusion that our electoral system is fundamentally broken, and the increasing consensus that we need structural electoral reform to rebuild our creaky and dysfunctional system of republican democracy,” Lee Drutman, a leading voice in the reform movement who is affiliated with the New America Foundation and co-founded Fix Our House, said of the CAP paper.

Voters cast their ballots

Voters casting their ballots in Midlothian, Va., on Nov. 8. (Ryan M. Kelly/AFP via Getty Images)

Electoral reform is not a partisan issue, however, and has support on the right as well. Walter Olson, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, told Yahoo News that “election reform is an exciting area these days because new ideas are getting a hearing that are scrambling some of the old battle lines.”

Olson noted that recent bipartisan cooperation on updating the Electoral Count Act of 1887 shows that reforms aimed at protecting democracy are possible.

“The successful reform of the Electoral Count Act at the federal level has made people aware that cooperation across party and ideological divides can get real results in ways that benefit the country as a whole. I see Alex’s paper as very much in this spirit,” he said.

Kristin Eberhard, director of climate policy at the centrist Niskanen Center, said electoral reform should be a central focus of anyone interested in good government.

“You can’t solve money in politics if you continue to have extremist-driven primaries. You can't solve gerrymandering if you continue to elect all legislators from single-winner districts,” Eberhard told Yahoo News.