Election Reforms?

From "The Trouble With Elections: Everything We Thought We Knew About Democracy is Wrong," Chapter 4 (entire chapter)

Note that this is an entire chapter (over 10,000 words) all about the limits of election reforms in the United States. I am unsure whether this should be included in the final version of the book. Your feedback is welcome.

With the modern assumption that elections are the very essence of democracy, each specific electoral problem engenders a reform proposal (or menu of reforms) intended to remedy it. Elections themselves, however, are never questioned. Before considering a radical concept such as sortition, it is prudent to first examine whether the failings of American “democracy” can be fixed using any of these commonly proposed solutions. In this chapter I will discuss several of the most widely recognized specific problems with the American election process, present some corresponding reforms that have been proposed, and examine their likely efficacy (or lack thereof). While many reforms certainly have some merit, we will see how they all fall woefully short of fulfilling the democratic vision.

There are a profusion of reforms that have been proposed to improve the way Congress and state legislative chambers are elected. Many of these reforms also deal with changing the incentives created by the way elections are conducted so as to affect the functioning of legislative bodies. The inventory below is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather illustrative. However, there is one class of election reform that is arguably so much more significant, that it will get a chapter of its own. The chapter after this one will deal with voting methods and proportional representation.

TERM LIMITS

Incumbents who seek re-election almost always win. Of course, a few incumbents who have been caught in scandal, or have become unpopular for other reasons, may choose not to run again in order to avoid suffering the embarrassment of defeat. It is common for 98 percent of members of Congress who seek re-election to succeed. On occasion there are elections in which news analysts talk of a “red wave” or a “blue wave,” with many incumbents being turned out and the House or Senate changing partisan majorities. But such “sea change” elections, such as those in 2012 and 2018, still typically see approximately 90 percent of incumbents who run being re-elected. 

In some cases, re-elections maintain family dynasties. One striking example comes from Michigan, where John D. Dingel, Sr. served as the Representative in Congress from 1933 to 1955, and was succeeded by his son, John Dingell, Jr. who served the next 60 years from 1955 until announcing his retirement in 2014, as his second wife, Debbie Dingell who is 28 years his junior, won the primary to “inherit” the safe seat. Congresswoman Debbie Dingel has continued the dynasty, repeatedly winning re-elections on her own. The longevity in office of elected representatives is sometimes blamed for corruption, a distancing from average citizens, and a counter-productive focus on re-election. A few reforms, such as the option to vote for “none of the above,” or term limits, have been offered in response. 

Term limits were historically seen as a useful defense against tyranny at the time of the nation’s founding. The 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution mandated term limits, as did the Articles of Confederation. The Federal Constitution contained no term limits (though a presidential term limit was added by the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment in 1951). Term limits for state legislators were adopted in over a dozen states and in many local jurisdictions towards the end of the twentieth century. Some states attempted to impose term limits on their members of Congress. Some hoped this would lead to a federal change, like the proposal for direct election of U.S. Senators in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century. In the original Constitution U.S. Senators were elected by the various state legislatures. The idea of allowing direct popular election of U.S. Senators got a boost from state level efforts, in which non-binding primaries provided guidance to legislative appointment of U.S. Senators (and which was eventually added as amendment 17 of the U.S. Constitution in 1913). However, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 1995 (U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton) that state-imposed term limits on members of Congress are unconstitutional, and proposals for a new constitutional amendment have not caught on. 

Term limits at the level of the state offices may reduce the long-term concentration of power, and thus the potential for abuse. On the other hand, an unintended negative repercussion of term limits could be the diminution of the supposed after-the-fact sanctioning power of voters to hold re-election-seeking incumbents accountable with the reward of re-election or the punishment of refusing to re-elect them. An incumbent with no concern about re-election is free to pursue any policy at all, whether beneficial or harmful to constituents. Whether this accountability tool is real or merely theoretical, due to low voter awareness of incumbent behavior, is open to debate and is discussed more thoroughly elsewhere in this book. Researchers Michael Smart and Daniel Sturm found that this perceived diminution of accountability indeed allows incumbents to promote their sincere preferences, for good or for ill. (Smart and Sturm 2013) In a study by Yacov Tsur, entitled “Political tenure, term limits and corruption,” the author found that the more rapid turnover resulting from term limits affected

“the learning curve of incumbents in conducting their regular task (public goods provision) and the learning curve of opportunistic incumbents in becoming effective embezzlers. I find that stricter term limits increase the frequency of corruption incidents but reduce the expected cost per incident.” (Tsur 2022)

Not quite the result hoped for. Term limits may promote a sort of mentoring process for both good and ill as term-limited incumbents promote potential successors and in turn simply seek another, often higher, office for themselves. Opponents of term limits also argue that they merely strengthen, in relative terms, the  power of the permanent bureaucracy. 

One argument for term limits is the notion that it would reduce the tendency for “over-spending” by legislators seeking to “bring home the bacon” to their districts to buy votes for their re-election. However, there is no evidence of this effect. A study by H. Abbie Erler entitled “Legislative Term Limits and State Spending,” reported that term-limited states actually tend to spend more than other states. (Erler 2007) While term limits remain popular with voters in the states that have enacted them, studies have shown that term limits do not increase the number of women, nor generate a more representative body over all. (Carroll 2001) 

IMPROVING VOTER TURNOUT - Part 1

As noted above, the United States has some of the poorest voter turnout rates in the world. Typically between 10 and 20 percent of eligible people vote in local elections (and in many municipal elections it drops into single digit percentages), around 40 percent vote in congressional election years, and only in presidential years is it common for over half of the eligible people to cast ballots. The uniquely powerful emotional reactions to the Trump presidency prompted significantly higher turnout in 2020 than in recent presidential elections, with roughly two thirds of eligible adults casting ballots. Interestingly, a Pew Research Center study examining turnout in 2018, 2020, and 2022 found that only 37% of adults are regular voters who voted in all three of those elections. (Hartig et al. 2023)

One usual suspect for causing unrepresentative legislatures is the fact that some segments of society, low-income and young people for example, register and vote at significantly lower rates than richer and older voters. The Pew Research Center compared two groups of Americans; those they identify as “voters,” and those they label “non-voters,” based on whether they were likely or unlikely to vote in the 2010 Congressional elections. They reported that 11 percent of voters are young (18-29 year-olds), but 34 percent of non-voters are. Also, 19 percent of voters have family incomes under $30,000, while 43 percent of non-voters are in that lower-income category. (Rosentiel 2020)

The reform strategies resulting from this voter discrepancy seek to make registration and voting easier, and include same-day voter registration, extending the voting period, making election day a holiday, voting by mail, etc. A crucial question is whether higher participation among low-income citizens, for example, would change the kind of candidates they get to choose from to include more working class citizens, for example. In the vast majority of cases, candidates of both major parties are from the same race, income, class, etc. 

Various well-intentioned organizations such as the League of Women Voters, or Rock the Vote, not to mention partisan candidate campaigns seek to boost voter turnout. There are two related fronts in the campaign to increase voter turnout. One front is focused on increasing the pool of registered voters through voter registration reforms. The other seeks to motivate and ease participation by registered voters. 

Generally around  30 percent of the voting age population is unregistered. The percentage of unregistered adults is higher among racial minorities, the poor and young people. The 1993 “Motor-Voter Act” was an attempt to make registration more convenient by making registration available at state motor vehicle departments, at agencies that served low-income people, and through the mail. 1996 was the first presidential election under the Motor-Voter Act; turnout among the voting age population declined to a near record low of 49 percent. However, turnout is largely driven by campaign interest. The 1996 race between Bill Clinton, Bob Dole and Ross Perot may simply have failed to ignite sufficient enthusiasm. Researchers have been able to analyze the reform’s effects due to “natural experiment” opportunities that resulted from the fact that different states enacted active motor-voter provisions in different years (many adopted such reforms prior to the Federal law). By comparing voter registration and voter turnout in these different states, researchers such as Joseph Lawler at the University of Notre Dame found a slight positive effect on both registration and turnout, especially among lower-income citizens, in presidential elections (about a 3.5 percentage point bump in overall turnout). (Lawler 2008) 

Ironically, Lawler also found a slight negative impact from the Motor-Voter Act reforms on turnout in non-presidential elections. I can speculate on reasons for this based on my own campaign experience through this period. A major campaign tactic we used was door-to-door voter registration drives, in which we were able to provide a “service” to potential voters and collect their phone numbers for subsequent voter phone calls and get-out-the-vote efforts. If a person answering the door was already registered (due to Motor-Voter), the level of interaction and information gathering was reduced. In a relatively low-turnout municipal or state election campaign get-out-the-vote efforts can be decisive. Overall, while the Motor-Voter Act may have increased voter registration somewhat, its impact has been disappointing.

A number of states have gone a bit further than the original motor-voter requirements and adopted automatic voter registration (AVR). When interacting with state agencies, the default is registering the person to vote (or updating their address), unless they proactively opt out. In recent years reformers have often focused on election day registration (EDR), also called “same day registration,” which allows voters to register when they show up at the polls to vote, rather than in advance as in most states. The thinking is, that many citizens only get interested in an election during the final days, when it is too late to register in most states. A few states have had EDR in place for many years, including Minnesota and Maine. One state, North Dakota, simply doesn’t bother to register voters at all. Prior to the twentieth century, most states had no system of voter registration; prospective voters simply showed up with appropriate evidence or witnesses that could vouch for their residence and eligibility. Between 1870 and World War I, most states introduced some sort of registration law, frequently applicable only to residents of larger cities. While the ostensible reason was to prevent fraud,  Alexander Keyssar, who has written the definitive work on the history of voting in America suggests the motivation was frequently partisan advantage and to restrict participation by immigrants or former slaves and their descendants. (Keyssar 2000) A similar controversy has arisen over voter ID anti-fraud/voter suppression (take your pick) efforts in many states during the first decades of the twenty first century.

Election day registration does seem to work well in the states that use it, and at minimal additional administrative cost. Advocates of this reform point out that most of the states with EDR have among the highest rates of voter participation. Of course correlation does not prove causation. Colorado is also generally among the top states, and it does not have EDR, while Idaho and Wyoming, which later enacted EDR, were in the bottom half of states in terms of turnout in 2012. Researchers who have attempted to control for various factors and examine changes within states before and after adoption of EDR generally agree that the reform has a small positive effect on turnout (perhaps three percentage points), similar to that of the Voter-Motor Act reforms. However, contrary to a common assumption that EDR would tend to favor voters likely to vote Democratic (for example low-income renters who change addresses more frequently), a study in Wisconsin showed that, in that state at least, it actually advantaged Republican candidacies by about four to six percentage points. (Neiheisel 2010) A more ambitious reform that is gaining some interest in the U.S. would make universal registration a government obligation. The state would have to assure that all eligible citizens are on the registration list at their current addresses. Advocates in the U.S. frequently refer to this reform as “voter registration modernization,” or “permanent voter registration.” Universal registration is the norm in nearly every other developed nation with an elective government system. The governments integrate post office address information with tax, driver and other databases to assure that all eligible citizens are registered, with opportunities for people to correct errors that may occur. In 2015 Oregon and California became the first states to move in this direction, making registration automatic when people use the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

VOTER TURNOUT - Part 2

However, even if registered, many prospective voters fail to vote in most or all elections. So in addition to making registration either more convenient or automatic, many reformers focus on making voting itself more convenient. These reform proposals include making election day a holiday; moving the election from Tuesday to the weekend; allowing voters to vote during an extended period so that “election day” is merely a cutoff; and most sweeping of all, universal vote by mail (VBM) in which ballots are mailed to all registered voters in a jurisdiction. Oregon led the way with this last approach, conducting all elections exclusively by mail, with all “active electors” (those who have voted within the past five years) being mailed a ballot. While this has a modest positive impact on turnout in Oregon’s federal elections (with Oregon consistently ranking in the top quarter of all states), the boost is more substantial in county elections, where turnout is typically much smaller. The Covid-19 pandemic made vote by mail, including ballot drop-off boxes, the standard rather than the exception in many jurisdictions. Researchers found that universal vote by mail resulted in only about a 2% increase in voter turnout, however. (Thompson et al 2022)

At the extreme end of the spectrum are a few countries like Australia, which go one step further, having both universal registration combined with mandatory voting. A failure to cast a ballot can result in a fine (though this can be waived if the voter provides a reasonable explanation for missing the election). 

It is now apparent that institutional barriers to registering and to voting are almost peripheral to the real causes of low voter participation in the U.S. Curtis Gans, director of The Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, was widely considered to be the “go to guy” for issues related to voter turnout in the U.S. In a press release accompanying his analysis of election turnout in the 2008 presidential election he concluded that the participation problem is, at heart, not procedural but motivational. In that Nov. 6, 2008 press release about the limits of “convenience voting” measures, Gans wrote:

“It has always been abundantly clear that, after four decades of making it easier to vote and having turnout decline (among most groups) except for elections driven by fear and anger, the central issue governing turnout is not procedure but motivation.” (Gans 2008)

Efforts to increase participation by “good government” groups such as the League of Women Voters often hinge on an appeal to community civic mindedness (“your vote is important for democracy”), while those of groups like Rock The Vote, or ethnic identity groups are often based on self-interest (“if you don’t vote the politicians will ignore your needs.”) Candidate-centered get-out-the-vote efforts frequently use fear and demonization of opponents. Without all of these efforts, voter turnout would doubtlessly be even worse than it is, but the attempts still fall far short of the objective. But voter participation rates, by themselves, tell us very little about the strength of a democracy. Some dictatorships orchestrate sham elections with near 100 percent turnout. 

In their book, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote: And Why Politicians Want It That Way, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward consider factors causing voter demobilization and alienation.

“The much discussed and debated decline of party organization (at least in the Democratic party), the flood of special interest money pouring into campaigns, the growing presence of the K Street lobbyists, the gap between issues Americans say are important and national legislative agenda, the increasing complexity of policy initiatives riddled with pork barrel giveaways – all of these probably contribute to growing public cynicism. Perhaps the rise of neoliberalism as the current ideological orthodoxy also turns people away from electoral politics, if only because it argues the futility of government intervention in a world dominated by markets, especially international markets. In short, the political parties and their interest-group allies are constructing a political environment that is demobilizing the American electorate, lowered barriers notwithstanding.” (Piven and Cloward 2000, 268)

While states which have adopted such reforms do have somewhat higher turnout, the effect is modest, and there is little evidence that it actually results in more representative legislatures. 

Opponents of simplifying voting access often raise concerns about voter fraud, though there is no evidence that voter fraud is a significant problem. Another concern, though rarely spoken out loud, is the idea that current non-voters are less well informed, and arguably less fit for participation. Research consistently shows that non-voters are far less likely to follow news about candidates and public affairs than are regular voters. But with media coverage of elections devoted to the horse race aspect of politics and sound bites, rather than policy substance, exactly what value following such news is not clear. This topic will be examined closely later in this book. Henry Thoreau wrote

“What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.” (Thoreau [1863] 1998, 89)

The following of political news as presented in the American media and on the Internet may simply serve to reinforce pre-existing biases, rather than genuinely inform. 

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM - Part 1

Campaign finance reform is another widely proposed remedy for our unrepresentative legislatures. In a nutshell, it takes resources to run winning campaigns, and only certain sorts of people have ready access to the necessary money. This restricted pool of potential “serious” candidates is a fundamental reason legislatures are so unlike the population they represent. However, that crucial dynamic is generally overshadowed in the public’s mind by the corrupting potential of the fact that politicians have a powerful incentive to cater to monied interests that can fund their campaigns. This corruption is well known in general terms, though the countless specific examples are essentially ignored or unknown by voters. A typical explanation of this by political scientists Bernard Manin, Adam Przeworski, and Susan C. Stokes, goes:

“Because voters do not care about policies that have only a small impact on their welfare, politicians can sell policies to interest groups that inflict only a small cost on each individual voter but which concentrate benefits on the particular interest groups and spend on electioneering the resources contributed by interest groups in exchange for these policies.” (Przeworski, Stokes, and Manin 1999)

Voters may generally despise the influence of money in politics, but relatively few make an active effort to address it.

 If the corruption of the campaign system is ever fixed, I expect people will look back at this time with amazement at how any population put up with this legalized bribery.  Since political advocacy is protected speech under the first amendment, efforts to limit campaign spending (at least nominally “independent” expenditures not directed by any candidate) would likely require a constitutional amendment. One failed approach to campaign finance reform was focused on disclosure, based on the adage that “sunshine is the best disinfectant.” If voters only knew who particular politicians were beholden to, they could avoid the more disreputable ones. However, experience has shown that massive campaign spending can trump the relatively minor embarrassment of such disclosures. The more significant campaign finance reform proposals (short of a constitutional amendment) offer some form of public financing (in exchange for swearing off large donations), freeing politicians from going hat in hand to big money interests. There are many variants, requiring candidates to raise a large number of small qualifying contributions (as in Maine) or providing all adult citizens with “democracy vouchers” that they can give to candidates of their choice (as proposed by reformers such as Larry Lessig). The voucher scheme would, of course, still tend to favor candidates who have access to enough money or celebrity to be well known prior to launching a campaign, though it could reduce the importance of wealthy backers and theoretically allow for a somewhat wider range of candidates.

The more credible hope for public campaign financing is not how it affects election results, but its impact before and after the election. Prior to an election, especially for an open seat, the ability to raise large amounts of money is seen as a de facto “wealth primary.” A candidate who can’t raise a substantial war chest is not deemed to be “serious” by the media or other potential donors. Citizens who might make superb legislators never seriously consider running if they can’t access the money. Depending on how high the hurdle to qualify for public financing is, candidates would not need to be tied to wealth as a prerequisite for running a serious campaign. Indeed a study of the effects of the Maine and Arizona public financing (the first two states to enact such laws for legislative races) found that there were fewer uncontested races in which incumbents had no opponent. (Malhotra 2008) A subsequent study found that “the availability of public financing among all US state legislatures between 1976 and 2018 had a small positive effect on the number of candidates running for office,” though the author notes the increase was so small that it was not statistically significant. (Mancinelli 2022) 

There is no evidence, however, that public financing results in more representative chambers. An analysis was done of 

“public financing programs in Arizona, Connecticut, and Maine to causally identify the effect of a legislator's funding status on how closely she represents constituent preferences. Using multiple identification strategies, we show that candidates who exclusively use public campaign financing are more extreme and less representative of their districts than nonpublicly financed candidates.” (Kilborn and Vishwanath 2021)

An international study found that public financing of political campaigns

“disproportionately aids radical-right parties. This is a counter-intuitive result, as public financing of elections has recently become an important issue for those on the political left as a method to restore power to the majority. Rather, it seems to aid not only those on the right, but those on the political fringe. Through a cross-national analysis of 328 lower-house elections in 20 advanced democracies, I demonstrate that public financing serves to significantly increase vote-share of the radical-right.” (Bichay 2020)

Interestingly, however, the study also found that

“these same effects are not shared by extreme-left parties. Due to important and unique characteristics of far-right parties, public campaign financing seems to have a disproportionate and exclusive effect on them.”

Most of these countries use some form of proportional representation voting method, so the relevance of this finding in the United States is questionable.

After the election, rather than corruptly rewarding big donors, or at the very least preferentially taking their calls and input, legislators elected with public financing would presumably have more time to engage with ordinary constituents. Former U.S. Senator Ernest Hollings in a 2006 Washington Post opinion piece estimated that nearly one third of a Senator’s time is spent fund-raising. (Hollings 2006) Since it is illegal to use government offices for fund-raising, both major parties maintain offices with phones nearby and encourage members of Congress to spend approximately 30 hours per week fund-raising, either “dialing for dollars,” or traveling to fund-raising events. Publicly financed legislators wouldn’t have to spend a huge percentage of their time raising money for the next campaign. 

But even public financing is no panacea when it comes to forming a legislature that is genuinely representative of the population.  Mitchell Kilborn, studied this issue and writes,

“Using occupational data on state legislative candidates in public financing state Connecticut and two paired control states to execute a difference in difference analysis, I demonstrate that when public financing is available, fewer low SES [socio-economic status] candidates run for state legislative office, and those who do run are not more likely to win and are less likely to utilize public financing.” (Kilborn 2018)

Fixing the money problem alone might have some effect, but would not remedy the countless other biases that are ubiquitous in American legislative elections, such as gender, and age distortions. Data collected by the National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL) a few years ago showed that 76 percent of state legislators were male and 72 percent were over 50 years old.

One might hope that more working class people would become legislators if access to big money were removed as a prerequisite, but that, unfortunately, does not appear to be the case. In Maine, which has led the nation on public campaign finance, over 80 percent of legislators ran using public financing. But NCSL data showed that Maine’s legislators are no more likely to have working class occupations than legislators from similar New England states.  Although census data indicates less than one third of Maine’s workforce is in higher income occupations, NCSL data showed that, around two thirds of Maine’s working-age legislators come from this class (there is no previous occupation information for legislators who are retired). Public financing of election campaigns in Maine has also shown no impact on gender bias. The state does not stand out in terms of the number of female representatives either, and males still predominate. 

Approaching the same subject from another direction, the winners of State House races in my small state of Vermont often spend less than a thousand dollars. Money is simply not a substantial impediment to running a low-level winning campaign in Vermont. Yet, as I noted earlier, when I examined the housing status of my fellow Representatives, I found an almost total absence of renters. This probably reflects a built-in bias in regards to what type of people are willing to run for office in terms of such things as self-confidence, class, and employment situation (affording them the ability to take time off work for campaigning, for example). Making public campaign funds available would probably make no difference to most people. Taking time off from work in order to campaign would still be unaffordable for most people, even if they had the desire. And no public campaign finance reform proposal includes stipends for living expenses during the campaign. Using campaign money for such purposes is expressly illegal under all such proposals.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM - Part 2

 All legislators, who are being honest, admit that large contributors are, at a minimum, buying access. Howard Dean, a Governor of Vermont when I was a legislator, who revamped his image from a conservative to a liberal or progressive when he sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, was frank about the role of money. After leaving his position as Chair of the Democratic National Committee he went to work for the lobbying firm McKenna, Long & Aldridge. In a presentation he said:

“Even without the Citizens United decision, I’ve advised a lot of clients in the industries that I usually end up working with, which are mostly healthcare industries, not to give any money to either side, or if you do, give it to both sides because politicians really don’t know much about the issues. They really don’t. But believe me, they remember who gave money and they remember those ads.” (Dean 2012)

The Supreme Court’s opening the flood gates through its Citizens United ruling, only exacerbated an already extreme problem. In that decision the Court stated that even if large contributions or expenditures on behalf of candidates effectively bought general favor and access, "ingratiation and access, …are not corruption." The Court’s subsequent 2014 McCutcheon decision extended the Court’s view that large campaign contributions to legislators, even though they may garner “influence over or access to” legislators are Constitutionally protected free speech, asserting that anything less than quid pro quo bribery (“this check is for your vote in favor of that amendment”) cannot be prohibited by law.

With millions of dollars being spent in Congressional campaigns, it might seem reasonable to assume that seats are essentially being bought. After all, 95 percent of Congressional races are won by the candidate who spends the most money. Many reformers (myself included) have advocated public financing of political campaigns.¹  If candidates have roughly equal amounts of money, the hope is this can help level the playing field. However, the Supreme Court has also ruled that an attempt to “level the playing field” by, for example, providing additional funds to a publicly financed candidates if they are being dramatically outspent by a privately financed opponent, as some states attempted, is unconstitutional.

But the dynamics of campaign finance are far more convoluted than generally recognized. Causes and effects are often the opposite of what people assume. Indeed, Fred McChesney of Harvard in his book, Money for Nothing: Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion, has argued that rather than merely constituting legalized bribery on the part of special interests, the campaign finance system may be better described as a system of extortion by politicians who can threaten to harm a group’s interests if not paid off. We are so accustomed to the narrative of manipulative fat cats buying politicians, that it is hard to recognize the flip side where manipulative politicians threaten fat cats with punitive laws if they don’t pony up contributions. This isn’t an “either/or” situation — both scenarios may be accurate in different cases, and both are completely unacceptable.

But the more common cause-and-effect reversal has to do with the widespread belief that, since the candidate who spends the most money almost always wins, this must show that these candidates are effectively buying their offices. While money can be decisive in open-seat primaries and non-partisan races (discussed below), the level of campaign spending by incumbents in Congressional general elections is nearly irrelevant to the determination of the winner. Steven Levitt, co-author of the entertaining book on unexpected economics, Freakonomics, studied the impact of campaign spending on election outcomes using hard data rather than “common sense” or anecdotes. The difficulty is to compare apples to apples, since different elections have different candidates, and it would seem impossible to re-run a given election, but with different spending levels. He was able to control for the unmanageable factors such as candidate quality by looking at a thousand federal races in which the same two candidates faced each other in different election years. In this way Levitt could focus in on the impact differential campaign spending may have had. He found that spending levels hardly mattered at all. A winning candidate could cut his spending in half and still win with a decrease of only 1 percent of the vote. Likewise, a losing candidate could double his spending and pick up only about 1 percentage point. 

Yes, huge amounts of money flow to the candidates (generally incumbents) who are bound to win, but that does not mean this flow causes their victories. It is inaccurate to suggest candidates “buy” elections through the campaign finance system. Rather, the candidates who are virtually assured victory in safe seats find it much easier to raise cash, and find money flowing into their campaign coffers, as moneyed-interests seek to buy access. The protection offered by safe seats is illustrated by the case of Congressman Charlie Rangel. With around a dozen charges of ethics violations (mostly financial) widely reported in the press from 2008-2010, Rangel stepped down from his powerful chairmanship of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. However, in 2010 he won his safe seat (solidly Democratic New York City district) primary election with a majority, and went on to win in the general election with 80 percent of the vote. His formal ethics trial before an ethics subcommittee of Congress began on November 15, shortly after the election. He was found guilty on nearly all charges, and was censured (one step below expulsion). He went on in 2012 to be re-elected for his 22nd term, raising nearly $1.5 million, primarily from large special interests such as lobbyists, insurance companies, real estate, hospitals, securities and investments, and unions. [from Open Secrets website maybe don’t need a citation???]

FairVote: the Center for Voting and Democracy prepared reports every two years that predicted which party would win most Congressional elections more than a year prior to the election. These predictions were done without regard to campaign spending or fund-raising, voting records, or even who the eventual opponents would be, but simply by looking at how each of the districts had voted in past federal races. While there are some districts that are genuinely competitive and cannot be reliably predicted in this manner, they are a small minority. In 2006, for example, FairVote made predictions for 354 of the 435 Congressional races. In 2022 they made 349 high confidence projections (accounting for 80% of seats) and 435 overall projections. The 86-seat difference was possibly competitive races. They correctly predicted 347 (99.4%) of their high confidence projections. For the full House, they made 417 (95.8%) correct predictions. Since 1996, FairVote’s predictions have been correct more than 99 percent of the time. In fact, the reports even predicted the margin (from a squeaker to a landslide) of each of these victories accurately over 98 percent of the time. 

Even in the atypical 2010 Congressional elections, which saw an exceptional Republican swing, most districts were still uncompetitive. Nearly two thirds of Congressional races were won by landslide margins. Over 86 percent of the 390 incumbents who ran were re-elected (slightly down from the 94 percent-98 percent that is typical in most Congressional election cycles).

At the level of state legislatures also, the winner of most general elections are obvious well in advance, even before campaign fund-raising is considered. Between 35 percent and 40 percent of state legislative races typically have only one of the major parties fielding a candidate, because those races are so “in-the-bag” that they are considered a waste of effort and resources by the other major party. The 2010 state legislative races were widely reported as a historic Republican rout. But even in this atypical election year, which saw far more legislative seats change party control than usual, the net change was just 11 percent, and most incumbents of both parties easily won re-election.  As usual, 36 percent of all races in 2010 had only one major party candidate.

Altogether, public financing may address the quasi-bribery corruption issue to a significant extent, and that is certainly important, but the evidence indicates it fails to significantly alter demographic unrepresentativeness. So, if  the plethora of gerrymandered safe-seats trumps campaign finance in determining winners, redistricting reform seems to be in order. 

 REDISTRICTING

 An almost universally acknowledged flaw with the American electoral system is rampant gerrymandering — the decennial redrawing of district boundaries for political advantage, and so-called “safe seats.” As a legislator and city councilor I participated in drawing and re-drawing district boundaries numerous times, and am well aware of how cleverly the party in control can stack the deck. The art of drawing favorable district lines has evolved from an art when the term was first coined in Massachusetts in 1812, to a science. Often, the resulting districts are oddly shaped, such as, what one critic called, the salamander-shaped district at the time of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry. 

While the re-drawing of district boundaries occurred from time to time, (such as when a state gained or lost a Congressional seat following the census), it was not until a series of United States Supreme Court rulings in the 1960’s  mandating that each seat within a legislative body (other than the U.S. Senate) must represent roughly the same number of residents (the “one person, one vote” principle), that this became a regular decennial practice everywhere. The standards for how re-districting should be done have evolved, and contain self-contradictory goals (e.g. compact, contiguous, uniting communities of common interest, respecting existing political jurisdictional boundaries, yet protecting voting strength of certain minorities.)

Some legislative districts abandon compactness entirely and are nominally contiguous by connecting specific population groups with narrow ribbons following Interstate corridors, so as not to include unwanted voters living between the desired population centers. But such “bizarre” districts aren’t always necessary in order to gerrymander. Take a look at the hypothetical distribution of voters who favor Party A and Party B in figure 1, and note that  three reasonable and fair-looking district plans can be drawn, with very different partisan results.

[illustration about here]

illustration not included

Sophisticated computer programs now allow layering all kinds of census, demographic, survey, and Internet-mined meta-data onto district maps in order to tailor districts to legislators’ re-election interests. The legislators, in effect, get to pick their voters rather than the voters getting to pick their legislators. As we will see in a later chapter, gerrymandering is almost a uniquely American problem tied to the fact that the U.S. primarily uses single-seat districts that elevate geographic representation above representation of other interests. John Stuart Mill, the most influential English philosopher of the nineteenth century, wrote in Considerations on Representative Government:

“I cannot see why the feelings and interests which arrange mankind according to localities should be the only ones thought worthy of being represented; or why people who have other feelings and interests, which they value more than they do their geographical ones, should be restricted to these as the sole principle of their political classification.” (Mill 1861)

Most modern elective governments use proportional representation with multiple seats per district, making district boundaries and gerrymandering non-issues.

While “gerrymandering” has a negative connotation, Since the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was adopted it has also been used as a tool for allowing the election of racial minorities, by creating “majority-minority districts.” Minorities that are geographically disperse are particularly discriminated against by this system. The voting Right Act only seeks to protect specific minorities. In the 1970’s when Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn was split to allow the creation of a majority African American district, effectively eliminating their previous ability to elect a Representative of their choice, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, Inc. v. Carey) that the Jews were not a protected group under the VRA. The Court rationalized that the Brooklyn Jews were “indirectly” or  virtually represented by white legislators elected from other districts, any way.

In 1986, in Thornburg v Gingles, the Court set out specific criteria for when a state should gerrymander, if necessary, in order to create majority-minority districts under the VRA. The three conditions that had to be present were: 

1) a minority group is large enough and lives closely enough together so that a relatively compact district in which the group constitutes a majority can be drawn;

2) the minority group has a history of political cohesiveness or voting as a group, and;

3) the white majority has a history of voting as a group sufficient to usually defeat the minority group’s preferred candidate.

This, in effect, means that minorities deserve the protection of their voting rights from “vote dilution” only if they happen to also live in segregated communities, such that the limited remedies that are convenient under the common single-seat, winner-take-all voting rules can be applied successfully. Minorities that are spread out geographically are just out of luck.  Alternative voting methods, such as cumulative voting, that can achieve proportional representation in multi-seat districts can protect against minority vote dilution, even among more dispersed populations, and have been used in numerous out-of-court settlements of VRA challenges — but the courts have been reluctant to order such solutions.

 One inevitable outcome of drawing boundaries that pack black voters within a given district (facilitating their election of an African American representative), is the “bleaching” of the surrounding districts creating multiple white-majority districts. This has had the unintended consequence of creating more white Republican-leaning districts, and under-representing Democratic voters in a state. Democratic legislators in several states have sought to crack apart such majority-minority districts, to spread the black Democratic voters among more districts, and thus increase the total number of Democrats elected, of whatever race. This “packing and cracking” dilemma has even united certain white Republican legislators with incumbent black Democratic legislators to maintain these racially gerrymandered districts.

However, in 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court undercut the use of gerrymandering to satisfy the VRA. In its ruling in Shaw v. Reno, the Court effectively decided that states may no longer use race as the primary factor when drawing maps, though partisan advantage is still on the table. Indeed, the vast majority of gerrymandering is all about partisan control and incumbent protection. With the Court throwing out the pre-clearance requirements of the VRA in 2013 in jurisdictions with a history of racial vote discrimination, many people worry that the days of the rest of the VRA may be numbered.

Arizona reformers passed a constitutional amendment in 2000 to eliminate gerrymandering using an independent redistricting commission. With legislators removed from the process of drawing their own district lines, and with lofty goals and guidelines, the hope was that elections would be more competitive. However, the elections under the new districts were even less competitive than before, with incumbents from both parties winning every single State Senate race in which they ran. In a study published in 2018, researchers evaluated

“whether maps drawn by independent commissions are more electorally competitive than those produced by party-controlled legislatures. … counter to expectations, we find that independent redistrictors produce virtually the same degree of insulation as plans devised in legislatures or by politician commissions. Overall, our results suggest caution in overhauling state redistricting institutions as a mechanism to increase electoral competition.” (Henderson, Hamel, and Goldzimer 2018)

Because like-minded people tend to live near each other (what author Bill Bishop and others refer to as “the big sort”), if Arizona were to elevate having competitive races as the top priority, they would have to give up other priorities such as compact districts that respect communities of interest, as well as risk a far less representative legislature. Other states have also pursued independent redistricting commissions since then, with Colorado amending its constitution in 2018 to establish a 12-member commission (four Democrats, four Republicans and four unaffiliated) to approve redistricting plans.

As final evidence that gerrymandering is not the root of unrepresentative legislatures, one need look no further than the U.S. Senate, whose district boundaries, state lines, never change, and thus cannot be gerrymandered. Gerrymandering cannot explain the Senate’s mal-representation. Competitive elections are seen as essential to voters’ ability to hold legislators accountable. It turns out that, while gerrymandering to create non-competitive districts is a slimy process, it also is not the core reason that we have non-representative legislatures.

REFORMING PRIMARIES

In most Congressional districts (with partisan safe-seats) the key election is the primary, rather than the general election. This is the stage at which campaign cash can be decisive. Voter turnout in primaries is a fraction of the already low turnout of general elections. In the 2012 primaries, overall turnout was only 15.9 percent of the voting-eligible population in the 45 states that held statewide primaries. And being a presidential election year, this was higher than in off-year primaries. But since most Congressional primaries are in safe-seat districts, only one party’s primary has much significance. Thus, as a crude estimate, 8 percent might participate in the relevant party primary, and if two candidates nearly split that vote, the candidate who is essentially assured of returning to Congress (and it is usually an incumbent) only needs support from about 4 percent of those eligible to vote. If there are more than two candidates in the primary, under plurality rules, that percentage can be even smaller.

There is a widespread perception of an increased polarization between Democratic and Republican legislators over recent decades. So-called “moderate Republicans” and “boll weevil Democrats” of the 1960s (when some Republican lawmakers were the left of some Democrats, and some Democrats were to the right of some Republicans) have disappeared. As noted previously, the extent of this legislative polarization is far more extreme than any polarization among the general public. One reason often cited for this trend in addition to gerrymandering is the party primary system of nomination. Since so few citizens vote in primary elections, relatively small factions can sway the outcome. Some incumbents feel obliged to placate the more extreme elements within their party in order to avoid a primary challenge. The influence of Tea-Party-Republicans, and more recently Trump-Republicans, and Black-Lives-Matter-Democrats are often linked to this factor.

Ironically the current primary system, which many blame for the nomination of extremist candidates, grew out of a reaction against the former party caucus nomination process. American antipathy towards parties developed, partially as a reaction against “smoke-filled rooms” where power brokers and party “bosses” decided who the candidates would be.  As with the 1913 adoption of the 17th amendment to the Constitution, which instituted direct election of U.S. Senators (instead of by state legislatures), in order to “open up the process” to average voters, at the beginning of the twentieth century one state after another enacted party primaries in lieu of caucuses or conventions of party stalwarts. This state take-over of what had previously be seen as prerogatives of private associations changed the nature of political parties.

In a series of cases,² many originating from Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down attempts by state Democratic Parties to exclude blacks from participating in their primaries, and established the legal theory that party primaries were an integral part of the governmental election process. Rather than being considered private associations, political parties effectively carried out a public function and were subject to Constitutional standards of government entities. But “opening up the process” has served to replace “smoke-filled room” insider strategic nominations with rational ignorance and expensive media manipulation.

With the widespread perception that there are fewer and fewer moderate “bridge-builders” who can form bi-partisan compromises within legislatures, some reformers have laid the blame for polarization on the primary nomination systems that tend to under-represent more moderate independent citizens. Some reformers have proposed changing the primary system, in the hopes of moderating these extremist influences. Advocates of reforms, such as “top-two” primaries, often cite polarization as a motivation for the reform. A top-two primary is an alternative to the “blanket primary” (which allowed any voter to pick candidates from different parties in different races in the primary) that the Courts have ruled were an unconstitutional violation of the association rights of political parties to select their own candidates. Like the blanket primary, the top-two primary sidesteps the notion that parties, as private associations, get to select their own candidates, and instead converts the initial primary into a first round of a general election, with the top two plurality leaders advancing to the general election. This is also called a “non-partisan open primary.” Under a top-two system it is possible that both candidates on the general election ballot will be from the same party, and it also virtually guarantees that no third party candidates will appear on the general election ballot. Alaska, California, Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington State currently use some variant of this system.³ In 2013, the California Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge from third party activists, stating that political parties have no constitutional right to access to the general election ballot, having relatively easy access to the open primary ballot.

A number of political scientists who have studied the impact of the top-two primary express doubt as to whether it will have any impact on reducing polarization. (Sides 2013) For example, surveys reveal, contrary to the common assumption, that there is almost no difference in terms of policy preferences between traditional primary voters and general election voters. The fact that the top-two primary advances plurality leaders (except in the Alaskan variant), may also undercut the prospects of second-preference compromise moderates. Indeed, political scientists who carefully examined the impact on polarization of California’s non-partisan redistricting commission combined with its top-two primary found that

“California’s electoral experiments did not bring their hoped-for effects. If anything, legislators strayed further from their district’s average voter in 2012.” (Kousser, Phillips, and Shor 2016)

Even if voters were more moderate than many of the candidates, another study of the 2012 California primary concluded that for the top-two reform to work, voters would need both access to fine-grained knowledge about various candidates within each party, and sufficient motivation to devote the needed time to deeply study candidate distinctions. There is no evidence voters employed either of these needed elements. (Ahler, Citrin, and Lenz. 2016) This is a manifestation of what economists call “rational ignorance,” and is a major theme throughout the rest of this book.

Some states today, including my home state of Vermont, have a less extreme form of “open primary,” in which registered voters, regardless of party loyalty, are allowed to vote in any single party primary. A national study conducted by a team of five political scientists, led by Eric McGhee, published in 2013 found that

“the openness of a primary election has little, if any, effect on the extremity of the politicians it produces.” (McGhee et al 2014)

Open primaries can lead to such mischief as supporting the weakest candidate in a primary of a party the voter never intends to support. The quintessential example of such mischief is the example of an elderly retired Vermont dairy farmer, Fred Tuttle. Tuttle was featured in a 1996 low-budget satirical movie entitled A Man With A Plan. He played the part of a character very much like himself, who ran for Congress. Reality imitated art when in 1998 Tuttle was convinced to run in the Republican U.S. Senate primary. Many Democratic and independent voters crossed over to vote in the Republican primary, laughing all the way, and Tuttle ended up defeating the multi-millionaire bona fide Republican (though recent Vermont immigrant), Jack McMullen, with 55 percent of the primary vote. After winning the primary, Tuttle withdrew and endorsed the Democratic incumbent, Patrick Leahy, leaving Republican voters with no choice in the general election.

Reform of the party presidential nomination system in the 1970s also nominally spread the nomination responsibility among primary voters, though this effectively served to concentrate it by shifting it from “party boss” insiders to the candidates and funders who could finance the most advertising spots. The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders was a rare exception to the general rule, by leveraging his novelty-derived celebrity status to draw a vast number of small contributions instead. It has been argued that Donald Trump used the same principle, using his own (distinctly different) celebrity status to leverage an estimated $5 billion in free media coverage. (Open Secrets 2016)

REFERENDUMS

One alternative reform that has gained renewed interest since the advent of the Internet, is the notion of direct democracy through referendums, whether traditional or over the Internet. Many advocates point to the long-time, and relatively successful use of referendums in Switzerland, and the more equivocal use by many U.S. states. A major complaint about referendums in states with ballot initiatives, is the big money and media domination of public debate and the low level of public understanding. While the Internet may ease the challenge of providing access to information (whether balanced or accurate at all), it can’t overcome the inertia of rational voter ignorance and widespread unwillingness of most people to spend the time necessary to become informed. Benjamin Barber, an advocate of participatory politics, points out that many of the criticism of referendums are hollow.

“They throw referendums at the people without providing adequate information, full debate, or prudent insulation from money and media pressures and then pillory them for their lack of judgment….But what general would shove rifles into the hands of civilians, hurry them off to battle, and then call them cowards when they are overrun by the enemy?” (Barber 2009, 154)

He distinguishes between mere masses and a citizenry.

“At the moment when ‘masses’ start deliberating, acting, sharing, and contributing they cease to be masses and become citizens. Only then do they ‘participate.’” (155)

In an upward spiral, participatory democracy needs citizens in order to exist, and it is participatory democracy that creates genuine citizens. Thus Barber proposes a steady evolution towards participatory democracy that would include national referendums as one element. In order to build confidence in referendums, he suggests a two-step process, requiring two affirmative votes perhaps six months apart, as a means of encouraging meaningful deliberation. Some technology enthusiasts even imagine a system of direct democracy that allowed all citizens to vote on all legislation through the Internet. While it is now technologically possible to overcome the logistical obstacles of scale,  this would be a disaster. Barber rightly dismisses such “mindless plebiscitary democrats,” as ignoring the lack of information and deliberation such instant votes entail. (289) Democracy must be more than the mere aggregation of individual off-the-cuff preferences.  

Oregon, which adopted initiative and referendum reform in 1902 as a result of the Populist and Progressive movements at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, recently added a new deliberative element using sortition. The Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review process draws a randomly selected group of ordinary citizens to review initiative ballot questions, and the state publishes their findings or recommendations in the state voter guide. An analysis of survey data following the 2010 and 2012 referendums found modest increases in feelings of political efficacy, with only around half of voters even being aware that the report of the lottery-selected review body was included in the voter guide, and fewer having read it. (Knobloch, Barthel, and Gastil. 2019) A similar proposal was put forward for a national system of deliberation by sortition and national referendum by former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel, in his book Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change, first written in 1971, and revised and updated in 2008. (Gravel [1971] 2008) A severe limitation of such proposals is that the deliberative portion is only advisory, and is readily swamped by paid advertising. 

As discussed earlier, control of the agenda is crucial, and initiative through petition is fundamentally different than a referendum determined by the authorities. Of course, here again money for hired signature gathering takes some of the shine off this image. One proposal under discussion by activists in California and elsewhere is to have lottery-selected citizens deciding what issues should go to referendum. This would have substantially more impact than the Oregon initiative review process. However, with thousands of public policy decisions being made at the national, state, regional and municipal level, referendums can only scratch the surface. Some sort of division of labor and delegations is essential.

In subsequent chapters I will examine the insurmountable obstacles of rational ignorance and lack of what philosopher Jeremy Bentham called “active aptitude” that are inherent in all mass politics. One of the features of smaller representative bodies, is that they provide opportunity to delve deeply into policy options and deliberate meaningfully. But just as importantly, it provides an incentive for its members to become informed, overcoming rational ignorance. Unlike a mass referendum, in the case of a representative body, the small numbers involved dramatically increase the likelihood that a given member’s participation may be decisive. Even if a decisive vote is unlikely, a member’s informed contributions in deliberation may swing a winning number of votes within the body.

MARKET ALTERNATIVE  

As one final stop in the consideration of reforming an electoral scheme, we should acknowledge an “end-run” that seeks to minimize the need for any such reform, by reducing the importance of government generally. Shifting as many responsibilities from government to markets is a “reform” promoted by libertarians that is intended to deal with the corruption of government (whether electoral or not). If corrupt government elites are going to direct the nation’s resources and pick winners and losers, the thinking goes, wouldn’t it be best to restrict the scope of those decisions, by moving as many societal decisions as possible out of government and into the market? They would rely on the invisible hand of the market (or hidden hand of a corporate oligopoly, as those on the left may fear), rather than the corrupt hand of politicians. Of course, this sentiment energized a decades-long deregulation effort, which is rife with its own forms of corruption. However, by utilizing the principle of one dollar one vote, rather than one person one vote, shifting traditionally public functions and decisions to the market (or boardrooms) is arguably a frontal attack on democracy itself, rather than merely government corruption. 

First it is important to acknowledge that observers as diverse as Adam Smith (the patron saint of capitalism) and Karl Marx (the patron saint of socialism) have agreed that civil government tends to serve the role of defending the interests of large property owners. Marx’s description of government in the Communist Manifesto as “but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie,” is well known. But Smith’s statement that “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all,” is less often quoted. Adam Smith noted the danger of letting business interests guide government policy. 

“The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures is always in some respects different from, and even often opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.” (Smith [1776] 1994, 230)

But removing government from the equation would not necessarily improve things, as markets, even theoretical perfect markets, have shortcomings. Political philosopher Michael Sandel of Harvard raises many troubling concerns in his book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, about the impacts of shifting from a market economy to a market society, where people with enough money can buy a spot at the head of any line. In order to preserve the concept of society and a common good, it is necessary that, in at least some realms, citizens are on an equal footing, regardless of wealth. 

Even if wealth was evenly distributed (and in the U.S. it is more unevenly distributed than in any other modern nation state), there are serious societal problems with such a heavy reliance on markets. The decisions we would make as consumers do not necessarily agree with the decisions we would make as citizens. Few Americans would favor the notion of building a Disneyland-like theme park inside the Grand Canyon, even though the market would likely show it to be a “good” decision as indicated by attendance and profits if it were built. Market decisions reflect opportunities for profit-making on the part of those who control and have access to capital. But many of the most important decisions we make need to have a broader perspective and be held above the profit motive. 

Recent research raises yet another concern about substituting market mechanisms for non-market or democratic choice. Economists point out that markets allow individuals in a mass society, who don’t know each other, and thus have no basis for trust, to never the less work or make trade agreements to their mutual benefit. However, psychologists and economists have concluded that in many circumstances, markets promote amoral, if not immoral decision-making. Economists Armin Falk from the University of Bonn and Nora Szech from the University of Bamberg, showed in an experiment that markets erode moral concerns. “Our results show that market participants violate their own moral standards,” Prof. Falk told a reporter. “To study immoral outcomes, we studied whether people are willing to harm a third party in exchange to [for] receiving money.” (Science X 2013) The experiment had to do with whether participants would choose to save the life of a “surplus” lab mouse that was otherwise destined to be killed. While some participants always refrained from having their mouse killed, in the market condition, where participants could make or accept token financial offers to kill or spare the life of a mouse, a far smaller percentage of participants were willing to save their mouse. Markets streamline decision-making, reducing or eliminating non-financial considerations. “In markets, people face several mechanisms that may lower their feelings of guilt and responsibility,” noted Prof. Szech. The notion that “if I don’t buy or sell, someone else will,” alleviates feelings of guilt.  Since many political decisions have moral ramifications, there is a danger in transforming these into simple market questions. 

This is not a simple issue, and deserves an entire book, rather than the few paragraphs I devote to it here. But, for our purposes, I just need to raise a warning flag that a faith in market solutions to poor representation is not a workable solution. While reasonable people of good will can disagree about the optimal extent and role for markets in society, even the most die-hard libertarians will agree that some important functions must be carried out by government. So, the question remains, who should make government decisions that are not relegated to markets?