Saving American Elections: A Diagnosis and Prescription for a He ...

even a bit harmful; some are based on science, others merely on personal predilections. Indeed, a close reading of the list of proposed electoral reforms reveals a number of problems for those trying to make elections in the United States healthier. First, the sheer number of disjointed proposals vying for support makes it unlikely that anything will get done. Second, some of the remedies proposed contradict each other—for example, making the ballots easier to read and reducing the number of elections simplify the choice for voters while instant runoff voting and holding national referenda increase the complexity of voting. Third, the efficacy of some remedies is not supported by, or even goes against, the extant scientific research on elections—for example, full disclosure of campaign contributions or making absentee balloting easy. In the worst-case scenarios, reforms proposed sans an assessment of their effects can actually make things worse. Fourth, most of the remedies address only one part of the problem, such as holding a national primary for selecting the parties’ presidential nominees or free television time for candidates. Fifth, in addressing one part of the problem, some proposals (like the “Rock the Vote”–style campaigns) merely address the symptoms as opposed to the illness itself. And finally, in the discussion surrounding these remedies, there is usually little consideration of potential side effects that could worsen the state and condition of the American electoral system.

The hodgepodge of remedies that constitutes the current approach to electoral reform suggests that the state of electoral “medicine” has progressed to the point where the medical field was at the time of “Theodoric of York.”⁵ The practice of electoral reform at the start of the twenty-first century is too often carried out without a clear understanding of what actually ails the U.S. elections, with little knowledge or assessment of the impact of proposed remedies. In addition, the practice is rarely informed by science (in this case, the extant social science research on elections). In this book, I aim to address these shortcomings in the practice of electoral reform. To do so, I first develop a full diagnosis of what ails elections, a diagnosis that is based on the extensive social science research on elections. Then, using that diagnosis and relevant research,