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

I evaluate the various prescriptions for electoral reform. In the process, I borrow from modern medicine’s holistic approach, weighing how each reform would interact with the other prescribed changes to elections and how together the best of the reforms would address what is really making American elections “sick.” I also take into consideration as much as possible the trade-offs and political costs of the treatments.

The process starts with cataloging the symptoms of the electoral illness in chapter 1. This is followed by a diagnosis of the illness afflicting U.S. elections and the causes of that illness in chapters 2 and 3. Then the subsequent chapters sort through the various remedies (and offer a few new ones) organized around the major causes of the illness—the state of the news media, the institutional structure of elections, the behavior of political parties and candidates, the laws governing elections, and habits of the public itself. The concluding chapter draws together the remedies that survive the analysis into an overall prescription for restoring health and vigor to U.S. elections and the democracy that depends on them.