[EL] Rick Pildes Guest Post

[Pildes, Rick]

I support ranked-choice voting in certain kinds of elections, particularly for a single officeholder (Ned Foley's idea that States should use it in presidential elections is a good one).

I have been more skeptical about using MMDs and RCV when electing members of Congress.  Take a State like NC, which might be carved up into three regions for MMDs; the regions would elect 4, 4, and 5 candidates.  So we would have 8-10 candidates running in a general election, across a third of the State, with voters having to rank them.  My concerns are that this would raise the cost of elections; demand more of voters regarding information than is reasonable to expect; would leave voters without feeling they had a representative who was "their" person.  I think a better approach, if we are going to think outside the box this far, is the hybrid German system, in which voter elect individual representatives from districts but there is also a party-based vote, and the overall representation reflects the correct PR outcome.

But none of these changes are going to happen, certainly not for the 2020 round.  So for that, I still will focus on IRCs.

Best,  
Rick

Richard H. Pildes
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law
NYU School of Law
40 Washington Sq. So.
NYC, NY 10012
212 998-6377

-----Original Message-----
From: Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Steven John Mulroy (smulroy)
Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2019 3:50 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Rick Pildes Guest Post

Rick Pildes does a good job explaining the practical tensions between partisan fairness and competitiveness, and between both and traditional districting criteria like compactness, contiguity, respect for political subdivision boundaries, and "communities of interest" (whatever that means). In my recent book Rethinking US Election Law, I argue that these tensions are inherent and irreconcilable, and reveal a fundamental flaw in our single member district, winner take all system. Thus, we should not assume that the ultimate I hope I iremedy is in independent Redistricting commissions (or IRCs, as Pildes calls them) 

. Rather, we should consider proportional representation approaches using multi member districts and ranked choice voting.  They have many advantages beyond fixing the persistence of "natural gerrymanders" even with well intentioned IRC map-drawers.  There should be a new piece about this soon in The New Republic. 

I hope reformers disappointed by Rucho don't rush to judgment towards IRCs as a perceived best practice. 

> 

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