The Conquest of Ballots

Jonah Martell lays out a vision of socialist electoral strategy.

In January 2018, the Democratic Socialists of America adopted an ambitious new electoral strategy. It denounced both the Republican and Democratic parties as “organs of the capitalist ruling class,” and declared that its goal was to build “independent socialist political power.” The resolution was a clear break from the strategy of DSA’s founder, Michael Harrington, who hoped to gradually realign the Democratic Party to the left.

However, the resolution did not call for DSA to reconstitute itself as an independent political party. It remained open to running candidates in Democratic primaries, and even to local chapters endorsing non-socialist politicians on a case-by-case basis. This flexible approach is helping DSA members win unprecedented electoral victories—most notably with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset in a New York congressional primary. But it also has its fair share of detractors who argue that any engagement with the Democratic Party is misguided and opportunistic.

Whether this assessment is accurate or not, DSA’s decision to avoid an all-out break with the Democrats has a rational basis. As the organization stated before its leftward shift, “the process and structure of American elections…[have] doomed third party efforts.” The United States has perhaps the most repressive electoral system in the developed world. Most states enforce draconian ballot access requirements on third party candidates and strictly regulate the organizational structure of political parties. Meanwhile, gerrymandering by both major parties has seated undemocratic legislatures, entrenched incumbent politicians, and made many elections uncompetitive.

Perhaps most importantly, nearly all American elections are based on plurality voting in single-member districts. This system creates the media-hyped “spoiler effect” in which marginal candidates draw voters away from one of the two major parties and unintentionally help the other. In 2000, the spoiler effect made an infamous contribution to George W. Bush’s presidential victory. More recently, it helped the vicious reactionary Paul LePage win two gubernatorial elections in Maine—once with less than 38% of the vote. Over time, the spoiler effect has frightened the public away from voting for third parties, contributing to their near-total marginalization.

Only extensive reforms can remove these obstacles to third party success, but the Republican and Democratic parties are both firmly invested in the existing political order and will never willingly change it. To most observers it seems like a hopeless situation, and even some socialists have called on the American Left to accept that we must work within the two-party system.

We should reject this defeatist outlook. The socialist project has always strived to “win the battle of democracy,” to achieve universal suffrage and other reforms that challenge the capitalist class. If our goal is to build a principled socialist movement with revolutionary ambitions, the very idea of two-party rule should be noxious to us and we must fight it tooth and nail. We need to conquer the ballot—to force a democratizing overhaul of the American electoral system.

And in Michigan, a grassroots campaign is showing us how.

The VNP Campaign

In December 2017, a Michigan activist group called Voters Not Politicians (VNP) announced that it had collected enough petition signatures to put a novel initiative on the ballot in November 2018. If it is passed, it will alter the state’s redistricting process by stripping the Republican-dominated legislature of its power to draw congressional and state legislative districts. Instead, redistricting will be conducted by an independent panel of citizen volunteers, selected by lot in a manner similar to juries. In a state like Michigan where gerrymandering is rampant, this would represent a groundbreaking democratic reform.

The success of the signature drive is particularly impressive because it was an all-volunteer campaign run on a shoestring budget, without a single paid petition circulator. Over 425,000 people have signed the initiative and polls indicate that a clear majority of Michigan voters support it. If they are given the chance, they will almost certainly pass the initiative—which is why its opponents, backed by the state’s Chamber of Commerce, fought bitterly to block it in the courts. In July this year, they lost, with the Michigan Supreme Court ruling that the measure would remain on the ballot in November.

Despite right-wing attempts at obstruction, the lessons of the VNP campaign are clear. Even with limited resources, grassroots organizers can use ballot initiatives to bypass establishment politicians, fight for electoral reforms, and win.

Eyes on the Prize

Twenty-four states, Washington, D.C., and countless local governments allow for some form of a citizen-led ballot initiative. If one group in Michigan could mount such an intriguing campaign, what could a national organization like DSA accomplish if it adopted a strategy for electoral overhaul through ballot initiatives? What kind of electoral reforms should socialists demand and which are the most important?

If we want to use ballot initiatives as a springboard for mass mobilization, we should emphasize broadly democratic reforms like the Michigan anti-gerrymandering measure. American voters on both the Left and Right are acutely aware of gerrymandering, and they universally hate it. They also hate the influence of corporate money in politics, so we should demand extensive public financing of elections to make races more egalitarian. If we tap into popular rage against the political elite, the public will increasingly view socialists not as a threat to democracy, but as its greatest champions. We could establish ourselves as a unique force willing to challenge both Republican and Democratic hacks, winning over a mass constituency not only from liberal demographic groups but also from traditionally conservative ones.

The same principle applies to reforms that more directly challenge the two-party system. Over 60% of Americans and 71% of Millennials feel that the United States needs a competitive third party. With their support, we should push initiatives to scrap unfair ballot access requirements and deregulate the structure of political parties. Ending plurality voting in single-member districts will be another crucial task. In state legislatures, we could implement proportional representation (PR), an electoral system that gives political parties representation directly tied to their percentage of the vote. Under PR, even single-digit support can often guarantee a party at least a few legislative seats. For a fledgling socialist group seeking a political foothold, this would be a godsend. There are many different types of PR—some of which would be more palatable to American voters than others—but all would represent an improvement over the current system.

At first glance, it might even seem possible to pass an initiative in a given state to have its members of Congress be elected with proportional representation. Nothing in the Constitution forbids a state from doing this. But sadly, federal law does: since 1967, it has mandated that all House representatives be elected in single-member districts. This means that at least in the beginning, our efforts to win proportional representation will have to focus on state legislatures and local governments.

Thankfully, federal law does not require that representatives be chosen by plurality vote. This opens up the possibility of an alternative federal-level reform: instant-runoff voting, which allows voters to rank multiple candidates in order of preference instead of choosing only one. If no candidate receives a clear majority vote, a series of simulated runoffs are conducted until one candidate emerges as the victor. Instant-runoff voting does not produce proportional representation, but it helps third-party candidates compete by largely eliminating the spoiler effect. Last year in Minneapolis, where instant runoff has been used for nearly a decade, Ginger Jentzen ran for city council on a Socialist Alternative ticket, with additional support from the local DSA chapter. She won 34% of the vote in a four-way race, with more people selecting her as their first choice than any other candidate. Jentzen did not win the election, but her performance was excellent when compared to the single-digit results of most American third party campaigns.

Working state by state, we could implement instant-runoff voting for both House and Senate elections. Just a few successful initiatives could have tremendous political implications: Florida and California both allow ballot initiatives, and together they account for almost 20% of the seats in the House of Representatives.

In summary, our electoral reform program should raise five key demands: citizen-controlled redistricting to counter gerrymandering, public financing of elections, elimination of restrictive ballot access laws, deregulation of political parties, and an end to plurality rule in single-member districts—which could entail proportional representation in state legislatures and instant runoff voting at the federal level. Taken individually, these reforms would be policy tweaks that any liberal technocrat could propose. But if we push them collectively, as part of a broader radical movement, they could revolutionize working-class politics and smash the two-party system forever.

The Perils on the Path

This initiative-based strategy is the most realistic path to electoral reform in the United States, but it would still present serious legal and financial challenges. Many states not only require a tremendous number of signatures for an initiative to qualify for the ballot, but also have distribution rules mandating that they are collected in many different counties or congressional districts. Some states only allow initiatives for constitutional amendments, while others only allow them for ordinary legislation. There are often requirements that each initiative address no more than one issue, and limits to the number of articles in the state’s constitution that they can change. In this daunting maze of regulations, signature drives alone can cost millions of dollars. Subsequent campaign expenditures often exceed $10 million.

These problems raise a vast array of strategic questions that could never be adequately explored in a single article:

• Which states should we target first?
• Should we push our reforms incrementally, or all at the same time?
• If we do push our reforms all at once, should they be placed on the ballot as individual initiatives, or be bundled together in a single package?
• How can we raise the funds necessary to mount credible campaigns?
• Can we always rely on volunteers as Voters Not Politicians did in Michigan, or will paid signature collectors sometimes be necessary?

There are no easy answers to these questions, but if DSA or another socialist organization chooses to adopt this strategy, it will have to grapple with them regardless. We will need a flexible approach that can be adapted to each state’s political context and regulatory limitations. Only two things seem clear: first, that we should generally gain experience organizing initiatives at the local level before we attempt them at the state level; and second, we cannot win electoral reform all by ourselves—we will need to find allies willing to provide additional support to our project. This may entail partnerships with a wide variety of existing third parties, as well as elements of organized labor. Coalitions of this type will not form overnight; it will take years of work to bring them together. We must maintain our independence every of the way, working closely with other organizations without compromising on our basic principles.

The initiative strategy also has geographic limits. Because only 24 states have an initiative process, in the other 26 our road to victory will be more complicated. To succeed, we will need to employ a wide variety of tactics. We should strive to win municipal-level electoral reforms in every city, since even small local breakthroughs will help us gain momentum. We should also be willing to run socialist candidates in the primaries of both major parties, and use these campaigns to publicly confront politicians who reject electoral reform. Hopefully these efforts, combined with victories in states that do allow ballot initiatives, will cement popular enthusiasm for our reform program. The tide of public opinion would force politicians in states without initiatives to give way or face primary challenges, electoral defeats, mass protest, and constant upheaval.

In areas where our movement is strong and the Democrats are politically dominant, we could also use the spoiler effect to our advantage. Far ahead of a given election, we could publicly announce a plan to run our candidates on an independent socialist ticket, even if it splits the left-liberal vote. Democrats would receive a clear warning: pass electoral reforms before the election arrives, or face the natural consequences of plurality voting. If they ignored our warning and then lost to Republican candidates, we would not shoulder the blame. Instead, we would remind the public that the Democrats had a chance to block the Republican victory and refused. Disillusioned liberal voters would radicalize and break with the Democratic Party, benefiting socialists in the long run despite the short-term electoral consequences.

Beating Democrats with the “spoiler stick” will not work everywhere, and it has considerable limitations. It could bring an end to the plurality system that produces vote-splitting, but it would not win more transformative changes like proportional representation. Even so, the tactic could energize our movement and force our demands onto the political agenda if we learn to use it strategically.

Elements of the spoiler stick tactic have already worked in the real world. In Maine, Democrats grew tired of the constant vote-splitting that put Paul LePage in power and realized that there was only one way to eliminate it. They backed a ballot measure to implement instant-runoff voting in nearly all of the state’s elections, and in 2016, it passed with 52% of the vote. It was the first statewide law to abolish plurality voting—and an encouraging sign that initiatives can create a democratic mandate for electoral reform.

But the initiative effort in Maine also illustrates the greatest obstacle to electoral reform: capitalist sabotage. Despite the clear majority support for the initiative, Maine Republicans have staunchly opposed instant-runoff voting, which led the state’s Supreme Court to issue a nonbinding opinion in 2017 claiming that most of the initiative’s provisions are unconstitutional. This opinion gave members of the state legislature, including some wary Democrats, an excuse to pass a bill that effectively repealed the initiative. Only another initiative, signed by over 80,000 people, was able to block this bill by subjecting it to a veto referendum at the state’s recent primary elections. On June 12th, Maine voters decided once again to save instant runoff—but the court opinion has ensured that it will only be used in the state’s federal elections.

Reform efforts in other parts of the country have been met with similar obstruction. In 2008, 65% of Sante Fe, NM voters passed an initiative for instant-runoff voting in their local elections. The city government responded by simply ignoring them, with the Democratic mayor even claiming that they “voted for the concept…without understanding what it meant.” Local officials dragged their feet on the initiative for years, refusing to implement it until an activist group sued and the New Mexico Supreme Court ordered them to back down. In March this year, Sante Fe voters used the new system for the first time—after waiting for a decade.

From Michigan to Maine

Socialists can anticipate all of these pitfalls and take steps to address them. We can write our reforms carefully to minimize legal obstruction, promote them effectively so that voters overwhelmingly support them, and sue whenever officials refuse to implement them. But even if we make all the right decisions, there is no way around it: electoral reform will face formidable opposition from political elites. Occasionally we may wring concessions from both parties of capital, but in general, they will unite in bitter hostility to any movement for increased democracy—especially if it is championed by the radical left.

The conquest of ballots will not be bipartisan. Every step of the way it will bring conflict, and if we want to win, we can’t shy away from it. Instead, we must embrace the battle of democracy, using it to radicalize working people and forge an independent party of the Left.  

From Michigan to Maine, the lesson is clear: the path to electoral reform is narrow, but it’s still open.

It’s time for us to take it.