Contemporary electoral reform efforts in the United States give primacy to voting systems that make use of rankings, particularly ranked choice voting (RCV). Known more commonly as the alternative vote (AV) before its rebranding by US reformers, RCV has been adopted nearly exclusively for single-winner contests. After adoption in nonpartisan local contests, reformers aimed for the state level, successfully implementing RCV in Maine and, most recently, Alaska. Jack Santucci’s wide-reaching book explores the history of early twentieth-century local adoption and repeal of multiwinner, single transferable voting (STV) in the United States. This work helps us better understand how previous and contemporary electoral reform efforts emphasize “anti-party” reforms and the consequences of failing to accommodate competition among political parties.
Many readers familiar with the Model City Charter of the early twentieth century are likely aware of the overt goals that earlier reformers had to weaken political parties. The Model Charter proposed off-year, at-large elections; small assemblies; and nonpartisan ballots. Fewer may be aware that various iterations of the Model Charter also advocated for multiwinner STV elections to be used in combination with these other features, because it “worked” with nonpartisan elections and the other Model Charter anti-party reforms. Yet, as Santucci observes, although these other reforms were adopted widely, only 24 cities adopted STV—all between 1915 and 1948. This book provides rich theoretical and empirical explanations for why STV was adopted and abandoned.
Santucci develops a theory of reforms reflecting the coalitions that shaped the new rules, with reforms being seen as efforts to “get or keep control of government” (p. 50). He identifies three reform strategies: insulating (aimed to keep an existing coalition intact), realigning (aimed to alter the existing coalition), and polarizing (aimed to target “centrists”). All the reforms guiding STV are argued to be of the realigning type, where incumbent party defectors align with the party out of power to build a new coalition. In all cases except for New York and Cleveland, this was done in a two-party context, with minor parties playing a weaker role. Where a dominant party was factionalized, a realigning coalition should be more likely. The empirical work provided supports this case.
Previous explanations of the demise of STV in the United States suggested that it did “too good of a job” of representing racial minorities and leftists. Santucci provides another perspective: STV without parties did not work without slating organizations that attempted to take on the role of parties. Reform coalitions turned into governing coalitions via slating organizations. Even with slating groups recruiting and promoting candidates, the reform’s corrosive effects on parties made for unstable coalitions. Lacking effective coordination, voter error rates were high, candidate quality was low, and coalitions on STV councils shifted rapidly. Slating groups proved unstable, and councils depended on “pork” and logrolling to hold things together. Despite “good government” slates that scholars portrayed as conservative and pro-business, Santucci demonstrates that government spending was higher under STV than plurality elections. An alternate reading could see higher local spending under STV reflecting pro-business candidates channeling spending into Harvey Molotch-like “growth machine” infrastructure investments. Santucci makes a persuasive argument that it instead reflected personal vote-seeking of candidates pursuing the “bailiwick” strategy associated with STV in Ireland.
Santucci argues that twentieth-century STV was used in the United States to “defy an overarching party system” and that slating groups—comprising candidates from various dispersed groups and interests—“did not track the wider party system” (p. 121). Moreover, these slates did not manage to effectively limit the number of candidates they nominated and suffered from voter dealignment and transfer leakage away from candidates on the slate. A resulting “legislative limbo” occurred during which no coalition secured regular control of government. This encouraged counter-reform coalitions to take aim at STV, which was then abandoned in every city by 1961, except for Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The demise of STV in the United States then was not due to it being “too successful” in representing race/ethnic minorities and leftists but due to its intentionally neutering of political parties. Nonpartisan STV hid candidate party labels, came with small councils that could not facilitate multiparty politics, and produced unstable and inefficient coalitions in local legislatures.
Santucci concludes with an examination of prospects for electoral reform in the contemporary era. This treatment raises one question not fully addressed: Why did the majority-preferential systems now in vogue with contemporary reformers “disappear from the map” (p. 177) in the early twentieth century? He notes that political scientists “do not yet know why” but offers some clues that raise questions about prospects for single-winner AV in the United States (aka single-winner RCV). One lesson from this book may be that US STV of the twentieth century and RCV/AV of the twenty-first century have never figured out how to accommodate parties, let alone multiparty politics. Single-winner AV persists today and “works” in Australia because it works with parties: parties control nominations, voter preference rankings are mandatory, parties issue “how to vote cards” to coordinate supporters’ preference transfers, and parties of similar ilk who are coalition partners make agreements not to compete against each other in districts. As such, RCV/AV can complement a multiparty system.
Many contemporary US electoral reformers have advocated single-winner RCV, more recently in state-level races where justifications for these reforms (the de facto nonpartisan “Top 4” in Alaska and a similar “Top 5” proposal pending in Nevada) echo some of the motivations of earlier anti-party reformers. Party control of nominations is seen as a problem, with preferential voting without party control of nominations said to lead to “good” outcomes, such as “moderation.” Santucci notes that in a previous era, STV could be effectively marketed as “anticorruption” (read “anti-party”). It seems that we are witnessing this again as reformers herald the supposed virtues of AV in Alaska as eliminating party control of nominations, blurring party lines, and electing “moderate” Republicans (Murkowski) and Democrats (Pelota), regardless of what party organizations might prefer. Santucci’s work challenges us to consider how a contemporary state legislature or the US Congress might function—or not—if such anti-party systems were adopted universally. The answer here seems to be badly, if parties are not better facilitated.
This book should be appreciated for the methodological rigor and detail used to support its claims and conclusions. Some of this is visible reading the main text—spatial maps of voting in STV cities illustrate legislative limbo, ecological inferences estimate support for charter amendments by partisanship, polynomial regression and fixed-effects models estimate spending, and comparative case studies are illuminating. The book includes advertisements for the slating groups that will be invaluable to those teaching this subject. Some of the most engaging bits are about fieldwork and are hidden in the footnotes: for example, about the author finding handwritten minutes of reform group meetings; interviewing surviving family members of elites involved in reform efforts; and going on a car ride with a midcentury party regular who recounted memories of anti-Semitism in coalitions as they made their way to a municipal archive. This is comparative politics of electoral systems reform at its best.
