Expanding Democracy
The United States prides itself as an early adopter and innovator in democratic self-governance yet holds firm to an outdated electoral system for nearly all of its elections. Most political seats including this race for governor are elected via a single-winner "first past the post" election in which voters are only allowed to express their preference for a single candidate and voting for their favorite may in fact empower their least favorite.
The result of this system is that it is rare for elections to have more than two competitive candidates for office. In Washington we attempt to solve this through our "top two" primary system, but this creates problems. The first is that to a great extent it simply moves the aforementioned problems into a primary election rather than addressing the problems directly. The second is that because of the tendency for primaries to be low-turnout, the final two candidates up for consideration are often selected by an unrepresentative and more politically extreme voter-blocks. Running two elections does not only reduce voter turnout, it is also more expensive and totally unnecessary.
We can improve our democracy in Washington by taking the following steps:
Pass a bill that enables all local, county, state, and federal elections in Washington to be run using a small but promising number of preferential voting systems which allow voters to rank or score all candidates based on their preference. Systems that should be considered include ranked-choice voting (as has been passed in Seattle already), approval voting, STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff), and ranked-robin.
Establish a transition period in which election offices are encouraged to try these alternative voting systems at their discretion, but require that after two election cycles that plurality voting will be phased out for all elections.
Require that all ballots include a binding "none of the above" option.
Work to expand legislative bodies including city and county councils and the state legislature to increase representation. Washington should consider expanding its legislature up to as much as 200 total members.
Adopt nonpartisan elections, councils, and legislatures across all local/county/state governments and elections.
Explore realistic pathways to proportional representation through proportional systems including but not limited to single-transferable vote and mixed-member proportional.
Explore a pathway to a unicameral legislature like the Nebraska Unicameral as a means of more productive efficient state government.
Citizen-initiated constitutional amendments - the citizens of Washington must be treated as co-equal to the legislature in their powers of governance and therefore must be empowered not just to initiate and pass legislation, but also amendments to the state Constitution.
Electronic signature gathering - Citizens must also be empowered to petition via electronic signatures.
Transition to a full time legislature - Washington's part time legislature complete with part-time salary is a huge barrier-to-entry for the working class who require a full-time salary in order to realistically consider taking a job. Additionally, the part-time status of our legislature is a significant limitation on the amount and quality of work it is able to achieve in a legislative session.
Establish election day as a state holiday - we should be pushing to have election day be made into a US holiday by establishing it as a state holiday and encouraging people and businesses to take time off to make sure they have some time set aside for them to do research, fill out their ballots, and see them dropped off. We should use election day as a means of celebrating democracy and civic engagement.
Expand public campaign finance - winning office should not be exclusively for the wealthy and those connected to the wealthy, it should be possible without raising tens of thousands to millions of dollars. Enough public funding should be available to serious campaigns with sincere public support that they are able to compete with those financed by corporate donors and the extremely wealthy.
Unicameralism & the Nebraska legislature
A bicameral legislature featuring a House and Senate is a deeply ingrained in the idea of American democracy. This famous compromise between the original US colonies defined our democracy as being shared between "the people" via the House and "the states" via the Senate. This design was then repeated in the newly forming state governments.
This distinction makes little sense at the state level as what can the Senate be said to be representing that the House isn't? Washington is divided into 49 legislative districts each of which is allocated one Senator and two Representatives in the state's legislature which are directly elected by the voters of that district. So in theory it could be said that the Representatives represent the people of that legislative district while the Senator represents the district itself - but a legislative district shares almost nothing in common with a US state other than having geographic boundaries. Because unlike a state, a legislative district is not a government, it has no authority, it's not a thing other than a 1/49th population-normalized geographic piece of Washington state. So Senators represent the exact same constituents that elect Representatives and who duplicate a huge amount of each other's work every legislative session. Every year hundreds of bills fail to make it through the legislative process with the primary reason cited being a lack of time. The bicameral legislature creates an arbitrary additional veto point in the legislative process which leaves many perfectly good bills dead in committee. It's inefficient government, but it's inefficient government with a simple solution.
To date, Nebraska is the only US state to both notice and take action on this silliness.
"After a trip to Australia in 1931, George W. Norris, then U.S. senator for Nebraska, campaigned for reform, arguing that the bicameral system was based on the non-democratic British House of Lords, and that it was pointless to have two bodies of people doing the same thing and hence wasting money. He specifically pointed to the example of the Australian state of Queensland, which had adopted a unicameral parliament nearly ten years before. In 1934, voters approved a constitutional amendment to take effect with the 1936 elections, abolishing the Nebraska Senate and the Nebraska House of Representatives and granting their powers to a new unicameral body simply called the Nebraska Legislature."
It is also worth noting that Nebraska has a nonpartisan legislature, something that is already the norm across all local elections in Washington state.
Movement highlights
Please check out the following groups below which are working on pro-democracy reforms at the local and state level in Washington and beyond.
