Societal Maladaptation

In democracies, voting systems theoretically provide feedback to our governments by aggregating individual preferences into societal goals. When voting systems are broken, our individual representatives are not getting the feedback they need to serve our collective needs. The current, most widely used voting system in the USA, called plurality voting, is technically a very poor system when trying to aggregate preferences over more than two alternatives.¹

The limitations of voting systems can encourage undesirable behavior on the part of individuals and small groups that result in governmental behaviors that do not represent the aggregate will of the people. Here is a partial list of various societal maladaptations encouraged, directly or indirectly, by our current voting system.

Two-Party Systems

Duverger's Law explains why two-party systems develop under particular voting systems. The problems caused by two-party systems result from the limited choices allowed. Some of the maladaptations from a two-party system include:

Gerrymandering

A direct result of two party systems and the resulting major parties is the temptation of one of the two parties in power to distort the voting power of supporters of the opposing party so as to limit opposition.

Political tribalism

When there are only two parties, supporters of one major party tend to identify with that party, and to consider supporters of the other major party to be obstacles. This often works both ways, and makes it difficult for governments to function.

General Problem of Representation

When a given party is in control of a district, the members of the other party have difficulty getting their needs addressed.

Negative Campaigning

In a two-party system, there are effectively only two options. In that situation, candidates for office are playing a game in which their goal is to get just enough votes to win. If they advertise their positions, they can be attacked on those issues. Whereas if they attack their opponents, they may not be able to gain support, but they might be able to reduce the turnout for their opponent.

Issue Drift

When two parties are competing over a long time, particularly with negative campaigning, party platforms can become vague or narrow, and as both parties try to make the campaign about their own strongest issues. When the emphasis is on winning, the public platforms of the two parties occasionally converge, leading to little differentiation between the two. When that occurs, an extreme wing of a party often gains strength and draws its party away from the center. That can cause the now more extreme party to lose. Yet when one party is extreme and the other is moderate, the extreme wing of the winning party can become disaffected as they see their party leadership acting more like the opposition party. This can lead to lower turnout, and one party leadership response to lower turnout can be to try to pick up more votes by following the other party's extreme wing. In the USA, during the 1970s, both parties started to sound so alike in their ads, to the point that it was sometimes hard to determine a candidate's party from their ads. Some of Democrat Bill Clinton's policy initiatives were further to the political right than the policies of Republican Richard Nixon. (Nixon had a much better policy on health care.)

Party Capture by Major Donors

When campaigns are negative, they get expensive, and political donors become important funding resources. This can easily get out of hand as politicians both in office and wanting to be in office feel they cannot offend major donors, and can end up modifying their actions to serve the interests of those major donors rather than the interests of the people who elected them.

Issue Suppression

Under some systems, the only input voters have to the process is an occasional vote for a representative. Introduction of new political issues is actively discouraged because it can change the current power structures. Also, the introduction of new issues can take more time than comment on traditional issues because newer issues tend to be more complicated.

Restricted Access to Representatives

As all representatives are people, they have limited time and thus limited sources of information about what their constituents want or need. When access to representatives is biased, those representatives cannot be responsive to the true aggregate of their constituents. With limited time, representatives are more subject to:

Lobbying

A lobbyist is likely to both have a coherent message and also be able to be more flexible in their efforts to access a representative. As successful lobbyists are often paid, they are most often associated with moneyed interests, with the result that they are more often supporting the needs and desires of wealthier constituents. The result is: representatives are more likely to know about what the wealthy want as opposed to what the poor want, with the result that the needs of the poor are likely to be under-served.

Money in Polics

When politicians do not have frequent contact with a representable sample of their constituents they can get out of touch with the needs of their districts.

Bribery and corruption

These is not limited to any particular voting system, but are symptoms of non-functional governments, and poor voting systems can lead to non-functional governments.

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