Power  /  Argument

Avoiding the PR Mistakes of the Past

The proportional representation (PR) vs. single transferable vote (STV) battle in local elections.
STV Comes to America

STV was used in 22 American cities between 1915 and 1962. (That number rises to 26 if we include two single-tax colonies and two federally planned communities in Tennessee.) Headliners included Cleveland, Cincinnati, Sacramento, and New York. All but one repealed it—several after just a few elections. The outline of that story is as follows:

Reformers settled on STV because some among them disliked the idea of parties.

Reformers then started forming parties to direct voters’ rankings.

STV got repealed anyway because it made it hard to hold those parties together. Or, in New York City, the system made it hard to bind a coalition of parties. (New York was the only city with visibly multiparty politics.)

Much of that history is detailed in my book More Parties or No Parties, published in 2022. Other excellent titles come from political scientist Doug Amy, the late political scientist Kathleen Barber, and historian Daniel Prosterman. I went beyond these in three ways. First, I asked why reformers were promoting STV instead of party-list. Then I sought a data-driven way to explain repeal activity. Finally, I asked why Cambridge, Massachusetts, never repealed STV.

Intellectually, STV was part of the Progressive attack on party politics. Many early PR supporters disliked it for this reason. “The Hare system,” wrote a leading pro-PR historian in 1896, referring to STV, “is advocated by those who, in a too doctrinaire fashion, wish to abolish political parties.” But public opinion was turning against parties for many reasons. One was a view that cities had fallen under the control of party “machines.” Another was frustration with party control of nominations. The country was diversifying, women were gaining voting rights, and nominating primaries were spreading as a way to hold the major parties together. An early form of “instant runoff” was gaining traction at the local level, alongside nonpartisan elections to small city councils. (The pro-reform literature from this period is eerily similar to what we read today.) PR advocates were piggybacking on a reform agenda that targeted parties.

But like many reformers today, they had also formed a belief that party-list could not win. The long-running debate over nonpartisan elections came to a head in March 1913, with a party-list initiative in Los Angeles. OLPR was one of eight reformer-proposed amendments to the city charter. And it was the only one to fail. The Los Angeles Times had equated party-list with socialism and told voters that “it provides for a government by parties.” Reform leaders publicized the episode to build support for STV.