Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Balkinization

Legal Commentary

: Balkinization

Why voting structures matter

By Jack M. Balkin

The New York Times reports that Democrats are "worried" about their 33-year-old candidate for the Senate in Illinois, who won the primary on Tuesday with a ringing 39% of the vote. For all I know he will be a terrific candidate and a wonderful senator (if elected), but what can be said beyond reasonable doubt (as Republicans are apparently already saying) is that 61% of the Democratic electorate preferred someone else. Perhaps Alexei Giannoulias would have prevailed in the runoff, but, obviously we'll never know. But what I think we can know is that runoff systems, though not perfect, are more likely to produce a candidate acceptable to the majority (which some people say is what "democracy" means) than first-past-the-post systems like that in Illinois (or in Texas, which re-elected Gov. Rick Perry in 2006 with a whopping 37% of the statewide vote). If the Democrats manage to lose the seat in November, they might consider blaming an election system that is quite literally designed to stymie "majority rule" save in races where there are only two candidates. (There were three plausible candidates in the Democratic primary, including an attractive "reformer" who received about 33% of the vote, just as there were four such candidates (or at least 3-1/2, depending on what you think of Kinky Friedman's candidacy) in Texas in 2006.

Full post as published by Balkinization on February 04, 2010 (boomark / email).