Opinion: Why the solution to the debt ceiling crisis (and to our dysfunctional federal government) can be found in Alaska
Sometime this summer we will face a catastrophic default if we do not raise the debt ceiling. Although the two political parties have compromised to solve this problem in the past, this time may be different as the parties have become remarkably polarized. The debt ceiling crisis, however, is only one piece of a much larger problem which is that our dysfunctional government finds it increasingly difficult to solve national problems.
The United States National Intelligence Council produces a Global Trends report every four years that is provided to the incoming president. The report is based on the work of intelligence experts within the government as well as outside experts in the private sector and academia. The Global Trends Report 2040, which hit Joe Biden’s desk soon after he was elected, is alarming. Climate change, globalization, illegal migration, new information technologies, and the pandemic are stressing governments around the globe as they face a crisis of adaptability. Democracies that are unable to solve national problems tend to fall apart as citizens turn on each other and often support deeply polarizing demagogues who promise that they alone can solve the nation’s ills.
For a possible solution to our polarized politics, Americans should take a long hard look at Alaska’s voting system. In the 2022 midterm elections, Alaska elected a moderate Republican, Lisa Murkowski to the United States Senate and a moderate Democrat, Mary Peltola, to the Congress, thereby bucking the national trend of electing highly partisan candidates. Alaska’s voters are famously independent voters, but that is not the whole story. Alaska voted for Donald Trump by 10 percentage points in 2020, yet elected a Democratic congresswoman to its sole congressional seat in 2022. Presidential elections are decided by the Electoral College, and voters typically have a choice between two, often polarizing candidates. Alaska’s elections for the House and Senate, on the other hand, are run under a voting system known as ranked choice voting that rewards moderation and penalizes extremism. Alaska’s voting system did exactly what it was supposed to do in 2022.
Alaskans adopted a two-round system of elections in 2020. The first round is an open primary in which anyone can run, and everyone can vote. The top four candidates in the open primary then face each other in the general election. The general election is decided by ranked choice voting. Citizens vote for their preferred candidates, and they can rank the other candidates in order of preference. If a candidate wins a majority of the votes in the first round, the election is over, and that candidate is the winner. If no candidate wins a majority, then the candidate with the fewest number of votes drops out. If a voter’s preferred candidate drops out, the voter’s ballot is distributed to her second choice assuming one was made. The process continues until one candidate reaches a majority.
Alaska is the first state to combine ranked choice voting with a nonpartisan primary. The key to getting past the first round is that candidates must be broadly acceptable to a large swath of the electorate. To win office in the second round, the candidate must be acceptable to a majority of the electorate. Alaska’s innovative electoral system is in line with what American voters want. Public opinion polls show that voters dislike extremist candidates. Moderate candidates, however, have difficulty in winning the partisan primaries used in most states. Consequently, a majority of Americans support a third political party as they believe that the candidates from the major parties are not representing their views. American voters are right to prefer moderate candidates for two important reasons.
The first is that moderation matters to the health of our representative democracy. Polarization is a cancer that erodes trust in institutions. Gallup has been measuring confidence in America’s institutions since 1973. Trust in America’s institutions and particularly in the major institutions of the federal government reached historic lows in 2022. Political scientists warn of the dangers of democratic erosion. This is not a new problem. James Madison in The Federalist writes that the violence of factions is a disease incident to republican government. He writes, in words that look as if they had been written for our age, that the “propensity” to fall into “mutual animosities” is so strong that the “most frivolous and fanciful distinctions” can excite “violent conflicts.”
The second reason is that moderation matters to the health of our constitutional republic. There are 22 constitutional representative democracies that have been continuously in operation since 1950. These are our peer democracies as they have withstood the test of time.
Our system of government, of course, has been in operation much longer than 1950. It also differs from those of our peer democracies since it is considerably more complex. We have an exceptional constitutional system that protects our liberties by making it difficult for majorities to govern. Political polarization began to become more prevalent starting in the 1970s. Polarization has added considerable friction to the workings of our constitutional system. The trend towards divisiveness has been accelerated by new information technologies that have helped sort us into two, antagonistic camps who listen only to like-minded citizens.
A government that does not work is a threat to our liberties. When seeking to convince revolutionary-era voters to adopt the Constitution in the 18th century, the framers argued that its chief virtue was that it combined “stability and energy” in government with respect for liberty. The framers also made it clear that the failure to adopt the Constitution would likely prove catastrophic because a government that lacked energy, which could not govern, was a danger to our liberties.
In The Federalist, the framers wrote about the importance of the spirit of moderation. Moderation did not mean quite the same thing in the 18th century as it does today. Moderation meant approaching complicated problems in a thoughtful way by considering the arguments and the evidence on both sides. As a nation we face severe challenges such as climate change, globalization, new information technologies, a global pandemic, and illegal immigration. Our constitutional republic, which combines energy with respect for liberty, is up to these challenges, but our highly partisan politicians are not. States that are concerned about the health of our constitutional system should consider adopting Alaska’s voting system.
Miguel Schor is associate director of the Drake Constitutional Law Center and a Drake University law professor.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Alaska shows the path to solving dysfunctional government
