Could election reform in DC help conservatives embrace it nationwide?

Reformers in Washington, D.C. are trying to break the liberal domination of governance in the nation’s capital. 

Democrats comprise 76 percent of registered voters, but they hold nearly every elected position. There’s not a single Republican among them, and the few independents who have slipped in behave like Democrats. D.C. elections are so dull that few voters show up — a mere 28 percent in 2020.

Make All Votes Count D.C., an advocacy group, got a ballot initiative approved by the District of Columbia’s election board. To get this election reform proposal on the ballot, proponents must gather signatures from about 26,500 (or 5 percent) of the voters registered citywide.

The Make All Votes Count Act of 2024 (MAVCA) would change D.C. elections in two major ways. First, it would require the city to hold open primaries. Right now, the only voters who can participate in primary elections are those who register with a party. That leaves nearly 87,000 independent voters, or 16.5 percent of the registered electorate, unable to participate. This is a big deal because whichever Democratic primary candidate wins inevitably will triumph in the general election. Republicans often don’t bother to run candidates, and independents fail because they have less name recognition than the Democrats, who have been campaigning for months by the time the election season begins in earnest.

Second, MAVCA would institute ranked choice voting (RCV) in both the primary and general elections. This is an interesting development, and it opens a path for independent and maybe even Republican candidates to win. Unsurprisingly, the D.C. Democratic Party opposes the measure. They fear the initiative will dilute the party’s control over the process. But of course, that is part of the point.

You might think that Republicans, who are eager to break the left’s control of governance in D.C. and other metropolitan areas, would pounce on this opportunity. Maybe they would pour money into helping the MAVCA supporters get the signatures they need and educate voters.

But, no. To date, the political right has not lifted a finger.

I am not surprised. To date, conservatives have not engaged in systemic election reform ideas such as open primaries, ranked choice voting, final-five voting and nonpartisan redistricting. Mostly it has been academics, moderates and liberals who have discussed them.

To be fair, there are a few conservatives who have taken up the topic. John Ketcham of the Manhattan Institute, for example, explained that proportional representation (which allots elected seats based upon the proportion of a vote won by a party) would put more conservatives in city council seats, where they could curb liberal excesses. It also is worth mentioning that the Independence Institute’s Barry Fagin has studied both ranked choice voting and approval voting (which has voters approve of one or more candidates for office rather than rank them). Notably, he thinks these are superior to our current system.

In some instances, the right has displayed outright hostility to systemic election reforms. Earlier this year, the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution that “calls on Congress, state legislatures, and voters to oppose ranked choice voting in every locality and level of government and return elections to easier systems that have worked for centuries for fair and transparent elections.”

This is a strange hill upon which to die. The GOP is the party of federalism, yet it wants states and localities to adopt a national ban, which puts Republicans in Utah and other places that already have ranked choice voting in a difficult position. And obviously, it creates an issue for D.C. Republicans. Can they speak up in support of MAVCA, or should they sit on their hands and let slip an opportunity to win?

For decades, conservatives have complained about being shut out of power in big cities. They also are regularly disappointed by the GOP candidates for Congress, who talk a big game during elections and then vote for more federal spending and bigger government.

Yet it seems pretty clear that the quality of candidates and the government we get has a lot to do with how we hire and fire politicians. Accordingly, if conservatives want less liberal governance, then they should more seriously engage with MAVCA and systemic reforms. 

Kevin R. Kosar (@kevinrkosar) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the co-editor of “Congress Overwhelmed: Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform” (University of Chicago Press, 2020). He hosts the Understanding Congress podcast.