OPINION: We need to change election rules so voters can break the two-party gridlock

This legislative session, New Mexico will have the chance to improve our elections by opening the primaries to independent voters. Not only is it important to include this diverse and growing group of voters in such a crucial time of public decision-making, it’s also the first step in loosening the grip that the insider politics of the two-party system hold on our elections.

There are a lot of reasons to feel dissatisfied with the two-party system. Maybe you think it doesn’t produce candidates who are moderate enough. Maybe you think it doesn’t produce Democrats who are progressive enough, or Republicans who are conservative enough. Or maybe you think it makes candidates talk about the wrong policies entirely.

No matter the prognosis from our various ideological stripes, we seem to agree on one thing: surely, we’d be better represented by something else.

Very often, we blame this on the two major parties being corrupt. We don’t talk enough about why we can’t seem to do anything about that corruption by voting. There’s a real reason why every year so many people feel trapped between people who say you’re a bad citizen if you don’t support either option, or people who say you’re a bad citizen if you do.

We political scientists call it Duverger’s Law: a system with single-member districts and first-past-the-post voting will tend to produce a two-party system.

We see this in action every time a third party tries to break the pattern. If they get a little bit of support, such as the approximately 1% of the popular vote typically won by the Libertarian Party, then they’re not fairly represented because they haven’t won in any single district. If they get a lot of support, then they potentially spoil the vote, such as Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 third-party run that allowed Woodrow Wilson to take office with only 42% of the popular vote.

No matter how good a third-party run is, they won’t have the chance to make policy because, as Duverger’s Law shows, the rules prevent them.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Many proposed changes to voting rules could make the outcome more representative of our preferences. With ranked-choice voting, for example, we could designate a second-choice candidate, allowing us to vote authentically rather than just strategically.

A smaller change, which is well within reach, is opening primary elections to independent voters. Instead of just listening to party insiders, such a change would expand the pool of people whom candidates can campaign to during primary elections.

The New Mexico Legislature will be voting this session on a bill to do just that, and it’s a great first step in making our elections serve us. Even without radical change to the two-party system, changing election rules in this simple way can make that system more responsible and fairer.

But it’s more than just letting people vote fairly. Many people are rightfully angry at the government for the corruption, gridlock and cronyism that prevent it from addressing the issues that people care about. But these problems don’t come from nowhere. They fester because they’re the best way to get ahead in this election system.

If you want to help change these, and many other, problems, election reform is your way forward. Better elections will make it easier for voters to vote out corruption, instead of getting turned against each other by divisive rhetoric and demagoguery.

We can get mad at politicians for how they play their game. But the best way to get them to play differently is to change the rules.

Karla Eickhoff is a Ph.D. candidate in the political science department at the University of New Mexico.