Domino effects of democracy repair

How citizen initiatives, ranked-choice voting, and redistricting reform will affect the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election

Attention is gravitating towards this year‘s presidential race. For several years the Biden-Trump rematch has been inevitable. Now it’s starting to fill people’s minds.

As I wrote last month, Trump’s defeat in November would still be insufficient to prevent the rise of another figure who threatens the institutions of democracy. Today I describe several bugs in democracy that allowed his win in November 2016. Those bugs have been partially fixed, and continued repairs can make a further difference in time for the November 2024 election.

Inevitably, attention is turning away from repairs to democracy at the state and local level, in favor of this year’s election campaign. To the extent that people talk about regional issues, they might think about the presidential race’s coattail effect on congressional, state, local races. However, repairs to democracy can have a cumulative effect - sometimes in unexpected ways. Indeed, domino effects of the last 10 years’ worth of reforms and electoral events substantially reduce the likelihood that Donald Trump and his anti-democracy policies will return to power.

Today I will show how three factors will have surprisingly large effects on the 2024 election: reproductive rights, redistricting reform, and ranked-choice voting.

Reproductive rights cast an electoral shadow

The average citizen is not in a great position to know how national politics affects their job, or their water quality, or whatever. But reproductive rights cut right through the confusion, and voters notice.

In 2022, the national right to abortion, created by Roe v. Wade in 1973, was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court, enabled by three Trump appointees, issued the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women Health Organization, which gave states the ability to set abortion policy locally. This has led to major electoral consequences.

First, there have been direct consequences through ballot initiatives. The constitutions of about half of the states provide a mechanism for citizens to change the law and even the constitution. Even when elected representatives are unresponsive, citizens can bring ballot initiatives on topics as diverse as marijuana legalization, minimum wage increases, redistricting reform, and reproductive rights.

In the case of abortion rights, every ballot initiative concerning abortion since Dobbs has gone in the pro-choice direction. In 2022, such measures were on the ballot in California, Michigan, Vermont, Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana, and in 2023, in Ohio. In each case the initiative was decided in the pro-abortion direction. That is relatively amazing, considering that it includes Kansas and Kentucky, two Republican strongholds. Overall, the proposals ran an average of 11 points ahead of the Presidential Democratic vote share in the same state.

Reproductive rights can also affect individual candidates. Post-Dobbs, special elections in 2023 ran an average of 5 points ahead of the 2020 Presidential Democratic vote share. The timing of this change suggests that the cause is the end of Roe v. Wade. And the razor-thin Congressional majority for Republicans after the 2022 election is yet further evidence for Republican underperformance.

This week, we saw evidence that the Biden reelection campaign is fully aware of such effects. He, First Lady Jill Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris appeared together at an event dedicated to the idea of restoring Roe through federal legislation. Linking their future legislative majorities to this idea may be of advantage to them this fall. 

Let us now focus on one abortion-driven election with particular ability to affect the Presidential race. In the perennial swing-state of Wisconsin, Janet Protasiewicz won a key state Supreme Court election by 11 points. She specifically called out abortion as a major issue. This month, her court is now reviewing another issue: partisan gerrymandering. And that can affect the Presidential race.

How a contested Presidential election can be swung by redistricting reform and ranked-choice voting

If neither Biden or Trump gets 270 electoral votes, for instance because of disputed electors in a close election, the decision will be thrown into the U.S. House of Representatives, where each state gets 1 vote. Whoever can get the support of at least 26 states would then become President.

After the 2016 election, Republicans controlled 32 state delegations to Democrats’ 17 (Maine was split). But in 2024, there is a chance that Republicans will have as few as 25 states. Nearly all of that 7-state shift arises from states where redistricting and voting-rules reform has taken place.

One state, Alaska, has changed how it elects members of Congress. It now uses a Top Four all-party primary, followed by a runoff election determined by ranked-choice voting. This system allows voters to express complex preferences, and in 2022 it elected Democrat Mary Peltola, who used to work on the staff of veteran Republican Congressman Don Young. Peltola replaced Young as Alaska’s sole member of Congress, and seems likely to be re-elected.

Similarly, Maine’s two members of Congress are also now elected using a Top Four system, and Maine’s delegation now has two Democrats.

As many as five delegations are shifted because of improved redistricting. In Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Virginia, redistricting is now done by a commission-based process, and Pennsylvania’s state supreme court imposed a congressional map that, unlike the 2012 map, is no longer a partisan gerrymander. In all five of these states, the each delegation is likely to end up controlled by whichever party wins more votes in that state. North Carolina’s Republican partisan gerrymander has been restored, which moves one state in the other direction.

So far, that adds up to a net change of six states. A seventh state is Wisconsin. Under the current Congressional map, the delegation is safely Republican. Litigants have just filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court to overturn that map. That’s the same state court that is about to undo a massive legislative gerrymander. If they act on the Congressional map too, it could make Wisconsin’s delegation swingable to either party.

Getting a majoritarian president in 2024 may depend on redistricting in Wisconsin

In short, depending on the outcome of one redistricting lawsuit in Wisconsin, a dispute in this year’s Presidential election would become a toss-up in the House of Representatives, a scenario that would have been far out of reach in 2016.

At that point the situation becomes fluid, leading to anywhere from a negotiated solution to the somewhat exotic outcome that the incoming Speaker-elect would then become President. And as I’ve written before, the House as a whole is much less gerrymandered than it was in 2012. So the new Speaker-elect is likely to come from whichever political party gets more votes this November. This leads us back to the same point: years of effort have created a more level playing field for the two parties, and it affects how the 2024 Presidential race may be resolved.