What the Last Six Years Show Us

It’s clear there are significant problems with our electoral system. First, each party is benefiting from a lack of competition in their races; it’s more than “safe” seats, it’s the problem of a failure to have a debate each cycle. It means both candidates and voters aren’t getting exposed to different ideas and new thinking isn’t entering the Assembly. One example of why this is bad: unwritten customs are becoming unwritten rules in the General Assembly. Which means new lawmakers have to learn a ton of unwritten customs to get anything done, stifling their ability to make change while also indoctrinating them to “how things work around here.”

More than that, the Democrats are benefiting too much from how the districts are drawn. Since the 2002 election, Democratic control has never dipped below 60 seats in the House and 29 in the Senate. And that 29 was an anomaly due to the 2010 elections, a year when there was low Democratic turnout; otherwise, Democrats have won at least 32 seats in the Senate each election.

There’s also the issue of local politics versus statewide politics. Any politician who is bound to a district will think of their politics in regards to their constituents there. Give a politician a relatively safe seat, with rare challenges, and the threat of political defeat is removed. Not only does that mean that politicians become unreceptive to the needs of their constituents, but they also become unreceptive to the needs of their state.

What I’ll suggest is that there is a way to transform our General Assembly while also transforming our electoral system; while at the same time tamping down issues of gerrymandering and institutional advantage for incumbent parties. The way I’m suggesting is mixed-member proportional representation.

This is Part 2 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 1 (the introduction) is available here. Part 3 is an explanation of what MMP is and a description of the methods used.