Many of you reacted quite strongly to last week’s newsletter about depriving the Senate of most of its power. Not necessarily a negative answer – you just had lots of ideas! And I happen to agree with many of those ideas. Perhaps the most common is less related to the Senate than to the House of Representatives. Many of you were adamant that if the goal is to bring the place of policymaking back to the House, then the House must also be more democratic than it is, and that part of making the House more democratic is to end partisan gerrymandering.
I agree with that! But I think we should go further. Even if you end partisan gerrymandering for House (and just as crucially state legislative) elections, you’re still left with the real culprit for many of our political dysfunctions: single-member districts and first past the post votes. As long as you choose individual members per district, there is a risk of misdistribution. And as long as you voted “first past the post” — where candidates can win by multiples of the vote — there’s little to no chance that a third party would succeed in an election (something I explore in my most recent column).
One solution is simply to abolish neighborhoods altogether. Or if you prefer to keep districts, divide each state into a number of multi-member districts, in which voters choose multiple candidates through a form of preferential voting. Ordered-choice voting has gained some traction here in the United States, but I’m a fan of approval voting, where voters can vote for as many candidates as they want on the ballot. Whoever gets the most votes — or in a multi-member district, the top voters — wins a seat in Congress.
Approval voting is a little more complicated than this – and there are several forms of approval voting that allow voters to indicate the intensity of their preference, for example – but these are the basics. One advantage of approval voting is that it is more likely to produce winners with broad support among the electorate. Another benefit is that it allows third parties to compete without “spoiling” the election in favor of a candidate who lacks majority support. (Although, in some circumstances, approval voting can produce multiple winners.)
In any case, an enlarged Chamber (again to at least 600 members) without gerrymandering and with a multitude of parties would be a nice counterpart to a Senate that can change legislation, but cannot veto it. Thank you, readers, for the feedback, which I found very helpful as I pondered these ideas.
What I wrote
My Friday column was a skeptical look at the new third party proposed by Andrew Yang and his allies and an analysis of third party success in the United States, using the Free Soil Party as my case study.
Why am I so sure the Forward Party is nothing? Because there is a recipe for third-party success in the United States, but neither Yang nor his allies have the right ingredients.
I was too a guest on the Five-Four podcastwhere I discussed the Democratic Party’s response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Now reading
Harold Meyerson calls for the abolition of state senates for The American Prospect.
Dan Kaufman on Wisconsin’s war on democracy for The New Yorker.
Fintan O’Toole on what Ireland can tell Americans about the effectiveness of abortion bans for The New York Review of Books.
Many generations of UVA students have eaten a lot of greasy burgers here. It’s a bona fide institution.
Now eating: black-eyed peas with tomatoes
This recipe, provided by Sandra A. Gutierrez, is from the “Beans & Peasedition of the Enjoy the south series of cookbooks. She says it’s from the book”Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Stories from the Jewish Southby Marcie Cohen-Ferris, and that it is traditionally served with a Sephardic dish of rice and tomatoes. I served this dish on an heirloom “Bloody Butcher” red grits from Milling deep roots in Nelson County, Virginia. It was a great meal. It makes six to eight servings as a side dish and three to four as a main course.
A few notes: I’ve tweaked the recipe a bit to suit my taste. I should also say that when I made this I fattened a few slices of bacon and cooked the vegetables in the bacon fat instead of using olive oil. If you eat pork, I recommend going that route.
Ingredients
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2 tablespoons olive oil
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1 large onion, chopped
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4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
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1 large tomato, peeled and diced
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1 teaspoon fresh thyme
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¾ teaspoon kosher salt
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½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
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2 ½ cups fresh or frozen black-eyed peas (about 20 ounces)
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1 ½ cups water or stock, with more if needed
Travel directions
Heat the oil in a large, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring often, until softened, about five minutes. Add the tomato, thyme, salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, for another five minutes until the tomato softens. Stir in the black-eyed peas and the water; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, partially cover, and simmer until peas are tender, about 30 minutes. Taste for spices. Serve over rice or grits.