This is the next post in the “Policies We Should Be Talking About” series. For more information see the introduction (and other policies) here, but briefly, this series is about explaining policies that might be unpopular, unknown, or simply undeveloped that could still have large positive impacts. Some face specific political obstacles, and some may be too radical to gain enough momentum in the near term, but all deserve to have their signal boosted.
Approval Voting
The United States and many other nations use the worst voting system in the world: First Past the Post or FPTP. This forces voters to think strategically, voting for candidates they think will win rather than candidates they actually like. Combined with the “package deal” problem we’ve discussed before, voters have at best tangential input into the political system. FPTP leads to a variety of bad outcomes, including static two party systems, wasted votes, ease of gerrymandering, minority rule, spoiler effects (where a third party causes the preferred major party to lose despite popularity, i.e. Nader voters preferred Gore, but didn’t vote for him and Bush won), and more.
The most common alternative discussed in the United States is Ranked Choice / Instant Runoff Voting, which is being used in Maine today. This allows voters to rank all candidates they like, supporting multiple candidates. If no candidate wins an initial majority, votes are redistributed from the least popular candidates based on voter rankings. The first candidate to accumulate a majority wins. However, this system still trends towards strategic voting and two parties, since voters’ second choices are only counted if their first choice is eliminated. If a smaller party is redistributed first, voters second and third choices may be ignored, with the winner being a candidate that fewer voters had as a second choice. There are other more mathematical objections, such as the lack of a Condorcet winner. It is nonetheless objectively better than FPTP.
An even better procedure is called Approval Voting. It is incredibly simple: voters vote for as many candidates as they like, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Voters can support the candidates they really like as well as the ones they think will win. In all likelihood, this will trend towards two parties, but the difference is that third parties can spring up and build support over time without voters fearing the spoiler effects. This incentivizes new parties with fresh ideas. Main parties may co-opt those ideas as they get popular, but that’s good news for voters anyways, as good ideas can bubble up outside of the two party system and nonetheless achieve mainstream success.
The main difficulty is that almost all politicians will not support a new electoral system if they know they have already won using the old system. To get around this, the Center for Election Science recommends ballot initiatives to bring this idea directly to popular vote rather than fighting politicians who want to stay in power. They are doing just that, starting small in Fargo, ND with a ballot measure this year. If successful, it can be pointed to as a real life implementation of a good idea and can be built upon in other polities.
Additional information:
- 80000 Hours podcast episode
- CGP Grey on the problems with FPTP
- Instant Runoff Voting
- Center for Election Science
- Postlibertarian electoral reform fantasies
Bail Reform
When someone is accused of a crime, they are charged and given a set of restrictions to ensure they show up for trial. In the United States, this usually includes a money bond that is deposited and then returned at trial. If the defendant does not show up, the property is forfeit. However, other common law nations, including Canada and the United Kingdom, usually do not require actual money, just restrictions on movement or activities (i.e. drinking).
In the US, this has given rise to bail bondsman, who will post your bail for a flat nonrefundable percentage of your bond, often 10-15%. If you fail to appear in court, they have authorization in most states to bring you to the court’s jurisdiction to recover their bond, which is known as bounty hunting, essentially legalized kidnapping. Even if bondsman were banned (and several states have done so) this system remains terrible. If you cannot afford the bail bond, you have a strong incentive to plead guilty. Sitting in jail until trial is not an option for someone in poverty who needs to be working and earning enough for their family. Combined with other criminal justice issues like overcriminalization and policing for profit, nonviolent poor offenders are trapped by a system where they never get a chance for a fair trial due to a lack of cash. Justice should be based on guilt or innocence, not wealth.
There are better ways; the Bronx Freedom Fund realized there was an excellent opportunity to help alleviate this problem. They bail out accused persons and help them make their court date, recovering a large percentage of their posted bonds. Poor defendants are thus able to contest their charges with a fair trial, and many charges are dismissed instead of forcing the accused to plead guilty or sit in jail unproductively. They’ve been so successful they are launching a nationwide project to establish charitable bail funds around the country. John Oliver has also talked about federal courts, where pretrial services assess if the accused is a flight risk. Many are not, and so are released without bail payment at all. Those who the services determine should be assessed a bond are never given one that cannot be paid by the defendant, and in fact in federal cases and the District of Colombia, there are virtually no people awaiting trial because they cannot afford bail, compared to the 450,000 state defendants.
What political challenges are there? The bondsman business has a strong interest in opposing any bail reform, and each state has to update their rules. There are good ideas though: Rand Paul and Kamala Harris introduced a bill that will provide federal grants to states who reform their bail system, although it will likely die in committee. It nonetheless lays the blueprint for how we might tackle this problem from a nationwide perspective in the future.
Additional information:
Organ Markets
Organ markets are extremely unlikely to be implemented soon. Nonetheless, organ market legalization would have by far the most concrete and immediate benefit to the world today, and black market organ markets already exist. Every year over 4000 people die awaiting a kidney in the US, and Medicare spends $89,000 per person on dialysis every year (that’s $34B/year for Medicare, $42B including private spending). The kidney supply is dwindling as cars get safer (many organs are donated by deceased car accident victims), but the vast majority of people do not need both kidneys while alive, and so could sell their kidney to another person with relatively low risk, given compensation. By far the most likely to sell their kidney would be people of lower income, and this is widely touted as a negative for this policy. It is not: blocking the poor from this avenue of income available to them, while simultaneously allowing people in need of kidney transplants to die, is morally wrong.
There is always concern when a transaction occurs between people of different wealth levels. Poor people may not be “forced” into the transaction, but if they have no good alternatives, it seems apparent there is a lack of choice. This is the difference between transactions that are “voluntary” and those that Michael Munger calls “euvoluntary“. Nonetheless, preventing the poor from participating in “voluntary” transactions that others would categorize as “exploitative” does not solve the poverty problem, and in fact makes it worse than letting them participate in the transaction.
Despite this argument, there is a simpler answer to legalizing organ markets: don’t legalize every possible transaction. Law can preclude people below a certain wealth level from selling their kidneys, enforce waiting periods for sellers, create delayed payments, or set prices via formula instead of the market. Yes, these restrictions will severely reduce the benefits that could accrue to the poor who want to sell their kidneys, but anything is better than the total ban we have now. Regulated organ markets could significantly increase the supply of kidneys available, while reducing demand on black markets.
On the demand side, regulation could leave in place the current waitlist structure and avoid rich people jumping the line entirely. This would require the compensation on the supply side to be fully government funded (would still likely save money given Medicare spending on dialysis). A market price on the demand side would have better systemwide benefits, as there would be incentives to improve the market, find efficiencies, etc. However, the potential gains are so large that even a heavily regulated market is worth creating, and relevant legislation already exists.
The political obstacles are clear. Organ markets could be exploitative, while transactions involving human body parts “diminish human dignity” according to the National Kidney Foundation (does death diminish human dignity?). Despite this opposition, there are significant gains to be had from an organ market that cannot be overlooked.
Additional information:
- How Iran’s kidney market works
- Sally Satel EconTalk episode, Tina Rosenberg EconTalk episode.
- National Review article
- Legalize Organ Markets from postlibertarian.com
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Picture credit: Martin Falbisoner, US Capitol at dusk as seen from the eastern side, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
