How “Free and Equal” defeats Gerrymandering

Let’s say your employer is having a popularity contest. The contenders are three people who think they might be popular, and a fourth who management wants to win. So, the company endorses their favorite and distributes flyers. It’s decided in one round.

This could be a primary election in an uncompetitive district. Both play out the same way. At least two people find out they aren’t nearly as popular as they thought. One person may make it a contest but can’t overcome managements’ thumb on the scale. The “plant” wins and faith in the outcome is undermined.

A fair popularity contest goes more like this. Everyone submits a list of their favorite employees, and a pool of top candidates is produced. Multiple rounds of voting whittle the field and there is a final vote between two people. The winner is always the choice of the majority - the most popular. If we ran the contest each way for two halves of the company, followed by a winner’s faceoff, I think you can predict who the favorite would be.

Political popularity contests function in much the same way. Ideologies fall on spectrums. Spectrums placed on populations tend to produce normal distributions, otherwise known as bell-shaped curves. The fair contest always generates a result at, or very near, the center of those curves; the unfair one almost never does.

Two important factors emerge when you put this into the context of an election system: apathy and ease of use. Both affect turnouts, which haven’t been factored in yet. The company faceoff assumes everyone votes. If half the company is unenthusiastic about voting in the contest due to inherent unfairness, then those in the fair contest would have higher participation rates. If voting in the unfair contest is also cumbersome in comparison, then the participation gap widens.

People in this country are frustrated and desperately want to see change. A nominating contest where voting is easy, and the competition is fair will eclipse our public primary system.

Now picture this: the winner of the free and equal contest emerges with support from thousands more constituents than the winner of the public primary. The general election features a nominee with evidence showing they are a more popular candidate. So, who do you vote for … the one who won the fair contest, or the one endorsed by management?

The Framers understood popular sovereignty and knew that free and equal elections were essential for a nation to attain peace and prosperity. They learned from history that systems fueling partisanship eventually led to the downfall of democracies. They told us how to avoid the same fate.