Hi Tom & Team,
Our nonprofit and coalition of alternative parties in California, ProRep Coalition, would love to have a conversation with you and your team about our work towards a ballot initiative adopting some form of proportional representation (PR) in the state legislature. Among the many impacts and improvements adopting PR would have on governance in California, perhaps the most notable is in how many parties would be elected. California would transition from our rigid, fully polarized, zero-sum two-party system, to a multiparty system that would incentivize collaboration, cooperation, and coalition-building among parties.
As to how PR relates to campaign finance, an important topic to this group: PR is the system that most of the world’s advanced democracies use to elect their legislatures, which partly explains why most advanced democracies have the robust campaign finance regulations we lack in California and the US. That’s because they have alternative parties elected to their legislatures who are not behold to corporate interests that advocate for fair elections. Case in point: When New Zealand adopted PR in the 1990’s, one of the first policies their alternative parties introduced was limiting campaign spending. Today, each political party can only spend around $1 million on nationwide elections — that’s because PR got them a seat at the table.
Please let me know if you’d like to chat! Donations aside, we’d be happy to bring you into the fold of our work and figure out how your team may be able to get involved.
Caledon
Adopting STV is the most important thing we can do for our democracy. I’m afraid it may not be practical without adopting it with paired states though, as it is very unlikely California will adopt PR and move from say, 40 Democrat house seats and 12 Republican, to 30 Democrats 22 Republicans (proportional) unless Republican states adopt it at the same time. And obviously… it is going in the other direction.
But we should focus on state elections adopting it!
I’ll also note: STV is mathematically less susceptible to money. 6 FPTP districts can swing with only a handful of voters, but a 6 member STV district can only swing a single seat with a handful of voters, swinging two seats would require a large swing in the population, which is much harder to do by throwing money around.
One thing to take into account is the transformation of the Republican Party, both nationally and in California. The GOP is no longer a pro-democracy, pro-rule of law party. Under project 2025 guidance, Trump and MAGA elites, the GOP has transformed into a deeply corrupt, autocratic party with powerful authoritarian influence by Christian nationalist theocrats (e.g., Russ Vought running the OMB), and centimillionaire, billionaire and corporate plutocrats. If multiparty means giving more power to the GOP, then people should do that with their eyes open.
From a pro-democracy and rule of law point of view, Republicans are no longer fit for political power. It will stay that way until the GOP wakes up and renounces its own corruption, authoritarianism and Trump himself.