How to democratize New York City (and Philly and Baltimore and…)

NYC once used proportional representation to elect its city council in party-based elections. Here’s how and why it should start doing so again.

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On June 24, New York City will hold its Democratic Party primary elections during which its mayor and most city council races will be decided. Since the Big Apple is such a heavily Democratic city, the Democratic primary winners will undoubtedly prevail in November. New York will use ranked choice voting for the party primary elections. But when it comes to electing city councilors, RCV is not really the best method for ensuring adequate representation for the infinite number of multi-everything perspectives that reside within those vast 304 square miles of world class virtuosity.

Don’t get me wrong, ranked choice voting for local legislative representation has been a vast improvement, including contributing to the election of New York City’s first ever women of color city council majority. Nevertheless the current system retains the district-based architecture that will never be able to provide adequate representation for a city like New York and its 8 million denizens.

Many decades ago, New York used a method of proportional representation (PR) which is a much better fit for the city it has become. Today I want to focus on how New York could once again adopt such a method. For this discussion, I will focus on the proportional representation (PR) method known as Party List Proportional. It’s intriguing to think about how cities that already have partisan, i.e. party-based elections –New York City, but also Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC and other East Coast cities – could greatly democratize their local representative governments by switching to party-based PR.

Compared to the “winner take” plurality method widely used all across the US (for president, Congress, state legislatures, governors, many city councils and more), proportional representation methods produce the most democratic results of any electoral method. Decades of research show that, generally speaking, PR results in broader representation (multi-party democracy), higher voter turnout, greater representation of women and geographic minorities, a more inclusive politics, better governance in which more centrist policy better aligns with the needs of the broadest swath of voters, and less poisonous partisanship and public discourse.

Not that these methods are perfect. Winston Churchill famously once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others that have been tried.” Something similar could be said for proportional representation electoral systems. Nevertheless, switching to one of the various PR methods could do a lot to tamp down the bitter, destructive partisanship that has infected the US, and open up American politics to allow the genius of our nation's best qualities to flourish.

What’s different about Party List PR

With a party list PR method, voters generally do not select individual candidates, instead they vote for a political party. It is simple to use, including for low-information voters, because all the voter has to do is to pick a single party that she/he likes or wants as their representative. The party publishes its previously decided list of candidates. With a “victory threshold” typically as low as 3% to 5% of the vote to win representation, this method results in multiparty democracy in which voters have a number of viable choices across the political spectrum. The votes are added up, and parties are awarded seats in proportion to their share of the popular vote. Simple.

It is the most widely used electoral method around the world, with over 130 nations using either a proportional representation or a mixed system to elect their lower chamber across the world. Less than 55 countries use the US-style  “winner take all” plurality system. Of the PR countries, the vast majority use some sort of party list system.

It would be great to see a party list PR system tried out in the United States somewhere. For the first 10 years after Rob Richie and I co-founded (along with Matthew Cossolotto) in 1992 what today is known as FairVote, we mostly talked, lectured and wrote about party list systems for the US because it was the simplest PR method for explaining the concept of proportionality in elections. But we found that many Americans – whether political leaders, media scribes or general audiences -- so reflexively despised the Democratic and Republican parties that they were not thrilled with the idea of increasing the power of political party leaders, which party list methods tend to do (but this limitation can be addressed using “open” party list methods, which allow voters to pick individual candidates. More on that below).

It wasn’t until later in the 1990s that we started incorporating ranked ballot methods into our educational efforts (and that was when we originated the terms instant runoff voting and later ranked choice voting, which had never been used before). That method – and that terminology – caught on much faster than the party list method ever did. The major reason is that nearly all of our early campaigns for electoral system reform occurred in cities that had nonpartisan elections. There was no way to promote a Party List method in such a setting without also converting the city to party-based elections, which would have been a poison pill for any ballot measure to change the electoral system. Consequently, proportional ranked choice voting, which allows voters to rank individual candidates rather than political parties, has become by far the best known of the PR methods in the United States, most recently adopted by the voters of Portland, OR which used it for the first time in November 2024.

Nevertheless, I think it would be interesting to map out a strategy for how to advance a Party List PR system in the United States. Let a thousand suns shine, right? For a Party List method, the most likely setting, with the best chances of near-term success, would be some of the East Coast cities that have retained party-based elections for local government, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC and others. These are heavily Democrat-dominated urban centers, with virtually 100% of seats currently won by Democrats; New York City has only five GOP city councilors out of 51 seats and no elected smaller parties. By transforming into a PR democracy, the Democrats would still dominate, but they would not win as many seats. Within these cities, Republicans would win their fair share of seats, as would perhaps a Working Families Party, a Green Party, Libertarian Party and who knows what other smaller parties might arise when they actually have a chance of winning representation.

New York City

New York City’s last partisan elections for Mayor, city council and other offices reveal why Party List Proportional would be a better system for providing greater representation to a lot more New Yorkers. In the mayoral election in 2021, we can get a glimpse of the enormous potential for improving representation in this world-class cosmopolitan city.

This being a heavily Democratic city, Eric Adams of course won the November general election with 67% of the popular vote, after having first won the Democratic primary in a ranked choice voting contest among a large field of candidates. In the November general, a Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, made a decent showing with 28% of the popular vote, considering Republicans comprise only 10% of NYC registered voters and Democrats 68%. A candidate for the small Socialism and Liberation Party garnered 2.5% of the vote, and a Conservative Party candidate won just over 1%. Candidates from the Libertarian, Empowerment, Humanity United, Save Our City and Out Lawbreaker parties all won less than 1% of the popular vote.

Looking at the 51 city council elections in 2021, which are all elected by single-seat districts, Democrats of course heavily dominated, winning 45 (88%) of the seats, with the GOP taking the other six (12%) of the seats. However, 20 of the races (40%) were contested by only a single Democratic candidate – no choice for voters there -- with the GOP fielding candidates in only 24 races. The Conservative Party had candidates contesting nine of the seats, the Libertarian Party four seats, Green Party three seats, and the Save Our City Party and Black Lives Matter Party ran two candidates each. The Working Families Party only contested a single seat (which seems odd, since the WFP is a big proponent of the fusion voting system used in NYC, maintaining that it encourages third-party participation. That argument seems unsubstantiated, considering that the WFP only contested 2% of the city council seats, and other smaller parties contested only a handful of seats, and none of these parties won a single seat).

Still, between the mayoral election and the city council elections, there were a total of 12 minor political parties that fielded candidates. None of them won any representation at all, with the Democrats winning nearly 9 out of 10 city council seats. Clearly New Yorkers have a great hunger for different brands of ideology-based politics beyond Democratic Party domination. But that appetite is not being satisfied under the current "winner take all" system.

Party List Proportional works in other cities

Compare New York’s results to city council elections in other world-class cities, such as London and Berlin. Both of these cities elect their city councils via proportional representation (a hybrid “mixed member” system that combines city councilors elected by Party List Proportional with other city councilors elected by single-seat districts). In the London Assembly, which elects 25 seats, five political parties won representation in the last election (Labour, Conservatives, Greens, Liberal Democrats and the Reform UK Party), representing the range of major political opinions from left to right in the City of London. Without the PR component of their election, both the Greens and Reform UK would not have won any seats.

In Berlin, which elected 159 city councilors in 2023, five political parties won representation, including the center-left Social Democrats, center-right Christian Democrats, Green Party, Die Linke (the Left) and the far-right Alternative for Germany. From right to left, all the major partisan perspectives won representation. If Berlin had not used a PR method to elect about half of its seats, the Social Democrats, Die Linke and Alternative for Germany would have won hardly any representation at all via the “winner take” districts seats.

Both London and Berlin are enormously large urban centers; at 8.9 million people, London is larger than New York City and Berlin is about half the size. Many other cities around the world use PR to elect their city councils and enjoy the benefits of multi-party democracy and voters having more electoral choices, which in turn encourages higher turnout and reduces the usual two-party “you against me” polarization.

New York City’s history using PR

In fact, as mentioned above, New York City had a 10 year period from 1936 through 1947 when it elected its city council by PR. Previous to that, New York elected 65 aldermen from single-seat “winner take” districts, and just like today the Democratic Party would win about 60% of the popular vote yet would capture around 90% of the seats, due to the distortions of the "winner take all" districts. A handful of seats were won by GOP candidates, but minor party candidates had virtually no success. “Boss Tweed” machine politics and unbridled corruption continued rampant for years in a situation of monopoly Democratic politics.

After the launch of PR for the first time in 1937 using proportional ranked choice voting, typically five political parties won seats. The Democrats continued to win about 50% to 65% of the popular vote, as before, but now they won only a proportionate number (about 50% to 60%) of the city council seats. The Republicans, instead of winning only a handful of seats, now also won their proportionate share, typically around 10 to 15% of both popular votes and seats. An American Labor Party consistently won 10 to 20% of the council seats, and other minor political parties also won some seats.

But the machine politicians within the Democratic Party, who saw their City Hall power waning and despised multi-partyism, waited for their repeal moment. That arrived when, in the 1943 and 1945 council elections, the Communist Party won about 10% of the city council seats. This was during the time of McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings, so the New York machine politicians used “red scare” hysteria to fuel a repeal of “Stalin voting.”

Following the return to single-seat “winner take all” districts, the partisan composition of the city council returned to typically 90% of seats held by Democrats and a handful of seats by Republicans. It is still that way today.

More East Coast cities with party-based local elections

Other cities such as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC also could be reform targets.

Philadelphia

The Philadelphia city council consists of seventeen members, ten elected from equal-sized districts and seven elected citywide (at-large). Interestingly, Philadelphia uses a semi-proportional method known as limited voting, which almost guarantees that, in this very Democratic city, a few non-Democrats usually have a good chance of winning.

With limited voting for the seven at-large seats, each political party is only permitted to nominate up to five candidates, and the voters may only vote for up to five candidates. So two seats are effectively reserved for members outside the majority party. Historically, this has resulted in the at-large seats being filled by five Democrats and two Republicans in every election going back to 1952 when the system was established. Despite the use of limited voting, third party candidates did not win any of the at-large seats, though a number of parties tried, including the Libertarian and Working Families parties, a “Term Limits Philadelphia” party, and some independent candidates. In the 2015 election, all four third-party candidates came in dead last, thousands of votes behind the nearest GOP contender. Even with limited voting, the two major parties retained their dominance.

But in the last two elections in 2019 and 2023, a remarkable thing happened -- two candidates from the Working Families Party were able to knock out the Republicans for those two minority seats. This resulted in Republicans not electing a candidate to any of the at-large seats for the first time in decades (though the GOP did manage to win one of the 10 district seats). So Philadelphia’s limited voting finally had success in electing a couple of third party candidates… but it came at the expense of two other “minor” party candidates, since the GOP is by far a geographic minority perspective in heavily Democratic Philadelphia. In a city with more than 115,000 Republicans (11.4% of registered voters), the GOP holds fewer than 6% of all council seats.

If Philadelphia were to transition to Party List Proportional, it would likely see both the WFP and the GOP able to elect its fair share of candidates, and maybe a Libertarian, Green or other small party candidate also would win some seats. Philadelphia could try out Party List by simply electing the seven citywide seats using this method. With that number of seats being elected at the same time (called “district magnitude”), each political party would need to win about 14% of the vote to capture one seat (it would be advisable to allow voters to use a preferential ranked ballot to rank several candidates, so that if they cast their first preference for a small party that doesn’t have enough support to win, their vote would transfer to their next-ranked party’s candidate. Without including the ranked ballots, that could well result in many voters “wasting” their vote on a small party that can’t reach the 14% threshold, much like the US-style “winner take all” plurality system wastes a large number of votes, undermining the benefits of PR).

This method would allow a very simple transition from the current system of semi-proportional limited voting to fully proportional Party List.

Baltimore

In Baltimore’s 2024 elections, Democratic, Republican and Green parties all ran candidates for the 14 city council seats. The Democrats won all 14 seats. Nine seats had no other candidates in November besides Democrats. In 2020 and 2016, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and a Ujima People's Progress Party ran city council candidates, and the Democrats once again won all seats. In the 2020 citywide election for mayor, the Democrats and GOP ran a candidate, as did a Working Class Party and an Independent. The Democrat easily won. About 75% of registered Baltimore voters are Democrats and 7.3% are Republicans. If Baltimore switched to Party List Proportional, more points of view besides Democrats would win representation, and it would encourage more voters to cast votes for other points of view, since they would no longer have to fear they would be throwing their votes away on parties and candidates with no chance of winning.

Passing Party List PR in any of these cities would provide a golden opportunity to demonstrate how effective this electoral system is in providing broad representation to more voters, which would engender higher voter turnout, more robust political debate and a more inclusive and consensus-building politics. With a population of 8.3 million people, New York City has a larger population than 37 states; Philadelphia with 1.5 million is larger than 11 states. Reforming any of these East Coast cities that already use party-based local elections would be a big deal, and would nudge the US down the road in the direction that it clearly needs to go — toward proportional representation elections.

Open List PR vs Closed List PR

One additional consideration for this discussion is that, as I mentioned at the outset, Americans don’t like political parties any more than they like government itself. So switching to an electoral system in which Americans are voting for parties instead of candidates, and in which party leaders typically pick the individual candidates that make up the party’s “closed list” of candidates, would likely be a barrier to reform. Many Americans would be shocked when they looked at their ballot paper (see link) and saw that it contained only the party names and symbols, and a photograph of the party leader, but no names of individual candidates.

But there is another version of Party List Proportional called “open list” in which voters are permitted the option to vote for an individual candidate, and that vote then doubles as a vote for that candidate’s political party in figuring out the proportion of the vote won by each party. Candidates that receive the most individual votes are pushed higher up the party list. In some open list countries, that determines which of the party’s candidates will fill the party’s seats and get elected, but in other countries winning candidates might be those who have hybrid support from both a certain number of the party’s voters as well as from party leaders. Canadian political scientist Henry Milner says “Sweden has found the right balance.” Any Swedish candidates who receive a number of personal votes equal to five percent or greater of the party's total number of votes in the multi-seat district will automatically be bumped to the top of the list, regardless of where the party leaders ranked them on the party’s list. But, says Milner, “most voters do not do this [i.e. vote for individual candidates], which to me means that party supporters tend to have confidence in their party’s leaders.”

Given the American tradition of voting for individual candidates instead of parties, open list PR methods offer the potential for individual voters to have greater influence over which candidates ultimately take the seats in the open list legislature. Open list PR has its own quirks and idiosyncrasies -- there is no such thing as a perfect electoral system – yet on the whole open list PR provides a credible path forward. For New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington DC, the open list system would be vastly superior to the current “winner take all” methods that those cities are using, which disenfranchises many political perspectives and millions of voters.

Toward a realistic strategy forward

How do we pass any of this? Some of the most vocal proponents of List PR seem to think that if they get more op-eds published in the New York Times or Washington Post, or publish more research papers, that will somehow spur reform. I’ve been doing this electoral reform work for over 30 years, and have led various successful campaigns. I can tell you that op-eds and research papers are valuable, but ultimately that is not the pathway to success. The forward way is to pick out a specific location – city, state, park board, school board, city council – and figure out the “logic of reform” for that specific place and legislative body. And then start slowly lining up your ducks among key political organizations, leaders, constituencies, media outlets and the public in general.

You have to make your case to these multiple audiences, identifying the specific democratic problem you are trying to fix, and show why you have the unique solution to that problem. Yes, it is a painstaking process and can take a number of years before success arrives. Sometimes luck helps, such as an electoral meltdown of one kind or another. Sometimes it’s helpful to establish a commission or task force to inspire a community-based process that pulls in stakeholders and issues its recommendation. But there are no shortcuts in my experience, so the sooner advocates start picking out a specific target, the better.

So -- who is going to roll up her or his sleeves and start the boulder rolling for this campaign for Open Party List PR?

Steven Hill @StevenHill1776.bsky.social @StevenHill1776