Sean Westwood - CGIS South S050

We will be in CGIS South, S050.

Title: Electoral reforms offer no detectable benefits

Abstract: Reformers increasingly suggest revisions to electoral rules as a response to polarization, distrust, and dissatisfaction with American political institutions. Large foundations and campaigns have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to sell the public on ranked choice voting, proportional representation, and various primary reforms on the premise that changing electoral rules strengthens democratic legitimacy. We empirically evaluate these assertions in three preregistered studies. With a meta-analysis of 9,081 estimates drawn from 790 published papers, we find an average effect that is, despite the efforts of researchers, essentially zero (partial r = 0.01). What positive evidence exists concentrates in descriptive studies, while estimates from identified designs are substantially less optimistic and cluster near zero. The literature shows evidence of publication bias around conventional significance thresholds and has not become more precise as it has grown. A common concern is that voters do not understand reforms and therefore offer naive views. In a survey experiment (N = 3,035) we taught participants how a slate of electoral systems operate. This tripled comprehension but produced no improvement on any of six preregistered outcomes. After applying a multiple-testing correction, all surviving effects were negative, with participants who learned more evaluating reforms less favorably. In an incentivized election experiment (N = 2,896), losing reduced confidence in the vote count just as much under reforms as under conventional rules, RCV worsened perceptions of fairness after close losses, and apparent gains in representation were no larger under proportional representation than under ordinary plurality rule. Alternative electoral rules do not activate the citizen-level mechanisms theorized by activists to rebuild trust or revitalize democratic legitimacy. Institutional reform alone may be insufficient to repair American democratic ills.