Congress: Making Democracy Competitive Again
Part 3 of 3: How three structural reforms could break the duopoly, restore real competition, and make the People's House accountable again.
For part three of our deep dive into the extraordinary lack of competition in races for the U.S. House of Representatives — The People’s House — we turn to solutions. If you missed the first two installments, check out Congress: The Vanishing Competition and Congress: How We Got Stuck.
But first, an apology. This week’s post arrives late — I was traveling in South Africa and didn’t manage deadlines as well as I should have. Thanks for your patience. For today’s post on solutions, we’ll explore:
Why America’s political dysfunction is a structural problem, not a people problem.
Three reforms that could restore genuine competition — open primaries with ranked-choice voting, multi-member districts, and a federal ban on gerrymandering.
How the fight for reform is unfolding right now — with reformers winning ground in some states while facing fierce pushback in others.
Solving For tackles one pressing problem at a time: what’s broken, what’s driving it, and what can be done. New posts weekly. Learn more.
Katherine Gehl thought she knew how to fix politics.
A lifelong business executive from Wisconsin, she’d built and sold a thriving food company, served on corporate boards, and backed candidates she believed could bridge America’s divides.
But after years of campaigning, donating, and policy work, a realization set in: the problem wasn’t the players. It was the game itself.
So Gehl teamed up with Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter — the world’s leading scholar on competition — to study American politics as an industry. Their conclusion was as simple as it was damning: the market for representation is broken. It no longer responds to its customers — the voters. And like any industry that stops innovating, it needs structural reform to work again.
“Too many people are laboring under the misimpression that our political problems are inevitable…or the fault of an increasingly polarized public,” they wrote in a Harvard Business School case study, Why Competition in the Politics Industry Is Failing America, “Those who focus on these reasons are looking in the wrong places.”
Instead, they concluded, “This is a systems problem.”
If Part I of our series explored the problem and Part II traced the forces behind it, Part III is about finding a way out — not incremental fixes, but structural reforms to make democracy competitive again.
This isn’t a story with an ending — it’s a struggle unfolding in real time. As the U.S. House grows more uncompetitive and gerrymandering intensifies, reformers have launched efforts to reopen the political marketplace. But every gain triggers resistance; every victory, a counterattack. Reform is less a march than a brawl—and the outcome remains uncertain.
What stands in the way isn’t a mystery. The parties, consultants, donors, and media ecosystems that profit from division have little incentive to change. For them, predictability is profit. Competition is risk.
And there’s no single fix. But to make elections genuinely competitive again — to restore a system where voters choose their leaders, not the other way around — three changes would rewrite the rules:
Open primaries and ranked-choice voting so candidates must build broad coalitions, not just appeal to party extremes.
Multi-member districts and proportional representation to replace winner-take-all elections with systems where several representatives are elected proportionally.
A federal ban on partisan gerrymandering to end map-rigging once and for all by establishing independent redistricting commissions nationwide.
Together, these reforms aim at a simple but radical goal: to make politics work the way democracy was meant to — where real choice fuels accountability and problem-solving.
Open Competition, Broader Coalitions
In every corner of American life, competition drives progress — except when it comes to how we choose our political leaders.
Less than 1 in 10 of the 435 voting seats in the U.S. House are competitive. In 2024, only 8 percent of congressional races were decided by fewer than five points, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
The result is a House — the “People’s House,” built to be the most responsive and representative branch — now dominated by insulated districts and dug-in factions. Polarization rises, problem-solving shrinks, and in most of the country a vote is symbolic rather than decisive.
To break that cycle, Gehl and Porter — who expanded their ideas into a 2020 book — laid out a model they call Final-Five Voting: a single open primary for all candidates, the top five advance, and a ranked-choice general election that ensures majority support. The open primary expands the electorate; ranked-choice voting pushes candidates to reach beyond their base.
In 2020, Alaska adopted a version of this system, advancing the top four candidates (not five) from an open primary into a ranked-choice general. Two years later, it delivered something rare in American politics: genuine competition.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, kept her seat by assembling a coalition of moderates, independents, and Democrats. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, won the state’s lone House seat — defeating Sarah Palin — with similar cross-partisan appeal. Conservative Republican Mike Dunleavy cruised to reelection as governor.
In one year, Alaska elected a moderate Republican, a Democrat to the House for the first time in 50 years, and a conservative Republican.
Maine has joined in too. It’s used ranked-choice voting for state and federal races since 2018 and in 2022 approved “semi-open” primaries that allow unaffiliated voters to participate in either party’s primary. New Mexico followed this year, opening its primaries to independents as well.
Gehl founded The Institute for Political Innovation and leads The Campaign for Final Five Elections to drive the reform. But as it has gained traction, opposition has hardened.
In Nevada, a referendum for open primaries and ranked-choice general elections passed with 53 percent in 2022 — but because state law requires two consecutive approvals, it returned to the ballot in 2024. With organized resistance from both parties, it fell short at 47 percent.
Measures in Colorado, Oregon, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, and South Dakota all failed in 2024.
The Atlantic’s Russell Berman wrote that “these outcomes proved that reformers still haven’t figured out how to sell the country on possible solutions to core problems that voters repeatedly tell pollsters they want addressed.”
The 2024 losses also revealed organized, effective resistance from the parties themselves. Alaska demonstrates the model works, but scaling it requires overcoming both the messaging challenge and entrenched interests that profit from the status quo. Reform may spread as dysfunction intensifies—or it may stall. Right now, that’s an open question.
Making Votes Matter
If open primaries and ranked-choice general elections change how we vote, multi-member districts change what our votes can do.
All 435 House seats are chosen from single-member, winner-take-all districts. Whoever finishes first — even by a single vote — takes 100 percent of the representation. Everyone else gets none. The system amplifies geographic polarization, rewards gerrymandering, and leaves millions politically homeless.
It wasn’t always this way. In the 19th century, many states elected multiple representatives from the same district. But those systems often let one party sweep every seat, so in 1967, Congress ended the practice, requiring single-member districts.
Reformers want to revive multi-member districts — this time with safeguards — and pair them with ranked-choice voting to allocate seats proportionally. The mechanics are straightforward: states redraw maps into larger districts that elect several members each.
That shift makes far more votes count. Today, a candidate with strong minority support in a safely drawn district translates into zero representation; with multi-member districts, that same support translates into seats. Democrats in rural regions and Republicans in urban ones gain a path to victory. Gerrymandering loses its power as proportional rules produce fair outcomes regardless of how maps are drawn.
A Brennan Center for Justice study shows how dramatic the impact could be.
In Massachusetts, Republicans routinely earn more than one-third of the statewide vote but hold none of the state’s nine House seats — their voters too thinly spread to win anywhere. When researchers combined the state into two multi-member districts and allocated seats proportionally, Republican votes aggregated, yielding three seats — reflecting their actual support.
Texas shows the opposite dynamic. Republicans have drawn one of the country’s most extreme maps, winning roughly two-thirds of the state’s 38 seats on just over half the vote. When researchers grouped Texas into six multi-member districts and applied proportional rules — Democrats consistently won 18 of 38 seats, matching their vote share.
Proportional representation, conclude the study’s authors Michael Li and Peter Miller, “brings a party’s share of seats in line with its share of votes — and insulates from attempts to distort those results, no matter how hard some might try.”
Crucially, a change like this doesn’t require amending the Constitution. Article I, Section 4 gives Congress broad power to set the “Times, Places and Manner” of House elections—the same authority it used in 1967 to mandate single-member districts. Repealing that statute and replacing it with a proportional framework would be enough.
The blueprint already exists. Representative Don Beyer of Virginia has introduced the Fair Representation Act, which would replace single-member districts with multi-member ones and use ranked-choice voting to allocate seats proportionally.
In 2024, scholars from universities and research institutes across the country — including Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School — issued an open letter urging Congress to adopt the Fair Representation Act. Their message:
“America’s winner-take-all elections manufacture zero-sum outcomes when what we need is fair, inclusive representation that reflects the full spectrum of voter preferences.”
What’s missing isn’t the policy or the research. It’s political will. The party in power has little reason to rewrite the rules that helped it win. But when pressure builds, history shows reform can turn from slow to sudden.
Ban It
Opening primaries expand who candidates must answer to. Multi-member districts make representation match the electorate. The final step is locking those gains in place — banning gerrymandering nationwide by shifting map-drawing away from state legislatures to independent commissions.
The framers foresaw the threat of state legislatures manipulating election rules.
When debating how Americans would choose their representatives, Alexander Hamilton warned against giving state legislatures unchecked power over federal elections. In Federalist No. 59, he singled out the danger:
“Nothing can be more evident, than that an exclusive power of regulating elections for the national government, in the hands of the State legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy.”
Hamilton’s concern was that states might put their own interests ahead of the people’s. So the framers built a fail-safe.
Article I, Section 4 — the Elections Clause — in the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to “make or alter” state rules for federal elections. Hamilton saw it as essential insurance.
Many reformers now argue it’s time to use that authority — banning partisan gerrymandering outright rather than tolerating it as an unfortunate byproduct of politics.
This urgency sharpened after the Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause, in which a bitterly divided 5-4 court held that partisan gerrymandering — even when “incompatible with democratic principles” — was beyond the reach of federal courts.
The Court left the issue entirely to Congress. But, once again, Congress has a blueprint — and it came close to being enacted in 2022.
The Freedom to Vote Act would ban partisan gerrymandering nationwide, require states to follow neutral map-drawing criteria, and make those rules enforceable in federal court. For the first time, voters and advocacy groups would have clear standing to challenge maps that entrench one party’s power.
The bill was introduced as a bipartisan-minded compromise. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin — often the decisive moderate at the time — co-sponsored the legislation authored by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.
But in a Senate split 50-50, all 50 Republicans opposed it. Unable to overcome the 60-vote filibuster — and an unwillingness by enough Democrats to scrap the filibuster — the bill died.
Republicans rejected it as federal overreach, arguing it would strip states of their traditional authority to run elections. Then-Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell called it a “solution in search of a problem,” denouncing it as a “naked power grab.”
The accusation inverted reality. The actual power grab was politicians drawing districts to predetermine election outcomes. What the Freedom to Vote Act proposed was ending that rigging—ensuring voters choose their representatives, not the other way around.
A Republic, Renewed
The fight is happening right now.
President Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms — not after the next Census, but immediately — to lock in more favorable districts. There was no attempt to hide the partisan gerrymandering at work. Texas Republicans moved first, rewriting the state’s map to flip several Democratic seats; North Carolina and Missouri soon followed. Democrats countered, with California’s legislature advancing its own aggressive map and voters approving it at the ballot box.
Redistricting is supposed to happen once a decade, yet nothing stops mid-cycle remapping. The message is unmistakable: when politicians control the lines, the lines will be drawn to serve politicians — until we change who draws them.
But, again and again, when American democracy has faltered, Americans have repaired it — not by tearing it down, but by rebuilding it from within.
Progressives of the early 1900s shifted nominating power from party bosses to voters and established direct election of senators. Women secured suffrage in 1920 after a 70-year fight. The Civil Rights movement forced the nation to live up to its founding creed by securing the right to vote for Black Americans.
Each time, renewal came not from the top but from citizens who refused to accept a democracy that no longer worked.
We stand in such a moment again.
When competition vanishes and accountability fades, the system cannot right itself. As Gehl and Porter warn: “Our political system will not be self-correcting. We must change it.” The question is whether we will—whether enough Americans will demand that the People’s House belongs to the people again.
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Previous Deep Dives
The 21st Century’s Oil: Solving For China’s Rare Earth Dominance
Part I - Rare Earths: The Invisible Backbone, Sept. 4
The Problem — What’s broken, and why it matters
Part II - Rare Earths: The Middle Kingdom’s Monopoly, Sept. 11
The Context — How we got here, and what’s been tried
Part III - Rare Earths: The Race to Rebuild, Sept. 18
The Solutions — What’s possible, and who’s leading the way
The Control Problem: Solving For AI Safety
Part I - AI: The Race and the Reckoning, Oct. 2
The Problem — What’s broken, and why it matters
Part II - AI: The Prisoner’s Dilemma, Oct. 9
The Context — How we got here, and what’s been tried
Part III - AI: The New Nuclear Moment, Oct. 16
The Solutions — What’s possible, and who’s leading the way
The Democracy Deficit: Solving for Competition in the People’s House
Part I - Congress: The Vanishing Competition, Oct. 31
The Problem — What’s broken, and why it matters
Part II - Congress: How We Got Stuck, Nov. 7
The Context — How we got here, and what’s been tried
Part III - Congress: Making Democracy Competitive Again, Today
The Solutions — What’s possible, and who’s leading the way