Representative Democracy and Convoluted Elections | The American Spectator

When professedly Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was asked on CNN in early September if he would pursue all the radical-left policies he has run on even if he wins the election with on only “one-third of the electorate.” Such an outcome is possible given the three other candidates running for mayor, including independent candidates Eric Adams and Mario Cuomo, and Republican Curtis Sliwa. “If you win an election,” he answered, “you have to fulfill the promises of that. Otherwise, what is the point of or politics?” Mamdani’s proposals have included a rent freeze, free bus service, city-owned groceries, a 2 percent tax increase on millionaires, and a 4.5 percent tax hike on corporations.

In fact, contrary to Mamdani, in a constitutional, representative system of government, the “point” of politics is not to enact a radical set of policies that are favored only by a limited minority of voters, while opposed by a considerable majority. Elections are meant to produce officeholders who not only pursue policies that reflect the preferences of their supporters, but also gain legitimacy from the broader electorate, since elections are conducted in a way that respects the rights of all citizens.

There are indeed noteworthy precedents for Mamdani’s view of electoral politics. Adolf Hitler came to office after his party won only 36.8 percent of the second-round vote for President  in Germany’s 1932 elections, with the winner in those elections, the aging Paul von Hindenburg, compelled to name the Nazi leader to the chancellorship the following year because of the combined opposition to Hindenburg’s government by the far right and the far left. Hitler then had himself named president upon Hindenburg’s death, and thus used “politics” to institute his party’s crazed policies without any limitation.

Nearly four decades later, the professed Marxist Salvador Allende became president of Chile after earning only 36.6 percent of the vote in a three-way election in 1970, winning barely over 1 percent more than the conservative second-place finisher. Allende had run as the candidate of  the leftist Popular Unity coalition, which included both the country’s Communist and Socialist parties.

Just as Mamdani is likely to win election only thanks to a division of the vote among several opponents, Allende was named president by Chile’s Congress on account of a constitutional rule  authorizing the legislature to choose the president from among the top two finalists if no candidate won  50 percent of the vote. He then announced the institution of a “Chilean way to socialism” (with the endorsement of Fidel Castro), including land redistribution and mining nationalization, that contributed to growing dissent along with economic chaos.

In 1973  a strong, 81-47 majority of Chile’s Chamber of Deputies adopted a resolution that called for an end to the President’s constitutional violations (exceeding his executive authority) and denounced his reorganization of the country’s army and police as “notorious attempts to use the armed and police forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks.” Opposition to Allende’s policies led to a coup that led to the right-wing, 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

It should be stressed here that Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary was facilitated by a complex “ranked-choice voting” system that has been adopted in some 46 other American cities that enables citizens to vote not only for the candidate they most favor, but to rank up to four more candidates in order of preference. The system is espoused in the name of “democracy” but is really anti-democratic, since it tends to confuse many voters, to advance the fortunes of fringe candidates (like Mamdani himself), and to facilitate the sort of deal Mamdani made with a rival, “progressive” City Comptroller Brad Lander, in which each would encourage his supporters to vote for the other as a second choice. (Lander had been the favored candidate of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Elizabeth Warren, so their politics weren’t far apart.)

The overwhelming majority that Democrats enjoy in New York’s City Council, plus their control of the state’s legislature and governor, offers little hope of restraint to the policies Mamdani will pursue if elected. (Mamdani, an ardent anti-Semite, has previously endorsed the slogan “Globalize the Intifada” — that is, the terrorist attacks in Israel that reached their apex early in this century — and in the past espoused official policies of the so-called Democratic Socialist parties entailing “depolicing” and “decarceration” — that is, emptying the jails. He is now backing off from those statements in hope of enhancing his election prospects, but in view of his stated determination to enact all of his radical-left policies, it would be unwise for voters to take those hedges seriously.

When the authors of the Declaration of Independence, following the teaching of John Locke, wrote that legitimate government derives its “just powers” from the consent of the governed, they did not mean, of course, that citizens would unanimously favor every  exercise of those powers: such a level of agreement is impossible. They meant rather that government will enact policies that are at least acceptable to the vast majority of the people, regardless of which candidate they voted for.

This means above all that government actions respect the inalienable or natural rights of every citizen, such as to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Such a system of government is limited in its scope and purpose; it may not single out some classes (religious, economic, racial, ethnic for example) to be discriminated against. It is representative in the modern sense first expounded by Locke’s predecessor Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan chs. 17-18): in return for the protection that government provides, each citizen must regard the government (whatever form it may take) as if, when it acts, he were “present again” in the sovereign authority, just as bound to obey its judgments as if he himself had pronounced them.

But it follows that legitimate government must afford law-abiding citizens the security for the sake of which they forego the freedom of action that would exist in a (hypothetical) “state of nature.” Methods of achieving this security typically include adequate policing and punishment (including, of course, incarceration) to deter criminals or keep them out of circulation, as well as effective armed forces to protect the nation from foreign threats.

One other lesson of the Mamdani candidacy should be an appreciation of the benefits of America’s two-party system, which ordinarily serves to prevent truly extreme candidates from gaining office (as they did in Germany in the 1930s and Chile in the 1970s) and promotes overall stability in the nation’s policies. For relevant contrast today, note the convoluted coalition politics in democracies like Germany and Israel, and the frequent threat of such outcomes in France and Italy, which tends to confer outsized influence on minor parties whose support is needed to generate a majority coalition.

Finally, ostensibly sophisticated devices like ranked-choice voting, which treat elections as if they were intended to maximize satisfaction of voter “preferences” rather than conform to a consensus of reasonable opinions, should be eschewed. They are just a means of promoting fringe candidates and parties at the expense of mainstream judgments.

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