Critics of our two-party, single-member district system often point to European countries, with their proportional representation and runoff systems, as shining cities on a hill that we should seek to emulate. Sometimes they have small victories, such as the recent passage of instant runoff voting in San Francisco municipal elections. Other times, they have spectacular failures, such as the spoiling of the 2000 election, to illustrate what happens when one leaves the two-party system. Rarely, though, does a failure of their own proposed systems become so obvious as in France over the weekend, with conservative President Jaques Chirac and fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen headed to a runoff.
The short version: The left was so fractured in France, splitting its vote among several candidates, that front-runner Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, leader of the center-left Socialist Party and rival to Chirac, failed to make the runoff. Fascist candidate Le Pen, leader of the National Front, who has called the Holocaust a \detail of history"" and whose No. 1 plank is the scapegoating of North African immigrants for all of France's problems, got all of his supporters to the polls.
As a result, Chirac is almost assured another five-year term, and a competitive race between the conservative Chirac and liberal Jospin, in which the left would have been favored, won't even materialize. Instead, on May 5, France will have the equivalent of a presidential race between President Bush and Pat Buchanan.
This strange result points out a severe weakness of runoff elections: What if one ideological wing, on the whole comprising a majority, is so split that the runoff ends up featuring two candidates from the opposite wing? In our two-party open primary system, this could never happen. If France held its candidate selection process in a manner similar to our own, Chirac would have fended off Le Pen in a conservative primary, Jospin would have led the leftist field and the two would have faced one another in the general election. As it now stands, the contest will be between the center-right and the fascist-right, an incredibly undemocratic outcome compared to what might have been.
This is the sort of result that really makes one appreciate the system used in our country, despite all its faults. That's not to say there aren't foul-ups, like the divided intra-party opposition to Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George McGovern in 1972 that guaranteed Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon historically massive landslide victories. However, at least in those cases, the left and right had clear candidates going into the general election, even if the swing vote went unanimously one way or the other come the general election. Our two-party system may on the surface seem stifling, but the competitive primaries that take place for all sorts of offices across the country and the variety of elected officials within a single party prove its inherent pluralistic aspect, guaranteeing both representative democracy and stability of operation.
Imagine if a runoff system was held in this country. We may very well have had two conservative candidates, John McCain and President Bush, competing in November 2000. Imagine a parliamentary system run under a form of proportional representation; no government could possibly be stable. The endless dissent in our system would turn into outright deadlock and national balkanization overnight. Italy, often seen as a European laughingstock for its instability, with several dozen prime ministers in the past few decades, would be a paradise compared to what this endlessly diverse country would have without institutional boundaries to political collapse.
That said, make sure to get out and vote Sept. 10 in the primaries for governor and other offices in Wisconsin. It's not just a formality of our system, but a truly vital part of our democracy in which nobody should neglect to participate. Indeed, France demonstrates that the American elections are held under the best of all possible methods.
