What is the purpose of this experiment?

To let students experience representative democracy in action and help them understand why:

• Most citizens mistrust political institutions.

• Political debates produce more slogans and partisan attacks than honest deliberation.

• Policy making is often based more on appearances than the public interest.

What could a classroom experiment prove?

That these problems are caused by the structure of legislative elections.

Why suspect the election method?

Because in studying political conflict outside the legislative arena, the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program has found that two facets of representation often affect the outcome.

First, if each representative speaks for a group of people who share a clear set of interests, he or she is usually motivated to meet that group's objectives. Typically, the most practical way to achieve those goals is to deal realistically with the issues and with the other representatives involved.

Second, if each representative can communicate directly with constituents, he or she can explain to them the benefits of any agreement he negotiates with the other parties. So all the representatives can have some confidence that if they do reach an intelligent outcome, their constituents will accept it and their efforts will be rewarded.

How does that relate to the legislative process?

In Congress, each representative speaks for a geographic district. Within any district, the residents vary greatly from one another: politically, economically, socially. So, anything a lawmaker says or does on controversial issues can trouble key blocs of voters. In fact, to persuade constituents that some legislation is in their interests, a lawmaker would need to customize the line of reasoning to each person he or she communicated with. No legislator has the resources to do this.

Harvard scholar Morris P. Fiorina observes that, on controversial issues, a lawmaker "can expect to make friends as well as enemies." On balance, dealing thoughtfully with hard issues produces few rewards. A more efficient way to stay in office is to reduce hard issues to slogans, attack opposing views, provide "constituent services," and get "pork" for the district.

What's the connection to voter alienation?

In every legislative district, the residents are politically diverse yet have to share the same representative. As a result, few citizens can get a representative who shares their political values. By comparison, most democracies use proportional representation (PR), a system that assures nearly all voters will elect someone who reflects their own values. In PR countries, voter turnout averages 80 percent. In our Congressional elections, turnout has been 44 to 50 percent in presidential election years and 34 to 38 percent in other years.

Meaning that PR is the answer?

Not exactly. Several American cities, including New York and Cincinnati, tried PR in the 1920s and 30s, and in all cases but one citizens voted to rescind it. Apparently, PR didn't increase most citizens' trust in the people who were elected or the laws they passed. One likely reason is that since a PR lawmaker doesn't represent everyone in a district, he or she has no way to know who his constituents are, which has the effect of limiting communication between PR representatives and citizens. The only practical way for a PR legislator to communicate with constituents is via the media. The media are not in the business of helping lawmakers explain their policy decisions in detail to their constituents. So, the surest way for any PR legislator to convince voters that he or she is championing their values is still by publicly attacking ideological opponents.

Is there a hypothetical solution?

Elections could be structured so that each legislator ends up speaking for a group of people who share the same values, and each lawmaker has a direct channel of communication to those constituents. With that combination, each legislator would know that if he or she resolved differences with ideological opponents, he would have the means to show his constituents that it was the best way to achieve their own objectives. So, legislators should have incentives to seek constructive agreements.

How does this tie into the Classroom Experiment?

The experiment lets an instructor model this election method in the classroom and gauge the effects on voters and legislators. Students get a more vivid experience of the political process than they can get from a text book.

Ideally, the students are divided into two groups, one using the above election method and the other using the current American system, so the two can be compared. That would require at least 40 or more students.

If you have less than 40 students or limited time, we recommend that you just create the negotiation-based legislature. After the exercise, the students can compare their experience to what they see happening in election campaigns and in Congress itself.

How does one begin?

The instructor may want to discuss or assign the students some reading about political conflict and the role of negotiation in resolving it.

The instructor then picks a complex, controversial issue that stirs strong feelings among the students: something that affects campus life or a national political issue.

If an instructor is going to form two legislatures, he or she divides the students into two groups by some criterion that won't bias the experimental results. (So, the students should not pick which group they are in.) The group that will use the current election method then has to be divided "geographically" perhaps by rows of their classroom so that each "geographic" division can elect a representative by straight plurality vote. The other group will elect representatives at large, as described below.

Whether the instructor is going to form one or two legislatures, he or she then asks students to volunteer as candidates. They are told that if elected they will be evaluated by their "constituents" like real world representatives running for reelection. Ideally, there will be about two to three times as many candidates as seats. The candidates can outline their positions to fellow students in a classroom presentation or in written platforms.

How does the negotiation-based election work?

It aligns voters with their representatives as closely as practical, drawing on a proposal by John R. Chamberlin and Paul N. Courant in The American Political Science Review, September, 1983. The election requires a preferential ballot: each student ranks the candidates he or she prefers, in order.

Ballots are counted in a way to ensure that as many students as possible get their first choice of a representative, and that most of the rest get their second choice. It works as follows: The candidate who is the first choice of the fewest students is out of the running. The votes that were cast for him are then given to his backers' second choices. Then, the next lowest vote-getter is dropped. The votes for her go to her backers' next choices. This process is repeated until the number of candidates left equals the number of seats to be filled.

After the election, each student is given the option to inform the instructor which representative he or she prefers. The instructor then informs each representative who his or her constituents are.

What's next?

The representatives should be told that the students they represent will vote on any proposal they produce. So, the closer the representatives come to consensus, the more likely that a majority of students will support their proposal. The "legislature(s)" then meet in private to seek a solution to the issue selected at the outset.

A fixed amount of time should be allotted for the deliberations. If a legislature produces a proposal that a representative supports, he or she should then seek his constituents' support for the measure. If a legislature produces no proposal or produces one that the representative doesn't support, he should explain his position and actions to his constituents.

Each group of students then votes on whether or not to adopt the proposal.

What about evaluating the process?

All students complete a questionnaire ranking their satisfaction with the process, their representative and the outcome. Among the questions to be asked:

• Do you believe that the outcome was the best one achievable in terms of a) your interests; and b) the interests of everyone?

• How sincere do you believe your representative was in statements about a) his or her own beliefs; b) his election opponents; c) his interactions with other representatives?

• To what degree do you believe that your representative tried to reach the outcome that best met your interests?

• If he or she did less than his best, what do you think was his motivation?

The representatives should also fill out a questionnaire ranking their satisfaction with the process and outcome. Among the questions to be asked:

• How accurate were your statements to your constituents about a) your own beliefs; b) your election opponents; c) your interactions with other representatives?

• To what degree did you try to reach the outcome that best met your constituents' interests as you understood them?

• If anything got in the way, what was it?

Then, the instructor can lead a discussion with the students.

If there were two legislatures, the two groups of students can meet to compare notes. Did the two sets of candidates campaign differently? What connection do the candidates see between the election method and the campaign tactics they chose? Did the two bodies negotiate differently? How did it affect the representatives elected by plurality vote that their constituents were diverse? How did it affect the other representatives that all of their constituents supported their basic outlook?

If there was only the negotiation-based legislature, the students can compare their experience to how the current election method may be affecting voters, candidates and lawmakers.

What additional information and support is available?

We will provide you with detailed instructions for the experiment, ballots and evaluation forms, along with individualized consultation, if you just tell us how many students you have and the amount of class time you plan to devote to the experiment. You can contact us by sending an email to dem2000@igc.org