For years, the left has commonly claimed that the reason the United States does not have universal health care is that it has a presidential system rather than a parliamentary system. This is also claimed to be the reason third parties have not formed a government in the United States since 1861.
The first reason this is not true is because if you look at South Korea, they have universal health care, as do many presidential systems in the Americas.
United States
The reason the United States does not have universal health care is because we keep voting for Republicans. It’s as simple as that.
Despite this, Republicans have only won one of the last eight presidential elections but have served three of the previous eight terms.
If the United States had a parliamentary system, assuming no changes in the House of Representatives elections over the last 36 years, Republicans would have formed a government in 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2022.
A parliamentary system would have given us a Democratic head of government for 12 instead of 20 of the last 34 years. We would have seen eight additional years of Republican rule under a parliamentary system.
A presidential system also slows things down, which is both a feature and a bug. Since 1988 we have had:
| Start | End | President | Senate | House | Years | Trifecta | Congress President different | Split Congress | Both houses flip? |
| 1987 | 1993 | Republican | Democrat | Democrat | 6 | 6 | |||
| 1993 | 1995 | Democrat | Democrat | Democrat | 2 | 2 | |||
| 1995 | 2001 | Democrat | Republican | Republican | 6 | 6 | 1 | ||
| 2001 | 2003 | Republican | Split | Republican | 2 | 1 | |||
| 2003 | 2007 | Republican | Republican | Republican | 4 | 4 | |||
| 2007 | 2009 | Republican | Democrat | Democrat | 2 | 2 | 1 | ||
| 2009 | 2011 | Democrat | Democrat | Democrat | 2 | 2 | |||
| 2011 | 2015 | Democrat | Democrat | Republican | 4 | 4 | |||
| 2015 | 2017 | Democrat | Republican | Republican | 2 | 2 | |||
| 2017 | 2019 | Republican | Republican | Republican | 2 | 2 | |||
| 2019 | 2021 | Republican | Republican | Democrat | 2 | 2 | |||
| 2021 | 2023 | Democrat | Democrat | Democrat | 2 | 2 | |||
| 2023 | Democrat | Democrat | Republican | 2 | 2 |
Since Reagan, we have had six years of Democratic trifectas versus four years of Republican trifectas, 14 years of Republican rule, and 14 years of Democratic rule under a parliamentary system.
This is one tradeoff you make between parliamentary and presidential systems. Parliamentary systems are faster than Presidential systems, for better and for worse. It all depends on how people vote and the election system you use.
Election systems make a tremendous difference in who gets elected into office.
Democrats won the most votes in the 1996 and 2012 House elections but did not win the most seats.
Democrats have not won the most seats without winning the most votes since 1942.
This is not because of how our head of government is selected; this is only because 50 states used first past the post until recently, and now the number is down to 48 states that use this archaic voting system.
United Kingdom
The same pattern appears in the United Kingdom, where the Conservative Party formed governments following elections in 1935, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1970, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 2015, 2017, and 2019, with a majority of the seats and no coalition necessary. The Conservative Party has not won a majority of the vote since 1931.
This is under a parliamentary system. Parliamentary systems do not protect you from the spoiler effect and voters making bad decisions.
One of the easiest ways to tell whether an election accurately represents voters is to measure how much a party is over or under represented compared to their vote share.
The British election in which the Tories had the smallest margin in the last 70 years was in 2017 when they won 45% of the vote and 50% of the seats. This was the most accurate election since 1951. Margins are often 20% off or even larger, like in 1924, when the Tories won 69% of the seats with 47% of the vote.
Germany vs UK
The German election in which the CDU won the largest disproportionate share since the fall of Hitler was in 2013 when they won 7% more seats than they technically should have won. This is only the second time their margin of error has been above 5% since the fall of the Third Reich! The closest margin of victory since 1892 in the UK was in 1945, when the Tories were off by 3.85%.
The UK and Germany have parliamentary systems with a mostly ceremonial head of state. The only difference in government formation is their election systems. German elections always see close margins between the total votes a party receives and the number of seats it gets. No party has ever received a majority of the seats without having a majority vote in Germany.
In the UK it is the rule that at least one party will usually win a majority of the seats, and no party will win a majority of the vote. The only two times parties have won a majority of the vote in the last century were Labour in 1945 and the Tories in 1931. Majority governments have been formed with a majority of the seats in almost every election since.
In this case study comparing Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, it is obvious that the most important variable in electing a government that represents the people is not how you select your head of government but your election system, which ensures majority rule, which must come along with a majority of the vote.
The biggest risk in Germany and the United Kingdom is that you don’t vote for your head of government, which is how Hitler came to power through backdoor deals with Die Zentrum, the forerunner to CDU.
Ireland
Ireland offers us an opportunity to see ranked voting in action. Ireland has seen similar results to Germany since gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1921. Ireland uses ranked voting, while Germany uses mixed member proportional, so one vote for your party, one vote in your constituency and then the party list seats are used to make the total allocation of parliament fit the vote share as close as possible.
Single Transferable Vote results in Ireland are similar to mixed member proportional results in Germany. Ranked voting ensures no party can win a majority of the seats without a majority of the vote once candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated. It also guarantees smaller parties can be started and gain representation in parliament. Ireland currently has nine parties in its parliament using a single transferable vote.
Party-list, proportional, and ranked voting can all work well.
However, there is a weakness in proportional and party list voting, which we observe in elections in Israel. Ideally, when designing a party list system, the threshold for getting a single seat should be set as the total valid votes divided by the total number of seats. This minimizes the number of wasted votes. But Israel, among many other democracies, sets an artificial threshold above that limit, which can easily cause 10% of more votes to be wasted. In the last election, 7% of the votes in Israel went to parties that won more than 1% of the vote.
Germany used to have the same problem until they made some reforms within the last decade. It is not unique to Israel, but Germany has since fixed it. This flaw still exists in many other democracies around the world.
So, if you use a party list, you need to ensure that the threshold for getting a seat in your parliament or congress is set at the total votes / total seats. Any party that wins more than that should have representation.
Ranked voting completely bypasses this problem by ensuring every vote counts as long as voters fill out their ballot. Under ranked voting, voters can both vote their conscience and ensure their vote never gets wasted.
This is why I believe ranked voting is the most proportional voting system.
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