Earlier today, I did a post explaining why, if the goal is to reduce the risk of Republicans repudiating the result of a valid victory in the 2024 presidential election by the Democratic candidate, the highest electoral reform priority for Congress right now should be to enact the “majority winner rule” I’ve advocated previously–and elaborated upon in a forthcoming law review article. What I describe as “the Portman problem” (referring to Senator Rob Portman’s decision to abandon his Senate seat rather than facing a Trump-dominated GOP primary, even though he most likely would win the November election if it were a one-one-one race against either the Trump-backed candidate or the Democratic nominee) can be remedied, not by the various make-it-easier-to-cast-a-ballot provisions of the newly unveiled Freedom to Vote bill, but instead by structural reform that would replace plurality-winner general elections with the requirement that a general election winner must receive over 50%. This kind of majority-winner rule would enable a GOP moderate, like Portman, to compete in the general election even if unable to prevail in a Trump-dominated GOP primary.

Now, as if on cue, we get the news that Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, like Portman, won’t run for reelection next year. It’s the same problem: Gonzales likely could beat either the Trump-backed candidate or the Democratic nominee one-on-one (as thus is technically “the Condorcet candidate” for reasons that I explained in my earlier post today), but is structurally boxed out under the current system of a partisan primary followed by a plurality-winner general election. According to an interview Gonzales gave to The NY Times, Gonzalez laments the fact that “the congressional wing of the [Republican] party will become only more thoroughly Trumpified” as a result of his bowing out of the race. To Gonzalez, “Trump represents nothing less than a threat to American democracy,” calling him a “cancer for the country.” Even so, the structural combination of the partisan primary and the plurality-winner general election prevents Gonzales from trying to stay in Congress to avoid “a Trump-dominated House Republican caucus.”

This news of Gonzalez’s decision, coming in the same week that Senate Democrats release their Freedom to Vote bill, ought to be an alarming signal that they haven’t focused on the electoral reform most needed to protect American democracy from Trump-instigated election subversion. If the Senate next week is going to debate what congressional legislation is absolutely essential to safeguarding democracy, it should make sure to consider the kind of structural reform that would let the likes of Portman and Gonzalez–as well as Liz Cheney and so many other threatened non-Trump Republicans–prove themselves to be the most majority-preferred candidate in the general election even if they can’t win a Trump-dominated GOP primary.