Very interesting report from Paul Kane of the Washington Post of a day-long meeting of 7 former Republican and six former Democratic members of Congress:

“Their ideas ranged from a major rethinking of how the body works to symbolic changes that could be implemented next month if anyone had the willpower.

“Eliminate partisan gerrymandering for House districts. Reshape campaign laws to give candidates almost full power over their own races. Make even modest tweaks to the legislative calendar to produce more days for committee work, and spread those meetings out so everyone can attend.”

I think gatherings of this type are a great idea. I only wish that in addition to eliminating partisan gerrymandering, there had been some discussion of nonpartisan primaries along the lines of Alaska’s top-4 system (as Rick Pildes prioritized in his recent Dunwody lecture). And speaking of this type of reform, there’s an important new paper by Ben Reilly and his co-authors simulating what the effect of Nevada’s top-5 variation on Alaska’s system might be given the current political conditions of Nevada itself. Here’s the paper’s abstract:

Electoral reforms that eliminate party primaries and plurality elections are often adopted with the goal of providing voters more options in the general election, advantaging moderate politicians, and providing non-major party candidates a better chance of winning office. In this article, we assess these claims in the context of a proposed top-five primary and ranked choice general election system in Nevada, which will adopt this model for all future elections if confirmed at a second initiative poll in November. Using a survey of Nevada voters in four hypothetical top five elections, and simulating different potential turnout scenarios, we find mostly confirming evidence for these claims. Moderate candidates from the two major parties, via cross-party rankings transfers, are advantaged at the general election. Voters will get more choice than at present and should usually be able to choose from multiple major party candidates in the general election, often leading to both the traditional and insurgent wings of the parties represented. However, to the extent that this occurs, the reform leaves less room for third party and independent candidates and in some scenarios may shut smaller parties out from the general election ballot entirely.

Also, one very simple reform that Congress could mandate for itself is a requirement that a candidate receive a majority, rather than a plurality, of votes in order to win a seat in Congress. That one-sentence rule, as I’ve discussed previously, would encourage states to experiment with the kind of systems that Alaska and Nevada have adopted.