The Washington Times Commentary pages on Monday had a wonderful one-two combination of innovative thinking about the electoral process. Bruce Bartlett analyzed the difficulties facing third parties in our politics ("Third party fantasies") and proposed that more states adopt New York's system, which allows a candidate to receive the nomination of more than one party. Jonah Goldberg reviewed the political mess of legislative redistricting ("Redistricting repair") and suggested that Congress return to the once-regular practice of increasing the size of the House of Representatives as our population grows — perhaps even with one dramatic leap of tripling or quadrupling the current 435 seats.

I could take issue with those suggestions or at least propose complementary reforms such as instant-runoff voting for presidential elections and non-winner-take-all, full-representation voting methods for legislative races. The key point, though, is that it's time to put creative thinking about elections on the table. One element of Howard Dean's platform that has the potential to draw cross-partisan support is the formation of a national commission to strengthen American democracy. Staffed by some of our best leaders and with enough resources to collect testimony from around the county, such a commission could spark the high-profile debate we need about ways to make elections work better for our country and its citizens.
    
    Rob Richie
    Executive director
    Center for Voting & Democracy
    Takoma Park