Ryan’s retirement shows why Republican voters should support proportional representation

If at least 1/8 of Wisconsin voters want Ryan in congress, his seat should be safe

The latest political bombshell is that Paul Ryan is retiring at the end of this term, not running for re-election.

His reasons are probably a combination of factors. There’s his stated reason, that he wants to spend more time with his family — which is probably true, but no more so today than it was in 2016. There’s the risk of losing his Speaker’s gavel, if Democrats take the House in 2018 (though gerrymandering puts Republicans at an advantage, able to lose the popular vote by 8–10% and still keep the chamber). But there’s also the risk of losing his seat; @IronStache (Randy Bryce) is running a vigorous campaign against him.

Ryan’s seat is gerrymandered to have about an 11 point Republican advantage, so Bryce would have had an uphill battle winning it from Ryan. But imagine it wasn’t. Imagine the leader of one party came from a swing district. Should that seat be up for grabs in every election, leaving their party in a humiliating scramble for a new leader every 2–4 years? To avoid this risk, parties tend to look for leaders from safer seats, and to gerrymander the seats they already have… but that exacerbates partisan hyper-polarization, a problem that’s tearing the fabric of our country.

Ryan is from Wisconsin, which has 8 House seats. So if over 1/8 of Wisconsin voters want Ryan in Congress, he should be able to stay in Congress. It shouldn’t depend only on how the partisan winds blow in his local district. Proportional representation could guarantee that.

Now, I’m not saying that a speaker should be immune from losing an election. If not enough voters from his own party support him, he should be gone. But while it’s true that there are plenty of Republicans who don’t like Ryan, there are almost certainly enough who do to make up 1/8 of Wisconsin voters. It should be up to voters, not the party; but if he has enough voters supporting him, he should not lose his seat.

How would proportional representation accomplish that? Here’s an example of how that might work. Imagine Ryan as the O2 candidate in the second example; as long as there are enough circle voters who support him, he can win, even if his own district swung towards the other party.

I’m making a Republican case for proportional representation here, but this is not a partisan idea. Whether you support Republicans, Democrats, or a third party, prop-rep would give you as a voter greater power, instead of giving that power to arbitrary lines on a map.

In the end, the question is simple. Ryan may or may not be the best person to lead the Republicans in the house. But why should there be any chance that that decision is up to Democrats in his district?