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 The authoritarian threat confronting the U.S. is profound. In 2020 and 2021, for the first time in its history, the U.S. experienced a sitting president’s refusal to concede an election and a multifaceted campaign to overturn its results.
Meanwhile, hundreds of bills designed to help partisans overturn elections have since been introduced, and some enacted, across dozens of states.
Although once marginal, and despite ongoing efforts by center-right political leaders to counter its influence, an extremist faction has secured its grip on one of America’s two major political parties.
And yet, America’s authoritarian faction does not enjoy broad-based support. To the contrary, antidemocratic politics in the U.S. remain unpopular. For instance, the vast majority of Americans—more than 8 in 10—disapprove of the January 6th rioters, including 75 percent of Republicans; and consistently less than 4 of every 10 Americans approved of President Donald Trump. Nonetheless, this faction is poised to experience continued successes; and the Big Lie behind the January 6th insurrection is spreading, not abating, as an increasing number of politicians propagate it.
This paper argues that understanding the escalating extremism and success of America’s authoritarian faction requires understanding the U.S. electoral system: one uniquely translating limited factional support into outsized political influence.
 It also examines the core components of the electoral system used for most U.S. elections—single-member plurality—and ways by which its basic features may be structurally favoring extremism. The choices constituting single-member plurality—along with other anomalous features of the U.S. system, such as party primaries and small assembly sizes—aggravate the authoritarian threat. In particular, this paper assesses at least three ways by which the design of the U.S. electoral system is likely accelerating antidemocratic extremism, including by:
- Generating electoral biases, or exaggerating electoral wins in one party’s favor,
- Rewarding coherent factions at the expense of less coherent majorities, and
- Collecting limited information about the electorate’s preferences, including underlying consensus.
Additionally, there are at least three ways by which the U.S. system blunts efforts to counter extremism, including by:
- Weakening competition such that the far-right is increasingly unchallenged at the ballot box,
- Diluting minority voting power such that racial and ethnic minorities are systematically underrepresented, and
- Entrenching binary conflict that exacerbates animosity between partisans and marginalizes in-group moderates.
 Lastly, while this paper does not advocate for any specific suite of reforms, it does briefly illustrate reform options and recommend pursuing reforms as a strategy for protecting U.S. democracy against further backsliding. Alternative electoral system design choices could incentivize broader coalition-building, lessen biases that favor one party over the other, enhance racial and ethnic minority representation, and facilitate substantially greater competition, among other potentially desirable effects to structurally help mitigate antidemocratic extremism. Absent basic changes to the U.S. electoral system, extremism is likely to continue accelerating. Electoral reform may thus prove essential to attenuating the authoritarian threat.
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