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May 21, 2007

Our View — Nonpartisan legislature works better

Partisanship appears to be at least part of the reason the Minnesota Legislature and the governor have again waited until the last minute to solve some of the state’s most pressing problems.

Passing laws for school funding, nursing homes and taxes in these short, pressure-filled last minutes does not produce the best laws possible. That’s a disservice to the voters and residents of Minnesota.

This problem has been around for some 20 to 30 years. Some of the longest and most drawn out special sessions started in the early 1980s. It may be no coincidence that time was about 10 years into the re-emergence of political parties in Minnesota legislative elections.

From 1913 until 1973, legislators were elected on nonpartisan ballots. And while most legislators caucused with a “conservative” or “liberal” caucus they were still free to choose their votes, mostly according to their district. They were not under pressure from party bosses.

Interestingly, a south-central Minnesota “progressive Republican” Sen. Julius E. Haycraft, of Madelia, introduced the bill in 1913 to create a nonpartisan Legislature. It was initially aimed at making judicial, city and county officials run on nonpartisan ballots. It was amended, surprisingly by another Republican, Sen. A.J. Rockne, a “conservative” Republican, to kill the bill by including the legislature as nonpartisan.

But, in a surprise to Rockne, both houses passed the bill without a word of partisan bickering.

There is some evidence in Minnesota that a nonpartisan legislature works better than a partisan one.

A 2005 study by Eric Manning, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa, shows that legislators elected on nonpartisan ballots often voted more for their districts and their own preferences versus party mandates than those elected on partisan ballots.

Manning studies Minnesota’s legislative voting records from 1967 to 1981, covering periods of nonpartisan elections and those where party designations were used to identify legislators.

Manning concluded: “Parties do have appreciable effect on the voting behavior of the legislators ... Without a strong party caucus system, the legislators are free to vote as they want or how their district wants them to vote.”

The fact that city and county officials have been nonpartisan for 90 plus years, and that the city and county government system seems to be working pretty well, is another testament that nonpartisanship can work.

A nonpartisan election for legislators would break the power the governor and party leaders sometimes hold over members. They can get these members to vote against their districts in exchange for holding out a pet project or important committee assignment.

These kinds of choke collars on independent-minded legislators — those elected officials closest to the people — have a quashing effect on citizen democracy.

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