Below is the abstract for “Requiring Majority Winners for Congressional Elections: Harnessing Federalism to Combat Extremism,” available for download on SSRN.

Congress should enact a law requiring a candidate for a seat in Congress to receive a majority of votes in order to win the election. Congress should let states determine what particular procedure to use to determine whether a candidate wins a majority, as there are significantly different methods of identifying a majority winner. While this simple piece of legislation might seem inconsequential—many Americans assume, erroneously, that elections already require majority winners—it in fact would cause states to undertake a form of experimentation in the details of electoral system design that would have the effect of counteracting the threat that anti-democracy extremism currently poses in America.

Suggestion citation: Foley, Edward B., Requiring Majority Winners for Congressional Elections: Harnessing Federalism to Combat Extremism (May 10, 2021). Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 616, Lewis & Clark Law Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2022, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3843029 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3843029.

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Edward B. Foley

Reporter, Principles of the Law, Election Administration

Edward Foley (known as “Ned”) holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University, where he directs its election law program. Foley is the author of Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States (Oxford University Press, revised edition 2024), the first edition of which was Finalist for the Langum Prize in American Legal History, and Presidential Elections and Majority Rule (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is also co-author of Electoral Reform in the United States: Proposals for Combating Polarization and Extremism (forthcoming 2025), Election Law and Litigation: The Judicial Regulation of Politics (2nd ed. 2022), and From Registration to Recounts: The Election Ecosystems of Five Midwestern States (2007; updated 2011).