Firing Line Debate: Electoral Reform Would Improve American Democracy

On Thursday, October 15, at 4:30pm in GR 109 (109 Grove St), the Buckley Institute will welcome Princeton University's Nolan McCarty and New York University's Richard Pildes for a Firing Line debate on the resolution, "Electoral Reform Would Improve American Democracy."

With the 2026 midterm elections around the corner, Americans are once again confronting questions about how our electoral system shapes the candidates we nominate, the choices voters face, and the representatives who ultimately govern. Renewed debate over how elections should be conducted has brought electoral reform back to the center of American political life.

Would changing the primary system produce more competitive elections and more representative candidates? Does ranked-choice voting give voters better choices, or introduce new problems into the electoral process? And would multimember districts and proportional representation better reflect the diversity of American voters, or risk further fragmenting the political system?

Join the Buckley Institute for what promises to be an important and informative discussion.

Nolan McCarty is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs and Vice Dean for Academic Assessment in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University. Previously, he served as interim and vice dean at the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), the director of the Data-Driven Social Science Initiative, and chair of the Department of Politics. Dr. McCarty has authored or co-authored four books, including Political Game Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2007) with Adam Meirowitz, Polarized America (MIT Press, 2016, 2nd ed.) with Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Political Bubbles (Princeton University Press, 2013) with Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, and Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is also the co-editor of Can America Govern Itself? (Cambridge University Press, 2019) with Frances Le. In 2010, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He earned his AB in economics from the University of Chicago and his PhD in political economy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Richard H. Pildes is the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. He is one of the nation's leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. His acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (Foundation Press, 2022, 4th ed.), helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. His scholarship is frequently cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and has been translated into several languages. He has also litigated extensively, including successfully before the Supreme Court, and served as a senior legal advisor to Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. Professor Pildes received his AB summa cum laude from Princeton University and his JD magna cum laude from Harvard University, where he served as Supreme Court Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva and Justice Thurgood Marshall. After practicing law in Boston, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan Law School, before joining NYU in 2001.