Counterpoint: Give compromise a spot on the ballot

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In "State must undo one-party rule" (Opinion Exchange, July 27) Jim Schultz advocated for divided government as part of your Minnesota's Future series. Great! But unfortunately, given our current system, this choice is only reliably available to voters once every four years — when governors aren't on the ballot. To empower voters to cast their ballots, if they choose, for divided government in every state election Minnesota needs structurally divided government ballot reform.

Since 1990 Minnesota has had divided government for all but two election cycles. Prior to the 2022 DFL sweep, the other "trifecta" came with Gov. Mark Dayton halfway through his first term in 2012, when Minnesota both voted down Republican marriage and voter ID amendments and threw out the Republican legislative majorities that had put those measures on the ballot.

Looking forward, Minnesota will only have a clear divided-government choice in 2024. DFL Gov. Tim Walz won't be on the ballot in that election, so divided government backers will be able, if they choose, to vote for a Republican state House candidate with the certainty that they're casting a vote for divided government.

So our current system does allow us a divided-government option as a mid-course correction. But in years when the governor is on the ballot, as well as one or both houses of the Legislature, things are not so simple. Voters can't know reliably in advance which party will control the governorship or the Legislature.

Lacking this knowledge, in years when the governor is on the ballot, voters can't choose, with confidence, to cast their votes for divided government. It's a guessing game.

There would be many ways to correct this. For now — to explore this idea — let's consider an imperfect but simple structurally divided government reform:

Modify our ballot to give voters this yes-or-no choice: "Do you want divided government?" Add this explanation: "If you check 'Yes' your votes for legislators will go to the party whose candidate lost the race for governor."

Our voting technology automatically sends ballots to a physically separate bin if any write-in vote is cast. We could similarly do this for ballots marked "Yes" for divided government.

Election judges would total up the divided government ballots separately on election night and report the number of such ballots for their precinct. We would then know — quickly but provisionally — who had won each legislative seat once it was clear who had been elected governor.

Structurally divided government reform would change how parties and candidates campaigned. It would also change who parties nominate for the Legislature in competitive districts.

Legislative candidates in competitive districts would be held accountable for being reasonable in negotiating with the other party — avoiding things like government shutdowns. Both parties would have moderate wings — legislative candidates in competitive districts. As a result, we might expect the votes cast for structurally divided government to be higher in competitive districts.

Candidates for governor would also be more explicit about how they would work with a Legislature organized by the other party. Both voters and the media would demand an answer to this question once divided government was an explicit structural choice on the ballot every two years.

There are many possible refinements. We could devise a system that integrates an explicit structurally divided government choice within ranked-choice voting. We could also let voters choose separately to vote for a Legislature divided between the House and the Senate.

But let's not get bogged down in details. The main point is to relieve Minnesota voters from having to play a guessing game half the time if they personally prefer divided government.

As our parties have become more extreme, our current system invites a wildly zig-zagging course: extreme one-party policies followed by panicked mid-course corrections — all amid threats of government shutdowns.

This is wrong in principle and a bad design in practice. Let's fix it with structurally divided ballot reform.

Bob "Again" Carney Jr., of Minneapolis, is a political activist and frequent candidate for public office.