
Towle then presented a striking visual representation of the growing partisan divide. He used a video to illustrate how over the past 60 years the members of Congress have become less willing to cross party lines to advance a mutual agenda and increasingly vote according to party blocs.
Towle offered several examples of voting methods in other countries that are used to balance representation. Israel employs a “proportional-list system” in which citizens vote for a party instead of a candidate. Each party

Towle suggested that “ranked-choice voting” be used in this new system. Voters would be given a list of candidates and would rank them in order of preference. Through a process of elimination, two of the candidates would be elected to represent one district. This might encourage candidates to seek votes from several voting blocs since they only need enough votes to finish second to be elected to a seat. Maine will be the first state to implement this method, and the rest of the nation will have the opportunity to observe the outcome.
Towle has taught political science at the Mount since 1991. He earned his bachelor's degree from Georgetown University and a doctorate in government from the University of Texas. His teaching and research focus is on American national politics. Recently, he has been conducting concentrated research in the area of voting systems and is currently co-authoring a book about ranked-choice voting. Towle’s first book, Out of Touch: The Presidency and Public Opinion, compares the changes in the ways former presidential administrations looked at and understood public opinion as the presidents’ popularity declined. As a political commentator, Towle has been featured in U.S. News & World Report and The Baltimore Sun.
The Ducharme lecture is available in its entirety on the Mount’s Livestream: https://livestream.com/msmu/events/8398452.