The design of an election system matters. That’s the advice of Michael Rubin, my American Enterprise Institute colleague, and an Arabic- and Farsi-speaking expert on the Middle East. Rubin criticized the Bush administration’s decision to allow Iraq’s first elections to be conducted with voters choosing from national lists of candidates which, he writes, “privileged Islamists and ethnic nationalists over more pragmatic politicians more eager to engage in local issues.” Why did we favor the national lists? The reason, I was told at the time by someone in the administration, is that it guaranteed the election of a certain number of women. A brilliant trade: we sacrificed workable government in favor of gender quotas.

Rubin’s subject this time, in his Commentary Contentions blogpost and in one for Fox News, is the election design in Egypt, which he argues unduly favors the Muslim Brotherhood. His specific recommendations: