On July 6, Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan wrote in his blog Informed Comment that there are 10 Ways Arab Democracies Can Avoid American Mistakes. He pointed out "a whole host of undemocratic practices" that should be avoided by those constructing the new Arab democracies, and by doing so offered ideas for strengthening our own, beginning with the election process.
1. Consider banning campaign advertisements on radio and television.
Whatever you do, do not let your private television channels charge money for campaign advertisements… Consider putting [the ban] in the constitution, because otherwise if it is only a statute, the wealthy will try to buy the legislature so as to overturn it.
2. Do not hold your elections on work days.
America’s robber barons put elections on Tuesdays in order to discourage workers, including the working poor, from voting…. France, in contrast, holds its elections on Sundays. In the first round of the 2007 French presidential election, 84% of the electorate turned out. In contrast, in the hotly contested and epochal 2008 presidential election in the US, the turnout was only 64%.
3. Have compulsory, government-run voter registration
Voluntary voter registration...is just a way of discouraging citizens from voting.
4. Make voting compulsory.
About 32 countries in the world have enforced compulsory voting. In Australia, for instance, you have to pay a small fine if you do not vote in certain elections…and Australia has turnouts as high as 95%. It is important not only to make voting compulsory, but to have some enforcement mechanism such as a fine.
5. A bill of rights.
Make a bill of rights central to the new constitutions. Rights to freedom of speech, worship, press and publication, privacy, a fair and speedy trial, and protection from torture are hallmarks of any democratic system. We have given up most of these essential rights to our secret police, without admitting we have done so and without calling them secret police.
6. Separation of church and state.
Put separation of religion and state in your national constitutions and make it hard to amend the constitution… If we did not have our First Amendment, our fundamentalists would long since have passed blasphemy and other laws and deprived us of freedom of speech.
7.
Military spending.
Keep your defense ministry spending as low as possible consistent with being able to defend your borders.
8. The judiciary.
Avoid allowing your judiciaries to become politicized…. In the US, we now have a Republican-majority Supreme Court, and since the Republican Party mainly looks out for the interests of our 400 billionaires, our constitution is being profoundly distorted. They even declared the billionaires’ corporations to be persons under the law. Never, ever, ever recognize your corporations as persons under the law. You’ll be really sorry if you do.
9. Unions.
Protect your workers’ unions. Make it illegal to fire workers for trying to unionize. Remove obstacles to unionization. Unions are key to a healthy democracy, and to ensuring that workers get their fair share of the nation’s economic progress.
10. Anti-trust legislation.
Find a way to fight monopoly practices with strong antitrust legislation and enforcement. If you can implement principle #1 above and keep big money out of political campaigns, you might have a chance at good antitrust practices. The US is now ruled by a small number of semi-monopolies, and the Justice Department almost never actually intervenes against monopolistic practices.
Professor Cole calls the U.S. "a twilight democracy" and says to the new democracies:
It is probably too late for us. The aggregate of changes in US law and practice in favor of corporatocracy and the national security state is so extensive and powerful that our constitution has been overwhelmed....In my lifetime I have seen the American state spiral down into a brutal tyranny that tortures, spies, union-busts, engages in illegal wars, and plays dirty tricks on dissidents. We used to have something much more like a democracy. Maybe we can learn from you how to safeguard something so precious....
For much more detail, see Professor Cole's article
here.