It’s no secret that our democracy is in trouble. Less than half the eligible voters participate, leaving a minority to decide who leads us. Our constitution never established an absolute right to vote, deferring to the 50 states to make up the rules however they see fit. Politicians have mastered the art of choosing their voters through gerrymandering and voter suppression. Far from a beacon for the rest of the world’s democracies, we are becoming in need of international election monitors to ensure free and fair elections. We are in danger of becoming one of the sham democracies that our government used to condemn.
Roots of the Problem
I have analyzed in a previous post how we got into this predicament, but I’d like to focus instead now, just before the 2018 mid-terms, on how we can move our nation out of this non-democratic “democracy” we currently practice to a genuine, modern democracy that gives truth to the concept of government of, by and for the people. Electoral reformers have identified three primary areas where our democracy has broken down:
- Campaign finance corruption – politicians are for sale to the highest bidder with unlimited dark money ruling our politics
- Partisan election administration – local control of elections means the party in power can write the rules to favorite itself
- Constitutional inequities – the compromises that led to our constitution included granting small rural states unequal power over our nation and preventing the direct election of the President, our national leader and commander-in-chief.
Legislative Solutions
Any attempt to comprehensively address the flaws in our democracy must address all three areas. The first two could largely be addressed through legislative action. We could pass laws to limit the influence of money in politics, even adopt a publicly-financed electoral system as many other democracies do. Some argue we need a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision that money is speech, but this could largely be mitigated by Congressional action on campaign finance laws. The Republican majority has turned a blind eye to the real electoral fraud – the buying of politicians and elections. Congress could instead enact new laws limiting the influence of money in politics, such as expanding the definition of bribery to include “pay to play” campaign donation schemes.
A second necessary step is to address our flawed system of administering elections. We currently allow local election officials to make up virtually any rules they want, regardless of their impact on voting rights or the validity of the election. Congress should set minimum guidelines to ensure free and fair elections in every voting precinct in America. No more turning voters away or making them jump through numerous bureaucratic hoops to cast a ballot. No more voter ID laws aimed at suppressing minority voters. No more voter registration purges. No more private electronic voting machines without a paper trail to verify the results. No more local election boards deciding who gets to vote and who doesn’t. No more placebo provisional ballots that never get counted. We need a federal law establishing minimum national standards that include an absolute right to vote, an avoidance of conflicts of interest in administering elections, verifiable ballots and independent certification of election results.
Congress can declare Election Day a National Holiday to encourage greater participation. I propose the real Patriot’s Day – the second Tuesday of every November – when every American Patriot shows up at a polling place to cast a ballot in a free and fair election. For federal penny pinchers, we could replace Veteran’s Day or combine the two, like we did with Lincoln and Washington. Trust me, there’s no valid reason for having elections on the second Tuesday of November!)
For that matter, the whole nation could go to mail-in ballots and skip the polling place altogether. We all manage to mail in our tax returns every April, so how hard could it be to vote the same way?
Constitutional Solutions
The third issue buried within the text of our constitution is more difficult to solve. The ideal way would be through amending the constitution, yet this is also the heaviest of political lifts. Requiring approval by the legislatures of three-fourths (38) of the states, the U.S. has not approved a new constitutional amendment since 1992 and that dealt with the uncontroversial issue of congressional pay (Congress cannot give itself a pay raise until the start of its next term). However, we have amended the constitution successfully 27 times, so the precedent exists.
What should a constitutional amendment address? The most obvious flaw is the Electoral College, the undemocratic method for electing the President and Vice-President. We could repeal it, as was done with election of Senators through the 17th amendment.
Beyond that, we should promulgate an affirmative right to vote, which is only implied in several amendments granting voting rights to former slaves, women and young adults between 18-21. The constitution itself is silent about the right to vote, since the franchise
was restricted at our founding to white male property owners only. We could simply adopt the language already contained in several amendments and simply state:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state.
OR to avoid the negative:
Citizens of the United States have an inalienable right to vote.
(Let’s see Faux News come up with talking points against the inalienable right to vote.)
Learn from the Original Progressives
In looking to our history, a period not unlike our own existed a century ago. In the early 1900s, our nation had seen 30 years of spectacular economic growth, the rewards of which were concentrated in a small percentage of aristocratic robber barons who wielded monopoly control over corporations and government. Growing out of this abuse of power, the Progressive movement instituted major reforms to rescue our democracy from the oligarchs, including abolishing the Electoral College for Senators, granting voting rights to women, instituting income taxes and expanding the House of Representative to its current 435 members. We can look to these early reformers for the inspiration we require to tackle the modern-day oligarchs who have seized control of our economy and federal government.
The Progressives relied on both constitutional amendments (Senate elections, women’s vote) and legislative action to achieve their reforms. I have already proposed two constitutional amendments to fix structural flaws in our democracy. The legislative initiatives could go well beyond that, if Democrats ever gain control of the three branches of government, as Republicans currently do.
Progressives instituted reforms to the administration of elections, such as banning the practices of buying people’s votes and ballot box stuffing. Although those reforms remain in place, we currently allow state and local election officials to create all sorts of barriers to voting. Congress should set minimum federal guidelines to ensure free and fair elections throughout America.
The next issue Progressives tackled was campaign finance reform. They passed new laws against bribery and official corruption that still exist. Today, we need to go much further. Get dark money out of politics. Make campaign donors come out into the light of day and declare who they are so voters can better judge their motives. Reinstate limits on campaign donations. Move to public financing of campaigns to give ordinary citizens a chance to run for office against the multi-millionaires who currently dominate our government.
Reinstate the fairness doctrine in broadcasting to require TV and radio stations to give equal time to both sides of a political campaign. Apply truth-in-advertising law to political campaigns. If a campaign ad is a deliberate defamation of an opponent void of any evidence, don’t allow it on the air, just as we don’t allow quack doctors to sell us snake oil disguised as a cancer cure during the evening news.
The third issue to address is gerrymandering. Rather than let the ruling party in each state draw district boundaries to benefit itself, turn this job over to non-partisan citizen panels without a conflict of interest. This has been implemented in California and several other states with good results. Districts more fairly represent their constituents, which encourages moderate candidates who will address the needs of a balanced electorate, not just those skewed to the extreme of their own party.
Finally, the Congress can do something else that would be a huge win for the democratic principle of one person, one vote. They can expand the number of Representatives in the House. It was last done in 1911 by those active Progressives, who also had the excuse of admitting several new states to the Union the following year, including Oklahoma and Arizona. Although the U.S. population has tripled since then, Congress has never increased the size of the House from its current 435. I propose raising the number to reflect the immense population growth of the U.S. and to rectify a decidedly undemocratic flaw in our system of state representation. The flaw is embedded in our constitution’s requirement that every state have at least one Representative. Since the smallest states (Wyoming, Vermont) have populations below 600,000, while the largest states have Congressional House districts with up to 750,000 people, votes in small states count more simply because they are fewer. To remedy this, we could propose to take a Representative away from the smallest states, but that is an undemocratic solution to an undemocratic problem.
The better way would be to follow the Progressives’ example and expand the number of House members. These would be given to the most populous states to even out Congressional districts. If Congress wanted to use 600,000 constituents per district as the new standard, we would have to expand the House to 533 members. To make it an even 100 more, Congress could also grant full voting rights to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, which also deserves statehood, along with American Samoa. (They’re either American or set them free! Colonialism is so nineteenth century.) Expanding the House to 535 members would require a larger chamber but would also allow a better reflection of the entire country. Eighty percent of the current House Reps are White men. The last time I looked outside my window, 80% of the people I saw were NOT White men. How can we claim to be a representative democracy when Congress does not represent over half the people of the United States?
It’s time to get real about our democracy before it is too late, and it goes the way of the Dodo bird.