There have been a lot of really good posts here about specific things we can do to remove the voting barriers our voters face. We should continue to pursue these, as they are the most immediate ways in which we can improve our access to democracy in the short term.
I have been noodling over more structural fixes that a Democratic POTUS candidate could run on. It seems to me there are four issues that underpin all (or most) of the voting issues we encounter:
- Unequal access to voting rights (registration barriers, voter purges, id laws, etc)
- Amplification of moneyed interests in the process (“corporations are people” and “ money is speech”)
- Measures (purportedly) applied to ensure free and fair elections are imposed without thought to their efficacy, the inherent risks, or the “cost” imposed on voters or the voting process
- Political considerations being introduced into what should be voting process driven decisions (gerrymandering)
To address these issues, I would like to see a Democratic candidate for POTUS and/or our party platform, propose an Amendment to the US Constitution that enshrines the “Principles of Voting.” I recognize that an amendment would be exceedingly difficult to enact. Yet the conversation we could start would be worthwhile in its own right, and the possibility of generating momentum toward enactment would just be gravy. The idea of these principles would be that they would be hard to argue with on their face: While they inevitably lead to things we would deem worthwhile, they are not inherently offensive to voters on the other side. Below are some of my initial thoughts:
- Every US Citizen should enjoy the same opportunity and access to the voting process
- Protected speech is the act of a person, not of any legal or financial entity
- Transparency being an essential ingredient to our democracy, the source of all money and speech involved in the political process must be made known immediately
- Restrictions imposed by government to ensure free, fair, and equitable elections should be measured to balance their effectiveness and the demonstrable benefit provided against the burden placed on voters, and must be done at zero cost to individual voters
- Decisions made about the voting process should be governed by transparency, equitable representation, and free from political or party considerations
I recognize these aren’t perfect and I welcome the contributions of the community to make them better.