Dec.25

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

How Democracy Could Be Strengthened

It is hardly a secret that democracy in the U.S. is cracking in so many ways. There have been several articles about what needs to be fixed and how. Some of the ways can be fixed moderately easily if the Democrats get the trifecta and decide fixing it is a priority. Some of them are much harder. Dan Balz of The Washington Post has compiled a list of some of the things that would help. It is clear from his list that the Republicans will oppose them all because the current system enables minority rule and keeps them in power, even without a national majority. So it is up to the Democrats to do what they can when they can. Here is a summary of his major ideas:

• Gerrymandering: This is one of the easiest. It is also one of the worst offenders. In states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, the population is almost equally divided between Democrats and Republicans yet the state legislature is overwhelmingly Republican due to gerrymandered maps created by that same legislature. This leads to hugely gerrymandered maps for the U.S. House. The maps for Illinois and Maryland are hugely gerrymandered in favor of the Democrats, but that is less offensive to democracy because the states themselves are heavily Democratic.
  
  The solution here is straightforward: Having an independent commission draw the maps. Of course the commission has to truly independent, which is not always easy to achieve, but that is easier than getting the politicians from the majority party to draw a fair map. The way to get this implemented is a ballot measure that amends the state Constitution creating the independent commission, describing its powers, and telling how its members are chosen. It could help if the rules say a two-thirds majority is needed, just in case the partisan balance happens to favor one party or the other.
  
  
• Expand the House: The House of Representatives was designed to be the "People's House," close to the people. That was the case back when the Constitution was adopted. It certainly isn't now; Here is a graphic showing the number of people each member of the lower chamber represents in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries:
  
  
  
  In the U.S., a House member represents seven times as many people as the average of the OECD countries. The solution is to expand the House from the 435 seats set by law about 90 years ago. All this would take is a law passed by Congress. One issue is space, so the House chamber would need to be radically renovated. There would also need to be a new House office building for members and staff. These can be done if the will is there. Once the will is there, the rest just takes money. There is nothing holy about 435 members.
  
  
• Proportional representation: All states have Democrats and Republicans but the minority is poorly represented in most states. In California in 2020, Donald Trump got 34% of the votes but Republicans have only 23% of the California House seats. In Florida, Joe Biden got 48% of the votes, but Democrats have only 29% of the Florida House seats. This problem could be solved by having multi-member districts with proportional representation. In the simplest case, all members would be elected statewide, with the number of seats per party based on the percentage of the vote each party got. In the case of large states, the state could be divided into a few districts, with proportional representation in each one. Again, this can be done by Congress alone by passing a law stating how it is to be achieved.
  
  
• Ranked-choice voting and open primaries: Another fix is all-party primaries and ranked-choice voting. Maine and Alaska have variants of this. The huge advantage of this system is that candidates can't focus entirely on their base because if they do, they won't get any second-choice votes. With half a dozen or more candidates, second choice votes are often the key to winning, and to get them, you usually have to get some from the other party. A base-only strategy is very hard to pull off with ranked-choice voting and all-party primaries. There are various ways to run such a system, but the bottom line is that being out on the fringe generally doesn't work for candidates, which tends to eliminate fire-breathing extremists.
  
  
• Changing the Senate: The Senate is a gerrymander of the entire country. Senators from small rural states represent far fewer constituents than senators from big urban states. This gives a minority a veto on practically everything. The founding parents never anticipated highly polarized political parties. They thought the senators would be wise men who had the best interests of the entire country in mind all the time. They blew that one. In other democracies, the power of upper chambers has been trimmed over time. The power of British House of Lords was curtailed a century ago. One solution would be to merge the two chambers into a single one. With the current sizes, the new chamber would have 535 members, so the small rural states would not have a veto on everything. Alternatively, the role of the Senate could be reduced in other ways—for example, it could hold up House-passed legislation for some period of time, but not forever. All these changes would require a constitutional amendment, which would be very difficult to get through Congress or the states.
  
  
• Filibuster: The Senate filibuster is just a Senate rule. It is not in the Constitution and is not even a law. The Senate can change its rules whenever it wants to. In the 19th century, filibusters were rare. In the 20th century, Southern Democrats used them to block civil rights legislation. Now virtual filibusters require 60 votes to pass almost anything, with only a few exceptions like budget reconciliation. If the Democrats get the trifecta in 2024, they could abolish the filibuster altogether. Alternatively, they could re-introduce the Jimmy Stewart-style talking filibuster, in which senators could talk until they dropped, but then a vote would be taken in a few weeks.
  
  
• Electoral College: The Electoral College has allowed the popular-vote winner to lose the election in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. That is about 8% of the time. The E.C. needs to go. Here, as with the Senate, a constitutional amendment is needed. That's not going to happen. There is one way around this, however: the National Popular Vote Compact. This is an agreement by a number of states to cast their electoral votes for the popular-vote winner, regardless of how their state voted. If states with 270 electoral votes join it, that is an effective end-run around the Electoral College. Currently, 16 states and D.C. have joined it. Together that have 205 electoral votes. Michigan is likely to join soon, bring the total EVs 220, so another 50 EVs are needed. That is not impossible.
  
  
• SCOTUS: Lifetime appointments for justices who carefully time their retirements to be sure a president of their party replace them has enabled minority rule. Sometimes justices die at inconvenient moments (ahem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg) but modern justices generally get the memo. Various improvements would be fixed terms of say, 18 years. An alternative would be to allow each newly elected president to replace the most senior member of the Court. Vacancies would stay vacant until the next presidential election, in which case the president would replace the justice who vacated his or her seat, instead of the most senior one. Another alternative is to have fixed terms and allow each president to nominate one justice, which would cause the size of the Court to vary over time. There could be ties this way, but if something is so disputed that it ends up 4-4 or 5-5, maybe it is better to let the appeals court ruling hold, but only in its circuit.
  
  
• Voting rights: Who gets to vote has been contested since the Constitution was ratified. At first, it was just propertied white men. Other groups were added later. Many states do their absolute best to make it as difficult to vote as possible. Congress could fix this by enacting national voting laws, something the Constitution clearly gives it the power to do. The H.R. 1 and H.R. 4 bills show how it could be done. All that would be required to pass these would be a Democratic trifecta and an abolition or serious weakening of the filibuster.
  

In short, democracy in America is deeply flawed and there are many things that could be fixed, some easy and some not. The easy ones should be done quickly and a start should be made on the difficult ones. (V)