STABBING DEMOCRACY TO DEATH
In an authoritarian nation like Russia a question is how close to totalitarianism, as under Stalin and under Hitler’s Germany, the authorities will go. Putin has taken steps to make it more so with his ever-greater censorship and moves to control everything in the media that does not follow his party line.
The United States has long paid at least lip service to democracy and viewed itself as a defender of “freedom.” Rather limited freedom for many of the people. It’s obvious in the patently antidemocratic “electoral college” for Presidential elections, with the result that two of the four presidents “elected” since the turn of the millennium had millions of votes fewer than their opponents. One political party has steadfastly and successfully opposed all attempts to eliminate the electoral college.
But in the years 2021 and 2022 the project of defeating democracy has taken a great leap forward. One political party U.S. is intentionally, systematically and methodically moving forward with a project to eliminate democracy and take authoritarian power for itself. This was visible to the entire world when the January 6 rioting mob stormed the Capital and tried to put the loser of even the electoral college vote into power.
That was just the visible tip of the iceberg. The greater damage, which may ultimately result in turning the U.S. into a fully authoritarian state with nothing but a fig-leaf of deceptive words that imply that it is a so-called democracy is the Republican project to 1) throw as many people as possible who look like they won’t vote Republican off the voter registration rolls, and 2) create electoral districts that assure them of victory at every level from state legislatures to the presidency regardless of what most voters want. While many people who are not Republicans realize this is happening, few have recognized it as the powerful threat to democracy that it is.
Computer databases and algorithms now make it possible to create electoral districts that are so bizarrely constructed to favor one party that no sane person would look at them and deny it. The “redistricting” or construction of new electoral districts that occurs every ten years after the census was never meant to be a political tool. It was meant to readjust districts to accord with population changes. But it’s a political tool now, wielded mainly by the Republican Party.
“Hey,” the Republicans say, “the Democrats are doing it too.” Yes—in the few states where they control the state office that does the redistricting—in retaliation for what the Republicans are doing in most of the country. But even in some of the states where the Democrats have control they have pushed successfully to set up nonpartisan commissions to carry out redistricting—such as in California. The results are radically different from the crazy-quilt districts of politically partisan redistricting. Those districts are typically constructed with a few simple lines. Any unprejudiced person looking at them would conclude that they are sensible. Any unprejudiced person looking at 2022 politically motivated districts would conclude that they’re just plain nuts.
The probable result is electoral victories for Republicans that reflect the will of a minority of the people and that disenfranchise many citizens. In other words, less democracy. Add that to the less democracy that comes from the systematic attempt to “cleanse” the voter rolls of as many probable non-Republican voters as possible. In other words, less democracy yet. That’s on top of the already anti-democratic electoral college.
Oh, and there’s also the matter of stacking the Supreme Court with political partisans instead of justices who have a history of impartial interpretation of the laws—partisans who are all too willing to “legislate from the bench.” Republican party legislators accuse the Democrats of that, but the evidence that they’re projecting their own dishonesty and hypocrisy is overwhelming.
Is all that the country we want? It’s what we’re moving toward.
I don’t love Democrats. I think many, and the party, are misguided in significant ways. I’d like to see other parties have a chance. I’d like to have electoral procedures that make that more possible, such as instant runoff voting. If I could set up my own party, it would be neither Democrat nor Republican. Beyond that, I might prefer no parties altogether. George Washington did, speaking again about how the “spirit of party” was a tragically negative influence that deterred democracy.
But as a minimum, there are four basic steps that could set the country back on a path toward more democracy rather than less. They are,
1. Nonpartisan drawing of electoral districts everywhere. Congress could require this.
2. Automatic registration to vote of every person at birth or naturalization. Denmark does this effectively.
3. Adopt Costa Rica’s Supreme Court procedure of having a rotating pool of justices with the requirement that any sitting justice, upon challenge (not upon his or her own volition), must be recused from any case where there is any conflict of interest and be replaced for that case with another justice from the pool.
4. Eliminate the electoral college in presidential elections—or at a minimum, require all states to apportion electors proportionally, as a few do now, rather than on a winner-take-all basis.
That’s a start. Unless we minimally do those four things, our nation is only a pretense of a democracy.
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