There is something wrong -- very, very wrong -- with our democracy
How is it a government of the people, by the people, and for the people consistently delivers a government the majority of people didn’t vote for and results the overwhelming number people don’t want?
Here are few examples from the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan fact tank that conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research.
- 91% support a ban on assault weapons.
- 93% of Democrats and 82% of Republicans favor background checks for all gun sales.
- 74% favor a DREAM Act law.
- 68% say tax rates on corporations should be increased.
- 67% want a $15 minimum wage.
Yet, our federal minimum wage is $7.25, we cut taxes for the very richest, the Dreamers’ future is put on hold, and the gun loopholes continue. To get results this far out of whack is proof that, in the words of Bill Murray, “There’s something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us.”
How we got here and how to fix it is beyond this column’s 600-word limit. For that, I recommend reading “Democracy in One Book or Less” by David Litt.
The primary reasons for this result are the initial compromises (including concessions demanded by slave states) in our Constitution, a long running Republican project to create barriers and disincentives to voting, and allowing the rich to turn their money into political power.
Despite our mythology, it turns out that some people’s votes matter more, sometimes a lot more, than others. Take the Senate: a Wyoming voter has 68 times more say on how our country is governed than a California voter. For Washington state, it’s 13 times more.
For the Presidency, the way Electoral College votes are allocated gives outsized power to voters in less populous states. Combined with states’ “winner-take-all” awarding of electors, the system resulted in electing Bush and Trump over their opponents who received millions more votes. The consequences of which include: the Iraq War, climate change denial and weakening environmental protections, and hard right Supreme Court appointments.
Those Supreme Court appointments resulted in the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that legalized and expanded States’ ability to suppress and deny the voice of citizens including through gerrymandering. It also allowed for Citizens United that shifted political power from “one person, one vote” to “more money, more political power.”
The Republican party relies on white, older, richer and rural voters, who are a declining share of the U.S. population, to win elections. But demography is destiny, so to win elections when their policies are opposed by an increasing majority of Americans, Republicans must devise new ways to suppress the vote of more and more groups, including minorities, those 35-year-old or younger, college educated, women, and those living in urban areas.
Here are just a few of their voter suppression techniques:
Closing polling places, scrambling precinct assignments, moving polls away from transit lines, and reducing the number voting machines to increase the wait times.
Denying 6 million ex-felons voting rights.
Taking drop boxes and polling places away from college campuses and requiring restrictive voter ID and residency laws.
Removing mailboxes and destroying sorting equipment.
Requiring multiple forms of ID that the poor are less likely to have.
Requiring “exact match” of signatures reviewed by untrained staff.
Now we have Trump’s disinformation campaign to sow doubts about mail-in voting. It is intended to undermine our faith in the election and the legitimacy of the results. It is a Republican innovation borrowed from anti-democratic authoritarians like Putin who know that democracies are vulnerable to the “Tinker Bell Effect”: If enough people stop believing in it, it dies.
Clapping won’t make our democracy well again. Voting will.
Larry Dzieza has been an Olympia resident since 1990 and recently retired from a public service career. He is a member of The Olympian’s 2020 Board of Contributors. Reach him at larryboc2020@gmail.com.