The genius of the American political system used to be its ability to change. Between 1784 and 1992, Americans amended their constitution 27 times, adjusting their governing structures to reflect evolving contexts and values. Today, the idea that the U.S. political system is imbued with genius sounds like a ludicrous joke. Our government has ossified and descended into decades of failure. It seems incapable of addressing the various crises that confront the American people at this point in time, and in addition to this inadequacy its structure seems all but unchangeable.
Our fossil of a political system inspires particular frustration within the Democratic Party. The Democrats, after all, are the party of activists government, and a political system that all but forecloses government action to redress wrongs is all but useless for such a faction. In addition, our government institutions provide systematic, inarguable advantages to the Republican Party. As the Republicans have devolved away from traditional American values, the unearned primacy our government gives to the GOP are putting our very democracy at risk.
The list of slanted institutions is long. Though Republicans seem literally incapable of winning the popular vote for President, they have held the White House for 12 of the last 20 years. That’s because the Electoral College gives outsize power to small, white states, and disadvantages a Democratic coalition that is increasingly concentrated on the coasts and in the Mississippi valley. The Electoral College is such an illogical feature of our government that though many republics around the world have emulated America, not a single one of them has implemented this minoritarian system. It is a catalyst for minority presidents.
Yet for all the iniquity of the Electoral College, no institution allows Republicans to arrogate unearned advantage like the U.S. Senate. The Senate overwhelmingly favors the voters who comprise the Republican base–white and rural. It is absurd that the Dakotas have twice as many senators as California even as their population is smaller than the Piedmont Triad, North Carolina’s third-largest metropolitan area. Further, the filibuster allows Republicans, who already represent 40 million fewer Americans than their Democratic rivals, to veto the vast majority of the Democratic agenda. Senate rules favor Republicans almost as much as the structure of the Senate itself.
The other branch of the American legislature is characterized by GOP privilege as well. The 2010 election will likely go down as one of the most consequential midterms in American history because it equipped Republicans with the power to draw districts. With majorities locked in by gerrymandering, GOP legislators have entrenched their party into nearly permanent majorities. They’ve already locked in majorities in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina for one decade, and the power of redistricting technology will let them draw slanted districts for another, and perhaps another after that. Democrats have to win the popular vote by nearly 6 points to take control of Congress. A Democratic takeover of purple-state legislatures is almost unthinkable.
The United States political system is broken and appears extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fix. The blunt fact is that Republicans from Newt Gingrich to Mitch McConnell to Donald Trump bear the overwhelming share of blame for our political system’s failures. They have created a system that gives their party far more power than its minority of the voters should bestow upon. Given the crisis we’re in, Democrats should make no apologies for changing the political system and restoring fairness, and functionality, to the government that should belong to the people.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
Now we need to guarantee the presidency to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in the country, by making every vote in every state matter and count equally, by supporting the National Popular Vote bill and state legislators in states with the 75 more electoral votes needed to enact it.
Most Americans think it is wrong that every vote is not equal and the candidate with the most national popular votes can lose.
Unfair elections can lead to politicians and their enablers who appreciate unfairness, which leads to more unfairness.
The sheer magnitude of the national popular vote number, compared to individual state vote totals, is much more robust against “pure insanity,” deception, and manipulation.
If as few as 11,000 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 12,000 in Georgia (16), and 22,000 in Wisconsin (10) had not voted for Biden, or partisan officials did not certify the actual counts — Trump would have won despite Biden’s nationwide lead of more than 7 million.
The Electoral College would have tied 269-269.
Congress, with only 1 vote per state, would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country.
It’s because of current state-by-state statewide winner-take-all laws for Electoral College votes, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes.
Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes.
Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton’s nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes.
537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000, despite Gore’s lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
The National Popular Vote bill is states with 270+ electoral votes agreeing to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All votes would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where voters live.
Before states began enacting new voter suppression laws, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 candidate “may need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an electoral college victory. Only once has the margin of popular vote victory been that large since Bill Clinton’s re-election,” Jacob Long
“If Republicans are building the infrastructure to subvert an election — to make it possible to overturn results or keep Democrats from claiming electoral votes — then we have to expect that given a chance, they’ll use it.” – Jamelle Bouie
When presidential candidates, who more Americans vote for, lose the Electoral College, the situation is unsustainable. This is how a government loses its legitimacy.
NationalPopularVote
Historically, the drafters of the US Constitution never intended to create anything near mob rule. They were aware of the fact most citizens could not read or write, therefore lacked the ability to educate themselves on matters of economics, foreign policy, etc. Most matters politic were passed by word of mouth which can be subject to the personal beliefs and prejudices of those hearing the information and subsequently passing it on to another who like themselves suffer from poor memory or some other mental condition that often produces something that was never intended by the originator. (A practice that seems to have stood the test of time even though a majority have since learned to read and write but prefer to watch TV.)
Unfortunately, they had something in common, that is a bad experience with a king or some other monarch who laid claim to their leadership by the old fashion way ,they inherited it. Many folks were aware some of the leaders suffered from disorders that rendered them incapable of leading. The founder did not desire to see that issue playout in their new country.
If read carefully you can see where the founder created exclusive levels of power a vested those power in Federal Government, the states, and the citizen. The result was obvious, we acted as one on the federal level and so on. Through the years this simple system worked to keep the ship afloat.
But of late, matters have evolved into a quagmire of competing individuals who have their own agenda.
That agenda can be economic, (tax cuts) religious that get rid of abortion or just power coupled with a good salary and benefits. In the last few years this country has violated the rules of common sense by pursuing long protracted and costly wars, for reasons that have never been made clear except somebody made a hell of a lot of money and other die or are disabled. Somebody has got to start putting things back to gather, cut their huge amounts spend pursuing projected wars and start rebuilding this country.
Biden appears to be making that a prime objective, stopping the big military expenditure and making an honest effort to make folks healthy so they can pitch in. What possibility could be wrong with that approach.
Rule of the mob is the left’s ultimate goal…except the mob, once it give power to the elite few, will be swept away like fleas.
Hear, Hear!