You Don't Need A Weatherman

Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a different county with a different political system — the U.K., parliamentary — that I’m more than happy to prescribe changes to the political system that has served the United States fairly well over the last 200 plus years.

Times change, and ideas about democracy that once seemed quaint, like universal suffrage and majority rule, are now best practices. Eighteenth-century ideas about democracy, like electoral colleges, now seem quaint and undemocratic. There are some features of the American system that are now obviously problematic and will require change, but because of the difficulty of amending the constitution, and how the Senate, in particular, perpetuates minority rule, change will be difficult to effect.

Given the history of the United States, it seems unlikely to me that an equitable resolution can be achieved without violence.

The issues with the current political system that are most in need of attention are:

The Senate: Comparing California with North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, California has more than nine times the population and over 70 times the GDP of these combined states, but they have four times the Senate representation that California does. There’s a movement to make D.C. and Puerto Rico, states, but that would just be a band-aid; the real problem is that the Senate misrepresents the actual distribution of the population.

Gerrymandering: In 2018, in four states -- North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin -- the party that won a majority of the state legislature seats received a minority of the vote in the state. In North Carolina that year, Republicans won the popular vote -- 50 percent to 48 percent -- but won 10 of 13 congressional seats.

Voter suppression: With the wild card of the pandemic, partisan politicians came up with new ways to suppress voter turnout. Earlier this year, The Guardian undertook an analysis of voter station closings in Texas. They found “the 50 counties that gained the most Black and Latinx residents between 2012 and 2018 closed 542 polling sites, compared to just 34 closures in the 50 counties that have gained the fewest black and Latinx residents.” Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted a section of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act where the mostly Southern states that were previously covered by a preclearance requirement, because of historical discrimination, have tried repeatedly to disenfranchise voters. Less than 24 hours after that ruling, Texas announced their intent to introduce a strict voter ID law.

The Electoral College: In 2000 and 2016 the candidate with the most votes did not win the presidency. The Electoral College favors the Republican party mostly because of the overrepresentation of smaller states, for example, Wyoming has one electoral vote for every 193,000 people, while California has one electoral vote for every 718,000 people. This violates a central idea of democracy -- that all votes count equally. Why bother with an election if we don't elect the person who received the most votes? Earlier this year the political polling and statistics website, FiveThirtyEight.com noted, “…Biden’s chances only become pretty certain if he wins by more than 5 points nationally, showing just how large the Republicans’ Electoral College edge might be in 2020.”

Lame Duck period: After a Democratic governor won election in North Carolina in 2016, the Republican-controlled legislature and outgoing Republican governor stripped the incoming governor of some crucial powers over the state board of elections and to appoint judges. Republicans, fearful of their loss of power in both Wisconsin and Michigan have made similar moves. The president has a mind-boggling ten-week lame-duck period between the election and inauguration.

The Judiciary: The idea that the third branch of government should be independent was behind the wording of Article III of the Constitution. But how independent can the judiciary be if every judge is appointed because of their allegiance to a particular political party? The very idea that there are conservative judges and liberal judges means we implicitly do not think the judiciary is independent.

Some issues, like voting rights and access to polling places, can be solved with new laws. Other issues, like the Electoral College and the Senate. will need amendments to the Constitution. However, the way amendments are ratified by the states (some of which have gerrymandered districting) makes the process arduous.

In the coming years, rich states will become richer, poor states will become poorer, and population growth in urban areas will far outstrip population growth in rural areas. Pressure for change will grow. Minority rule will endure for a while, but for how long? I’ll rephrase that: how long can minority rule endure without extensive repression?

The Senate is probably the most intractable problem: it needs to be reapportioned, diminished in power, or abolished, but it’s impossible to predict under what circumstances any of those things could occur. What is clear, however, is that states currently overrepresented will not give up their power easily, while states which are underrepresented will become louder and more agitated in their demands for a more equitable system.

But without changes, at some point, there will be a serious reckoning.

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