TWO HARVARD PROFESSORS

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are two Harvard professors of government and co-authors of two books that are addressing the causes of the ever more evident shortcomings in the American experiment in democracy. The books are “How Democracies Die” published in 2018 and “Tyranny of the Minority” published this year.

For anyone who is interested in understanding why politics in America have become so dysfunctional and why America has been sliding down the scale of the most democratically governed nations in the world, these two books are highly recommended reading. In fact, they should be mandatory reading in political science classes at the high school and college level.

The authors put much of the blame for the slide in America’s standing among the world's democracies to what they term “excessively counter-majoritarian institutions” including the fact that updates to the US Constitution have become nearly impossible to make. The authors point to many other countries where, over time, counter majoritarian elements have been removed, one after the other, from their governance structure.

While acknowledging that, just because of the existence of excessively counter-majoritarian institutions, required changes in the American public governance system are difficult to make, the authors point to the fact that America has in the past proven that it is capable of making previously considered impossible changes in the rules of its government e.g. when it abolished slavery, when it enshrined civil rights, when it established women’s right to vote, and when it transferred the right to elect the Senate from State Legislatures to the People of America.

In their book “Tyranny of the Minority” the two Harvard professors offer 15 practical suggestions for further democratization of the American political process that I quote hereunder (with only a few edits for brevity). The recommendations are grouped under three major headlines: Uphold the right to vote; Ensure that election outcomes reflect majority preferences; and Empower governing majorities.         

Here they are:

UPHOLD THE RIGHT TO VOTE

1.       Pass a constitutional amendment establishing a right to vote for all citizens, which would provide a solid base to litigate voting restrictions.

2.       Establish automatic registration in which all citizens are registered to vote when they turn eighteen.

3.       Expand early voting and easy mail-in voting options for citizens of all states.

4.       Make Election Day a Sunday or a national holiday, so that work responsibilities do not discourage Americans from voting.

5.       Restore voting rights (without additional fines or fees) to all ex-felons who have served time.

6.       Restore national-level voting rights protections. Reinstate federal oversight of election rules and administration.

7.       Replace the current system of partisan electoral administration with one in which state and local electoral administration is in the hands of professional, nonpartisan officials.

ENSURE THAT ELECTION OUTCOMES REFLECT MAJORITY PREFERENCES

8.       Abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote.

9.       Reform the Senate so that the number of senators elected per state is more proportional to the population of each state.

10.   Replace “first-past-the-post” electoral rules and single member districts for the House of Representatives and state legislatures with a form of proportional representation in which voters elect multiple representatives from larger electoral districts and parties win seats in proportion to the share of vote they win. This would require repeal of the 1967 Uniform Congressional District Act, which mandates single-member districts for House elections.

11.   Eliminate partisan gerrymandering via the creation of independent redistricting commissions such as those used in California, Colorado, and Michigan.

12.   Update the Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the House of Representatives at 435, and return to the original design of the House that expands in line with population growth.

EMPOWER GOVERNING MAJORITIES

13.   Abolish the Senate filibuster.

14.   Establish term limits (perhaps twelve or eighteen years) for Supreme Court justices to regularize the Supreme Court appointment process so that every president has the same number of appointments per term.

15.   Make it easier to amend the Constitution by eliminating the requirement that three-quarters of state legislatures ratify any proposed amendment.

The push by two Harvard professors is not enough to break the dam. What America needs now is a nationwide popular movement, akin to the abolition movement, the suffragette movement, and the civil rights movement, insisting on democratic reform of our institutions, including the Constitution, and elimination of the remaining counter-majoritarian institutions. For America to lead the world, it cannot afford to be anything less than a model democracy. It was designed to be that model when it adopted its Constitution in 1789, it now must catch up with the rest of the world.

A YEAR FROM NOW

The date for the next national election, in which the White House, the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, State legislatures, and many State governor seats are up for grabs is set for November 5, 2024. That is only a year from now. It is no hyperbole to label next year’s election ‘the election of the century’ even though many pundits named the 2020 election by the same label. Then, like again next year, the main issue was a popular referendum on Trump and Trumpism. Except that this time around it is even more clearly not so much a vote between nominees of the two parties as a vote between governance doctrines. 2024 is shaping up as the year in which the American voters must make up their mind if they are still intent on having a government of the People, by the People, and for the People, or if they are willing to be autocratically governed by an all-controlling executive branch.

Yes, there will also be elections this year, on the 7^th of November, but none of a national scope. Some may be bellwethers for how the 2024 elections may turn out. In my State of Ohio, for instance, the main issue, issue #1 on the ballot is a proposed constitutional amendment establishing “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety”. This popular driven initiative, which is opposed by the Republican DeWine administration, follows the defeat, in August, of an administration driven initiative to require a qualified majority of 60 percent and support in each of Ohio’s 80 counties for a vote to amend the Ohio Constitution. For the proposed constitutional amendment about Reproductive Freedom, a simple 51 percent of the popular vote will be enough to pass. This ballot initiative is a popular reaction to the passing in 2019 of a strict ‘heartbeat’ law by the heavily jerrymandered GOP controlled Ohio legislature (which law is currently suspended pending judicial review). In essence, the issue, in this election as in the big election of November 2024, is about the functioning of our democracy. Are we self-governing or subject to the tyranny of a controlling minority?

The campaign around Ohio issue 1 brings to the surface the frightening degree of dishonesty and deception condoned in political campaigns. Opponents of issue 1 want to make you believe that the amendment for Reproductive Freedom will lead to horrifying scenes of late term abortion butchering and unfettered access to abortion by juveniles, completely ignoring the provision in the proposed amendment that abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability and suspending belief in the high standards of conduct by medical professionals and the ethical values of the American people. On the other hand, the proponents of Ohio issue 1 are too easily papering over the legitimate rights to protection of the unborn, scaring the voters with an Orwellian ‘big brother’ government taking control of every aspect of our lives, conveniently ignoring the democratic and judicial checks on governmental excesses or abuses.

With the advent of A.I. and the dominance of social media in our lives, combined with the near boundless interpretation of our first amendment rights of free speech, it becomes very hard to determine who and what to believe anymore. Almost impossible to separate fact from fiction when all sides, enabled by previously non-existent information technology, are permitted to create their own alternative realities. How can we expect people to make the right choice at the voting booth when they can no longer determine what campaign rhetoric is false or mere propaganda and what is factually correct?

The November 2024 election will be held at the confluence of a legitimate policy debate about the management of the country’s business, its finances, its national security, its political agenda, and its role in the world and a fight for the soul of the nation fed by spurious identity politics: will it be increasingly democratic or increasingly autocratic? With a scarcity of unbiased, fact based, information on the choices on the ballot, people, particularly those who are only casually attentive to policy choices, are forced to rely on emotion, gut feel, and the voice of their preferred media channels when making their fateful ballot choices.

A year out from the election, we can only expect that control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate will be decided by extremely narrow margins. It is the nature of the beast: the population of the United States is hopelessly divided in its partisan allegiance and kept in place by its adherence to either Fox News or MSNBC. The stalemate this political reality creates in Congress, combined with the rules that pertain to the management of the agenda of the House and the Senate, means that there is no room or incentive for a meaningful policy debate and thus, the peoples’ choice is forced back to identity politics. And the world is watching in amazement and disbelief how one of its political parties is well on its way to place its bets on a failed former President, who is twice impeached and three times indicted for crimes committed in office and against the proper functioning of our democracy.

It is an outright depressing thought that, even if democracy wins over autocracy in the 2024 election and the person who belongs in prison is kept out of the White House, the chance for meaningful policy advancement will remain stymied by a stalemate in Congress. It is not clear if and how this impasse can be cleared. And the American people will be kept waiting for fiscal responsibility on the part of its government, for a comprehensive immigration policy, for climate protection, for gun safety regulation, and for diminished inequality in income and wellness between segments of our society.

Depressing as this may be, we are well advised to accept that we can win only one battle at a time. And, as former GOP congressman and member of the January 6 Commission Adam Kinzinger recently said on a PBS interview: “I consider there to be only one issue on the ballot for 2024, do you believe in democracy or not?”

That will indeed be the challenge the American voters will have to address a year from now.