PIPEDREAM

How much more dysfunctional can America get? Congress finally passed a long overdue, bi-partisan, infrastructure upgrade bill and now the 13 Republican legislators who voted in favor of the bill are being crucified by their own party for lending their support to this rare act of Congressional governance. Never mind that they voted for a bill that had passed the Senate with support of 19 Republicans, including the minority leader.

There is so much wrong with the current American system of public governance, that it is exasperating.          

The biggest issue is that it has become virtually impossible to right the ship and make the systematic changes that could put the ship of state back on course. It is not for a dearth of available improvements that the current stasis exists. The only reason that America can’t get out of its own way is that in the two-party system, with the parties more or less equally balanced, it is easy to calculate if a particular systematic improvement favors one party or the other. In today’s constellation, almost every possible move to unshackle the political process and democratize the system seems to favor the Democrats and is therefore blocked by the Republicans.

At first glance, abandoning the filibuster rule of the Senate offers itself as a prime example of this reality. But think again: While dropping the filibuster rule would allow the current Democratic administration to push through its agenda during this Congressional term, it would negate and reverse that advantage the moment the Republicans regain the majority in the Senate, which is a good possibility for 2022. Worse for them, if, in 2024, the Republicans were to win the White House as well as the Congress, the Democrats would find themselves deprived of any defense of their minority control and would have to helplessly watch the Republicans undo their legislative achievements. On the other hand, abandoning the filibuster rule is one of very few things the Democrats can do on their own without Republican support, while they have the majority in the Senate. And they will undoubtedly realize that if they don’t make this move while they are in charge, the Republicans can drop the filibuster rule at any time of their choosing once they regain control of the Senate.

But what about other possible improvements to the public governance system?

The good thing is, that much can be done without requiring an amendment to the Constitution. The bad thing, that in Congress nothing can get done without 60 votes in the Senate, unless the filibuster rule is dumped, but in that case any improvement orchestrated by the party in power can be undone once the balance of power shifts again.

We must also recognize that not all systematic improvements can be made at the federal level. Democracy in the USA is in large part a matter of State control. Two State prerogatives have a particularly large bearing on the functioning of the democratic process:

·        The mapping of Congressional Districts

·        The apportionment of Electoral votes

But, at the national level, there would still be plenty of room for improvement by e.g.

·        Expansion of the House of Representatives

·        Automatic voter registration

·        Making Election Day a Federal Holiday

The Democratically controlled House of Representatives has recognized the need for improvement of access to the polls and safeguarding against disenfranchising minority groups within the voting population by passing two Voting Rights Protection bills that are now stalled because of Republican resistance in the Senate enabled by the filibuster rule.

Expansion of the House of Representatives based upon the results of the 2020 Census is not part of either Voting Rights Protection bill but would also most certainly be blocked in the Senate, as it would presumably favor the Democrats since most of the population growth since 1929 (when the current limit of 435 seats in the House of Representatives was established) has taken place in the dense urban population areas where the Democratic Party enjoys the most support. By adding to the number of Congressional Districts in the areas of the highest population growth, it would make Congress more representative of the population and make it harder for States to gerrymander their Congressional Districts. The American population has nearly tripled from the Census of 1920 on which the current count of 435 seats was based, but Congress has neglected to acknowledge that growth in its representation of the voting public.

If nothing else, two legislative initiatives could go a long way to making the US election system more representative of the population demographics and fairer to minority representation:

1.       Creating a new Permanent Apportionment Act that requires that the number of House Seats is based on the Census population divided by 500,000; and

2.       Abandoning the ‘winner takes all’ rule for the apportionment of Electoral Votes currently in place in 48 of the 50 States and replacing it with a proportional apportionment based on the popular vote for President in each State.

With the current number of 435 House seats, each House seat represented an average of 242,000 citizens under the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. According to the 2020 Census it represented an average of 762,000 citizens. To bring that number back to 500,000 would increase the number of House seats from 435 to 663.

The increase in the number of House seats would also result in an increase in the number of seats in the Electoral College (which is equal to the sum of the seats in the House and the Senate plus 3 seats for the District of Columbia). It would take an act of Congress to make this change.

Abandoning the ‘winner takes all rule’ would require the legislative action by the 48 States (all but Maine and Nebraska). It would eliminate the disenfranchisement of minority votes cast in a Presidential Election.

Unfortunately, even these relatively minor amendments of the democratic process in the US remain a pipedream, as long as the People are represented by two similarly sized parties that are at unbreakable loggerheads with each other. This makes the outlook for a better functioning political system in the USA so exasperating.