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.