America’s anti-democratic spectacle

In my decades living abroad working for democracy organizations, I was constantly exposed to the diverse practices in — and interpretations of — democratic governance and representation. One unfortunate consistency, however, is the reluctance of even strident pro-democracy politicians to alter a flawed electoral system from which they benefit.

I often saw parties fight fiercely, for example, to hold on to arcane seat allocation formulas that defied reason, or selectively pick and choose from a menu of international best — if taken individually — electoral practices to create a Frankenstein amalgamation that provided them an advantage but hurt democracy.

We Americans are no different.

We see today transparent efforts to gain political advantage at the expense of what is representative and, put simply, fair. In fact, U.S. political actors are even more unconstrained in their ability to twist the system in their favor, given our lack of an independent, non-partisan election administration, which is mainstream in most other advanced democracies. Rather, our election management is run by partisan actors.

Because of our long democratic history, we are also anchored to rules written centuries ago and not fit-for-purpose today.

Today’s example is the Republican North Carolina state legislature arguing that the so-called Independent State Legislature Theory, based on the constitutional provision on election authority, gives them unchecked ability to draw electoral maps in their political favor. In this case, the GOP map divided North Carolina into essentially 10 safe Republican and four Democratic districts, despite the fact that, according to Pew, 43 percent of voters in the state identify as Democratic and 41 percent as Republican.

GOP representative David Lewis revealed their true intentions by simply saying that “electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats,” so he was doing what was “better for the country.”

Others attempted democracy jiu-jitsu arguing that the legislature represents the will of the people and thus its districting decision does too, conveniently ignoring the fact that by this map it wouldn’t come close.

The State’s highest court rightly threw out the legislature’s map, asserting the principle of one person, one vote, and sent the map-drawing exercise to an independent body.

The Republicans have appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case sits now.

North Carolina is not alone. Notably, high courts in both Ohio and New York rejected partisan gerrymanders by legislatures there. New York’s Democratic legislature ultimately accepted the ruling and an independently-drawn map, which could explain, in part, Republican gains this cycle. Ohio’s Republican legislature brazenly ignored the court’s ruling and rejected multiple independently drawn maps. The 2022 midterm elections were conducted with, literally, an unconstitutional map that significantly favored Republicans.

Placing our elections in the hands of those competing is not our only divergence from international best practice.

We have other systems in place calcifying undemocratic practices and outcomes, from the Electoral College and election administration to voter registration. The Senate, for example, creates a voter power discrepancy of up to 1:7,000 whereby a voter in California has one seven thousandth of the representation as a voter in Wyoming. International standards stipulate that voting districts should not differ by more than 10 percent, a standard the U.S. preaches to democracies elsewhere.

Debate has ensued about what our constitution meant by “legislature” when it declared: “The times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” Did it mean just the legislative body, or did it encompass the broader state apparatus of executive and judiciary? Constitutional interpretation aside, why have we stopped asking ourselves what is the best way forward? Fairest way? Most democratic way? Regardless of what made sense for the U.S. hundreds of years ago.

Many years ago, I conducted an election simulation with my son’s first grade class at his international school in Cambodia. His classmates represented some 10 or more nationalities and six continents, but matters of democracy and fairness were unquestioned and universal.

When I asked who should vote, there was agreement that they all should.

When I asked how to determine the winner, no one suggested that those from more rural countries be weighted or that the contenders should twist the system in their favor.

Ask a six-year-old if what North Carolina Republicans are pulling is fair, and you’ve got your smell test. It’s not complicated.

The election clause in the constitution is a sentence that sits beside fundamentals of and precedents in American democracy, like our sacred system of checks and balances, principle of one person one vote, and sense of justice and equality.

We need to dig in on democracy, as we see backsliding across the globe and the darkness of life in non-democratic countries.

Minority rule ultimately is not sustainable, and I’ve seen how it can lead to anger, conflict, and unrest.

For a country that is as innovative as the United States, there is no reason we must be so stubbornly rigid about our election practices, particularly those put in place in a completely different era. We can, like other countries, adapt and innovate — integrate new forms of representation and deliberative decision-making, continue to explore with ranked choice voting, proportional representation, and multi-member districts, reform our primaries to avoid migration to the extremes, and create space for new political parties and actors.

Above all, we can and should remove our election decision-making — from our electoral maps and voter registration to certifying the results — from political bodies and create independent, non-partisan election administration, as other democracies do. It’s common sense.

Laura L. Thornton is Senior Vice President, Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. Prior to joining ASD, she worked for 25 years in Asia and the former Soviet Union for democracy-promotion organizations.