In his new book, “10 Steps to Repair American Democracy,” Steven Hill, who directs the New America Foundation’s Political Reform Program, argues that what ails American democracy can be fixed by nothing short of a large overhaul of the United States’ antiquated system of government. Hill lays out 10 ways to improve both our government and the process by which we elect its representatives. Reforms range from having the House of Representatives appoint Supreme Court Justices (currently, the Senate holds that power) tomaking Election Day a national holiday.
The Examiner interviewed Hill to get a better understanding of why he’s proposed these particular reforms.
Q Most of your proposals address our electoral system. Explain why you focus your attention on that. What’s wrong with our electoral system?
A The electoral system we use to elect the president, the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, and the 50 state legislatures all date from the 18th century. Our nation was very different in 1790 than today. Then, only about 200,000 white, propertied males were eligible to vote. Representation was based on geography — where you lived — in an agrarian society. Today, we are a very diverse, cosmopolitan nation, yet the winner-take-all methods we have used no longer give adequate representation to many voters. Most voters, including Democrats living in heavily Republican districts and states and Republicans in heavily Democratic districts and states, feel like their votes don’t count because they always vote for losers. The winner takes all of the representation.
The winner-take-all system has led to a severe lack of competition in our elections. In the last two presidential elections, what should have been a national election boiled down to two states — Florida and Ohio. And it will be the same in 2008. This November, we will elect the U.S. House of Representatives yet out of 435 seats we can tell you right now who is going to win 400 of them, and that voter turnout will be around 37 percent of eligible voters. Most of the districts and states are one-party fiefdoms, crowned “red” or “blue” way in advance. The same is true for more than 7,000 state legislative races, no competition at all.
The typical explanation for this widely recognized reality is that incumbents and party leaders gerrymander their legislative district lines to favor their own and their party’s domination. There is some truth to that, but recent research reveals a more troubling, underlying reality — the lack of competition and choice are really caused by “where people live” in red vs. blue America. Increasingly, Americans are living in partisan enclaves — Democrats/liberals dominate the urban areas, Republicans/conservatives the rural areas and many suburbs. Even states with independent/nonpartisan redistricting commissions like Arizona and Iowa have difficulty drawing competitive districts unless they start them in the urban areas and extend them outward into conservative areas, like spokes of a wheel. But more competitive districts means more voters voting for losers, it turns out you can draw districts that are more competitive, or you can draw districts that give greater representation, but you can’t do both. In our winner-take-all system, both of these important democratic values are pitted against each other — competition versus representation.
Q And how will your proposals change that?
A We can’t change where people live, but we can scrap our winner-take-all elections and use a moderate proportional representation system. For example, Virginia could use a proportional system like that used in Peoria, Ill., for municipal elections. Instead of electing 40 state senators from 40 individual districts, voters in 10 districts could elect four senators each. Any candidate who won more than a fifth of the vote would earn a seat. These four-seat districts will be more competitive and bipartisan, even electing some urban Republicans and rural Democrats. Occasionally, a third-party candidate would win a seat. This would open up the system, you could have competition and representation. Voter turnout in nations using proportional voting is twice as high because voters have real choice. More women win seats in the legislature, for instance. Proportional voting gives representation based on what you think, rather than where you live, and that’s vitally important in today’s highly mobile, modern society.
Q Many of your suggestions for repairing American democracy might be construed as quite radical by many (i.e., direct election of the president, overhauling the U.S. Senate). And indeed many require a rewiring of our U.S. Constitution. With that, are many of these proposals politically unrealistic?
A I don’t see them as radical, I see them as common sense. What we are doing now is not working very well, on many levels. Some of my proposals can be accomplished in the short term. For example, one of the “steps” in “10 Steps to Repair American Democracy” is targeted at fixing the problems with voting equipment and election administration. Another step is for improving voter registration laws to enact universal voter registration, adding millions of eligible voters to the rolls, but making our elections more secure and more inclusive. Another step is to use instant runoff voting (IRV) to elect mayors, governors and the president to ensure that we elect leaders with a majority of the vote in a single election. These reforms can be accomplished in the short term, nothing is more important in a democracy than being able to count ballots accurately and securely. Or ensuring that the “majority rules.” In fact, this November four different jurisdictions will be voting on whether to adopt IRV for local elections.
Others of my proposals will take more time because they aim to pull our antiquated, 18th century political practices into the 21st century. But I have no doubt that within 20 years we will see major changes in how we elect the Senate and the president because, demographically speaking, those two institutions are increasingly out of touch with the American people. They both give more representation per capita to low population states which increasingly is distorting representation and national policy. When the Constitution was written, the most populous state was 12 times the size of the least populous state. Todaythe gap is 70 times and growing. By about 2030, our four largest states, California, Texas, New York and Florida, will have over a third of our nation’s population, will no longer have white majority populations, yet they will have the same representation in the Senate as the very-white states of Wyoming, Montana, South and North Dakota with 1 percent of the nation’s population. It is a demographic time bomb built to blow.
Q Why do you think that the House — not the Senate — should confirm Supreme Court justices?
A Because the Senate is the most unrepresentative legislative body outside Britain’s unelected House of Lords. It gives California the same representation as Wyoming, even though California has 70 times the population. Only six out of 100 senators are minority and 14 women. Two of our leading founders, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, were strongly opposed to the Senate’s giving equal representation to all states because they felt it would become a real barrier to enacting policies supported by a majority of Americans. And they were exactly right, both historically and today, where Senators representing less than 20 percent of the nation’s population can hold a majority of seats. If the Senate were a private club, a member would need to resign before running for public office to avoid charges of belonging to an exclusive fraternity. Such an unrepresentative body should not wield the important power of confirming Supreme Court justices.
Q You make a strong case for less partisan politics. But one could argue that partisanship is good for America; it is through the discussion of disparate views that a consensus can be achieved. Do you not agree?
A I agree that partisanship can be good when it is based on ideas and principle. But too much of the partisanship today is based on mudslinging and beating the other side. There is a prevailing sense that each side will do and say anything to win. It produces more bitter polarization and balkanization than true partisanship. But what’s truly tragic is that, with the two political camps drifting further apart, we have lost the political center in American politics. It is the moderates that act as bridge-builders in the legislature, forging bipartisan policy, yet research has documented that both political parties are more dominated by their wings. Most Americans today don’t feel represented by either of the two major parties and are increasingly alienated, even disgusted. In fact, most Americans don’t vote for a particular party or candidate as much as they vote against the other side. They vote the “lesser of two evils,” a kind of corrosive, negative consent. Paradoxically, we value consumer choice so highly in the free market, but when it comes to our politics there is no free marketplace of ideas. It is crucial that we find other ways to open up our politics and give Americans more choice in the voting booth. But that’s difficult to do in a winner-take-all system, whether at the state or district levels. Proportional representation, instant runoff voting, national direct election of the president are three of the keys to repairing American democracy. Public financing of elections, free media time for candidates, and media reform also are crucial.
Patrick Gavin is The Examiner’s associate editorial page editor.
