America’s Democracy is Fundamentally Flawed
- Reagan Fournier
- Nov 19, 2020
- 4 min read
Let us face the facts; our voting system holds a plethora of flaws. In 2016, only 55% of eligible adults voted in the general election, a 20-year low. Since the 1990s, citizen's satisfaction with both parties' representation of their beliefs has diminished. 61% of U.S citizens find their values not to fall synchronous to Democratic and Republican parties. Even when a popular vote is gained, the candidate is not guaranteed a spot at the oval office. Two out of the last three presidents who have won the election did not win the popular vote. The million-dollar question is, what is to be done?
Traditional "I voted" sticker
©Getty Images/iStockphoto Creator:flySnow
Mandatory Voting
An inherent flaw in American democracy is low voter turnout rates, hovering around 50%. That means that half of our eligible voters are not acting... One country that has impeded the problem of civic disengagement is Australia. Australia has a roughly 90% voter turnout rate, primarily because of its mandatory voting system. A fine of roughly USD 14 is implemented every time a voter does not turn up.
If this sounds authoritarian, mandatory voting in Australia is superficial. One can doodle, leave it blank, or write 'none of the above.' However, just receiving a ballot and having to turn it in is often enough incentive to get citizens civically engaged, allowing one to have that conversation of "who am I going to vote for?"
A quick example of ranked choice voting.
©Common Cause
Ranked Choice Voting
Another problem in America is that both political parties don’t really represent the people of the United States. For instance, someone might be pro-gun AND pro LGBTQ+ rights. It’s hard to find a person in either party who fulfills both of those. This forces people to stick with one side, even if that side doesn’t represent their viewpoint. Hence, why a strong majority of people believe that Democrats and Republicans alike don’t represent their viewpoint.
One of the most effective ways to solve this would be to implement ranked choice voting systems. Currently, you can vote for one candidate, and if they lose, it’s over. However, with a ranked choice voting system, you get to choose your candidates in order of how much you agree with them. If your top pick gets a majority of the votes, then they win. In Maine, where this has already been implemented, voting is counted by rounds. The candidate with the least amount of votes gets eliminated in each round until only two remain. This would help the party-voter disconnect by making it so that parties emerged not with candidates who won a small plurality, (the most votes), but a majority of the votes, meaning that the most number of people could be represented.
The Electoral College
To put it bluntly, the electoral college is outdated and harmful. By literal definition, America is not a democracy. Leaders are not chosen by the number of people that want them in office. However, they are chosen based on the valuation of their state. This system was created in the hopes of not giving larger states too much power. However, it remains irrelevant to our current society, as population density is changed to America's first days.
©National Conference of State Legislators
Why am I not seeing change?
Whenever our democracy does come up in public discourse, it is usually clouded by hot topic issues, like Russia or mail-in voting fraud. It seldom about the fundamental structural problems within our election systems. When voter suppression is discussed, it is not about how black people in the south (and other places) are still affected by specific laws that inhibit voting; it is about how people want to send in their votes by mail. When we talk about how an election was not fair, we talked about how one candidate smuggled millions of undocumented immigrants into the country to vote for them without evidence, not how a candidate can win without majority support.
Nevertheless, the reason no one on the legislative level is acting is simple. These flaws in our system allow them to gain even more power. For instance, mandatory voting would almost certainly increase voter turnout rates, which is terrible when one's ideas are not popular. Popular ideas like increasing the minimum wage to $15/hour (which 2/3s of Americans support), or the Green New Deal and legalizing marijuana (both of which have around 60% support), are not passing, simply because our politicians who are supposed to be representing us do not like them.
Incite Change!
Our congress might not want to solve these issues, but that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. You can help by donating to the ACLU, an organization that, amongst other things, fights for voting rights in America. Furthermore, linked below are several petitions to enact the essential democratic reform in this country
Sources:
Wallace, Gregory. “Voter Turnout at 20-Year Low in 2016.” CNN, Cable News Network, 30 Nov. 2016, 10:48 AM EDT, www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/index.html.
Smith, David. “Most Americans Do Not Feel Represented by Democrats or Republicans – Survey.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 Oct. 2016, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/25/american-political-parties-democrats-republicans-representation-survey.
Law, Tara. “These Presidents Won the Electoral College But Not the Popular Vote.” Time, Time, 15 May 2019, time.com/5579161/presidents-elected-electoral-college/.
Mulroy , Steven. “What US Election Officials Could Learn from Australia about Boosting Voter Turnout.” The Conversation, The Conversation, 13 Aug. 2020, theconversation.com/what-us-election-officials-could-learn-from-australia-about-boosting-voter-turnout-128617.
Dezenski, Lauren. “Ranked Choice Voting, Explained.” CNN, Cable News Network, 30 Sept. 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/09/27/politics/what-is-ranked-choice-voting-maine-election-2020/index.html.
Davis, Leslie, and Hannah Hartig. “Two-Thirds of Americans Favor Raising Federal Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 28 July 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/30/two-thirds-of-americans-favor-raising-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-an-hour/.
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