A Gradual Slide Towards Authoritarianism
(Or, how our current system subverts the will of the people)
Trump has exposed the flaws in our system. Or, more accurately, his followers and the Republican party latching on like lampreys in their quest for power have.
And, honestly, Biden is not the answer. No Democrat really is. Biden, and the rest of the Democrats are simply sandbags holding back the rising tide of self-interested, dictatorial power.
The reason for this is not because of the differences in the parties. It is because of the flaws in our system. For those of you who slept through civics class, or perhaps did not quite grasp this, we have what is colloquially called a “first past the post,” (FPP) or “winner take all” system. If we elected in FPP and had only two parties we would have majority rule (forget about the electoral college for a moment, it clouds the discussion).
However, if four candidates were to run, someone with 26% of the vote could conceivably win (the other candidates could have up to 25, 25, and 24%, respectively). This is an obviously undesirable outcome which is known as “minority rule.” In the above case, 74% of voters wanted anyone else, but wound up with the least-least popular candidate.
Over time, all four parties would eventually devolve into two, as the voters with the least representation eventually throw their lots in with one of the two major winning parties. They will eventually almost always begin voting tactically, hoping to get some candidate that possibly meets a little of their values (the least-worst candidate).
You do not have to have all parties give up, either. Simply having a third party that wants change results in the opportunity for minority rule. In fact, voting for a third-party candidate once the system is down to two major parties has the chance to elect the person that the third-party voter wants least.
If there are two major parties (party red, and party blue), voting for party orange (slightly like party red) turns this into a minority rule scenario by splitting Red’s base. Thus, this scenario elects blue. If party lavender runs, they are most likely only taking votes away from blue’s base, thus electing red. In each case, the similar parties (red+orange, and blue+lavender) may have agreed on most things but sabotaged each other and elected the least favored.
Speaking specifically of the United States now, this only gets worse for representation when you have an electoral college come into play. In this case, one or two votes may be cast by entire states on behalf ot their people. Clearly those have the potential to subvert the will of the populace. Redistricting for favor of one party (gerrymandering) can dilute the popular vote, thus gaming the electoral college system, and (again) resulting in minority rule.
In fact, the effectiveness of gerrymandering can be shown by the simple fact that no third-party candidate has won a single electoral college vote since George Wallace in 1968. Tell a third-party voter that they are wasting their vote however, and see how that goes for you.
Because not all congressional districts are the same size, or have the same population across the country, the popular vote does not mean much at all where Presidential elections are concerned. California, for instance has 55 districts (and thus 55 electoral college votes). With a population of 39.37M as of 2020, that means that each vote counts for 1/ 715,818 of an electoral college vote.
Montana, on the other end of the spectrum had 1.08M people in 2020, and 2 electoral college votes. This means that each vote counts for 1/540,000 of an electoral college vote. People in Montana are represented at a 75% greater rate than individual voters in California.
Indeed, this is the real problem with the electoral college system. Generally speaking, liberal votes tend to come from places with great population densities, and non-liberal votes tend to come from places that are more rural. The values are simply different when comparing rural and urban areas. And, because cities tend to only occupy a single district each, liberal votes are reflected less than non-liberal votes.
So, if the winner-take-all system results in minority rule, and the electoral system encourages gerrymandering (exacerbating the chance of minority rule), then where does that leave the country?
It leaves the country in dire need of political reform. We need an alternate voting system if we ever hope to have democracy in this country. Democracy is of course used here in the fashion of a government who carries out the will of most of its citizens. Of course, we are not a democracy, we are a republic (a democratic republic, but a republic nonetheless). Our votes go to representatives whom we hope enact our will.
But much in the same way that the electoral college skews towards the rural (and thus minority rule), so too, does the election of representatives, because they are appointed by unequally populated districts, and not by an equitable division of the aggregate population.
Were this a democracy (a strict democracy, mind you) gun control and reproductive rights would be the law across the nation, as both are supported by a majority of the citizenry.
The first alternative is ranked choice voting (RCV). In an RCV race, voters rank all the potential candidates in order of preference. If their most favored does not get the highest number of votes, then their vote goes to their second choice, then the third, and so on and so forth until one party has won the ballot. This eliminates the danger that a third-party candidate poses to a winner take all system, as the voters are not punished for selecting an alternative representative. In truth, it allows for more third-party representation and may result in elected officials that more closely reflect the population (higher election of women and minorities, for example).
A second alternative is approval voting. Approval voting allows voters to pick their candidates, approving as many as they want to consider for each position. If the run for president had 5 candidates, a voter could choose 1, or 4, or 5, even. This is the closest method to the United States’ current system, but still allows for better third-party representation. It still has the potential for tactical voting in that it might push voters to jump in behind a front-runner, and is less expressive of the overall will of the people than ranked choice voting is. It would however, require the least change to our voting system.
A third alternative is score-voting, which is like ranked choice voting (insofar as you rank your candidates), but a number is assigned in order from best to worst, and then they are totaled at the end. If the run for president has 5 candidates, a voter would rank them all in order of preference, 5 being highest. The candidate with the highest overall score wins (no shifting votes, like in RCV).
There are likely as many voting methods (and variations of methods) as there have ever been presidential candidates, but none are as inherently likely to subvert the will of the people as the current system, which is as far from true democracy as we can get without sliding into full dictatorship or a monarchy.
Our current voting problems are an artifact of the founding of our country, and the rules are outdated. Where before the states had to physically send representatives to the capitol to manually cast ballots, now it is handled electronically and by mail.
Where before the politicians didn’t trust the will of the people, it has become apparent from congress’ approval rating (15%) that the people no longer trust the politicians.
It’s time for reform, and it has to happen before we become a dictatorship. Even if we pull out of the current spiral, the right-wing party is only growing more authoritarian, and it won’t be too long before the traditional conservatives no longer have a place in their old party.
And we all know the effectiveness of the third-party they’ll form.