The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

6 SR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020

T

HE Trump presidency has

brought American democracy to

the breaking point. The president

has encouraged violent extre-

mists; deployed law enforcement and

other public institutions as weapons

against rivals; and undermined the integ-

rity of elections through false claims of

fraud, attacks on mail-in voting and an ap-

parent unwillingness to accept defeat.

In this, he has been aided and abetted

by a Republican Party that has fallen into

the grips of white nationalism. The Repub-

lican base and its white Christian core,

facing a loss of its dominant status in soci-

ety, has radicalized, encouraging party

leaders to engage in voter suppression,

steal a Supreme Court seat in 2016 and tol-

erate the president’s lawless behavior. As

a result, Americans today confront the

prospect of a crisis-ridden election, in

which they are unsure whether they will

be able to cast a ballot fairly, whether their

ballots will be counted, whether the candi-

date favored by voters will emerge victori-

ous and whether the vote will throw the

country into violence.

Yet if American democracy is nearing a

breaking point, the crisis generated by the

Trump presidency could also be a prelude

to a democratic breakthrough. Opposition

to Trumpism has engendered a growing

multiracial majority that could lay a foun-

dation for a more democratic future. Pub-

lic opinion has shifted in important ways,

especially among white Americans.

According to the political scientist Mi-

chael Tesler, the percentage of Americans

who agree that “there’s a lot of discrimina-

tion against African-Americans” in-

creased from 19 percent in 2013 to 50 per-

cent in 2020, driven in the main by

changes in the attitudes of white voters.

Likewise, a Pew Research Center survey

found that the percentage of Americans

who believe that the country needs to

“continue making changes to give Blacks

equal rights with whites” rose from 46 per-

cent in 2014 to 61 percent in 2017.

America’s emerging multiracial demo-

cratic majority was visible this summer in

the aftermath of the police killing of

George Floyd in Minneapolis. The killing

set off what may be the biggest wave of

protest in United States history. An esti-

mated 15 million to 26 million Americans

took to the streets, and protests extended

into small-town and rural America. Three-

quarters of Americans supported the pro-

tests in June, and large majorities — in-

cluding 60 percent of whites — supported

the Black Lives Matter movement. These

numbers declined over the course of the

summer. As of September, however, 55

percent of Americans (and 45 percent of

white Americans) continued to support

Black Lives Matter, levels that were con-

siderably higher than ever before.

Not only do most Americans disap-

prove of the way Mr. Trump is handling his

job, but an unprecedented majority now

embraces ethnic diversity and racial

equality, two essential pillars of multi-

racial democracy.

Yet translating this new multiethnic

majority into a governingmajority has

been difficult. Democracy is supposed to

be a game of numbers: The party with the

most votes wins. In our political system,

however, the majority does not govern.

Constitutional design and recent political

geographic trends — where Democrats

and Republicans live — have unintention-

ally conspired to produce what is effec-

tively becoming minority rule.

Our Constitution was designed to favor

small (or low-population) states. Small

states were given representation equal to

that of big states in the Senate and an ad-

vantage in the Electoral College. What be-

gan as a minor small-state advantage

evolved, over time, into a vast overrepre-

sentation of rural states. For most of our

history, this rural bias did not tilt the parti-

san playing field much because both ma-

jor parties maintained huge urban and ru-

ral wings.

Today, however, American parties are

starkly divided along urban-rural lines:

Democrats are concentrated in big metro-

politan centers, whereas Republicans are

increasingly based in sparsely populated

territories. This gives Republicans an ad-

vantage in the Electoral College, the Sen-

ate and — because the president selects

Supreme Court nominees and the Senate

approves them — the Supreme Court.

Recent U.S. election results fly in the

face of majority rule. Republicans have

won the popular vote for president only

once in the last 20 years and yet have con-

trolled the presidency for 12 of those 20

years. Democrats easily won more overall

votes for the U.S. Senate in 2016 and 2018,

and yet the Republicans hold 53 of 100

seats. The 45 Democratic and two inde-

pendent sena-

tors who caucus

with them repre-

sent more people

than the 53 Re-

publicans.

This is minority

rule. An electoral

majority may not be enough for the Demo-

crats to win the presidency this year ei-

ther. According to the FiveThirtyEight

presidential model, if Joe Biden wins the

popular vote by one to two points, there is

an 80 percent chance that Mr. Trump wins

the presidency again. If Mr. Biden wins by

two to three points, Mr. Trump is still likely

to win. Mr. Biden must win by six points or

more to have a near lock on the presiden-

cy. Senate elections are similarly skewed.

The problem is exacerbated by Republi-

can efforts to dampen turnout among

younger, lower-income and minority vot-

ers. Republican state governments have

purged voter rolls and closed polling

places on college campuses and in pre-

dominantly African-American neighbor-

hoods, and since 2010, a dozen Republi-

can-led states have passed laws making it

more difficult to register or vote.

Minority rule has, in turn, skewed the

composition of the Supreme Court. Under

Mr. Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kava-

naugh became the first two justices in his-

tory to be appointed by a president who

lost the popular vote and then be con-

firmed by senators who represented less

than half the electorate. Amy Coney Bar-

rett is likely to become the third.

In America today, then, the majority

does not govern. This disjuncture cries out

for reform. We must double down on de-

mocracy. This means above all defending

and expanding the right to vote. HR-1 and

HR-4, a package of reforms approved by

the House of Representatives in 2019 but

blocked by the Senate, is a good start.

HR-1 would establish nationwide auto-

matic and same-day registration, expand

early and absentee voting, prohibit flawed

purges that remove eligible voters from

the rolls, require independent redistrict-

ing commissions to draw congressional

maps, and restore voting rights to con-

victed felons who have served their time.

HR-4 would fully restore the 1965 Voting

Rights Act, which was gutted by the Su-

preme Court in 2013.

Doubling down on democracy also

means reforms that empower majorities,

such as eliminating the Senate filibuster.

The filibuster, which was rarely used dur-

ing much of the 20th century, has turned

into a routine instrument of legislative ob-

struction. There were more Senate filibus-

ters over the last two decades than in the

previous eight. All meaningful legislation

now effectively requires 60 votes, which

amounts to a permanent minority veto.

A democratic reform agenda should

also include an offer of statehood to the

District of Columbia and to Puerto Rico,

which would provide full and equal repre-

sentation to nearly four million Ameri-

cans who are currently disenfranchised.

And it should include elimination of the

Electoral College. The House last voted in

favor of a constitutional amendment in

1969, but the proposal died in the Senate,

at the hands of old segregationist inter-

ests. (As Senator James Allen of Alabama

put it: “The Electoral College is one of the

South’s few remaining political safe-

guards. Let’s keep it.”)

Not only would ending minority rule be

inherently democratic, but, importantly, it

would also encourage the Republican

Party to abandon its destructive course of

radicalization. Normally, political parties

change course when they lose elections.

But in America today there is a hitch: Re-

publicans can win and exercise power

without building national electoral ma-

jorities. Excessively counter-majoritarian

institutions blunt Republicans’ incentive

to adapt to a changing electorate. As long

as the Republicans can hold onto power

without broadening beyond their shrink-

ing base, they will remain prone to the

kind of extremism and demagogy that

currently threatens our democracy.

There is ample precedent for democrat-

ic reform in America. A century ago, like

today, the United States experienced dis-

ruptive economic change, an unprece-

dented influx of migrants and the growth

of behemoth corporations. Citizens be-

lieved that their political system had be-

come corrupt and dysfunctional. Progres-

sive reform advocates like Herbert Croly

argued that Americans were living in a de-

mocracy with antiquated institutions de-

signed for an agrarian society, which left

our political system ill-equipped to cope

with the problems of an industrial age and

vulnerable to corporate capture.

The response was a sweeping reform

movement that remade our democracy.

Key reforms — then regarded as radical

but now taken for granted — included the

introduction of party primaries; the ex-

pansion of the citizen referendum; and

constitutional amendments allowing a na-

tional income tax, establishing the direct

election of U.S. senators and extending

suffrage to women. American democracy

thrived in the 20th century in part be-

cause it was able to reform itself.

Critics of reform assert that counter-

majoritarian institutions are essential to

liberal democracy. We agree. That’s what

the Bill of Rights and judicial review are

for: to help ensure that individual liberties

and minority rights are protected under

majority rule. But disenfranchisement is

not a feature of modern liberal democracy.

No other established democracy has an

Electoral College or makes regular use of

the filibuster. And a political system that

repeatedly allows a minority party to con-

trol the most powerful offices in the coun-

try cannot remain legitimate for long.

Democracy requires more than major-

ity rule. But without majority rule, there is

no democracy. Either we become a truly

multiracial democracy or we cease to be a

democracy at all.

We must become a truly multiracial

democracy or lose legitimacy.

OPINION

BY STEVEN

LEVITSKY

AND DANIEL

ZIBLATT

Mr. Levitsky and

Mr. Ziblatt are

professors of

government at

Harvard and the

authors of “How

Democracies Die.”

E

VERY eligible vote should be

counted. But already in this elec-

tion, more than 9,800 ballots

have been challenged and face

rejection in North Carolina. In Florida,

that number is 11,900.

These votes are often flagged because

the signature on the mail-in ballot does-

n’t quite match the one election officials

have on file. That’s enough in some

states — typically states controlled by

Republicans — to reject the ballot en-

tirely, sometimes without even giving

the voter a chance to fix the problem.

Not long ago, Georgia required voters

to write their address and birth year on

the ballot return envelope. Any mistake

could get their ballot tossed.

The state was sued, and the law was

overturned.

“These extra fields practically

amounted to a literacy test,” said Sean

Young, legal director of A.C.L.U. Georgia.

We’re told that these restrictive laws

guard against voter fraud. But voter

fraud is a problem so small and insignifi-

cant that only a handful of cases are re-

corded each election. And less restrictive

safeguards against voter fraud are al-

ready in place, like the voter registration

system.

The laws themselves are the real

threat to our democracy. States with re-

strictive laws are tossing away thou-

sands of legitimate votes from well-

meaning voters. And they’re doing it

with the consent of the courts.

The Many Ways Your

Everything from the proportions of characters to the space between letters can be scrutinized.

In states that conduct signature matching, these differences could be enough to reject the ballot.

How signatures on return envelopes are evaluated

Genuine signature

Questioned signature

Source: Colorado secretary of state’s “Signature Verification Guide”

SLANT ANGLE

SPACING END STROKES

THE NEW YORK TIM

LOOPS CROSS-POINTS

ABSENCE OF PEN LIFTS PROPORTIONS

BY NATHANIEL

LASH

AND STUART A.

THOMPSON

Nathaniel Lash is

a graphics reporter

in Opinion. Stuart

A. Thompson is a

writer and editor in

Opinion.

A

ROUND supper time on Election

Day, 1880, the poll workers in

Bolivar County, Miss., were get-

ting hungry. Someone ran out

for sardines and crackers. The officials

noshed and counted votes until the “vio-

lent laxative” that had been added to the

Republicans’ sardines started to take ef-

fect. Then they ran for the outhouses

while the remaining Democrats counted a

suspiciously large majority.

As a historian of American democracy,

I used to collect anecdotes like this from

the mid-to-late 1800s. They dramatized,

with outlandish gall, just how different

America’s past was from the square poli-

tics I grew up with in the late 20th cen-

tury. But on the eve of an election the

president of the United States has de-

clared might be stolen from him, a fear he

promises to counter with an “army” of

partisan poll watchers, dirty tricks don’t

feel so distant. As our politics have dark-

ened, I’ve shifted away from studying

spiked sardines, wondering instead how

Americans ever stopped stealing elec-

tions.

Such thefts are not cute. They robbed

thousands of people of their rights, helped

kill Reconstruction and forestalled politi-

cal reform. We still suffer from these

crimes, over a century later. But in a striv-

ing nation dominated by what Charles

Dickens called “the love of smart deal-

ings,” crooked politicians often chuckled

about their cunning. “Instead of wrath” at

stolen elections, the humorist James Rus-

sell Lowell complained upon returning

from abroad, “I found banter.” When the

journalist Lincoln Steffens mentioned a

St. Louis trick to a party boss in Philadel-

phia, the two began excitedly talking

shop, “as one artist to another.” Although

most elections were (relatively) clean,

“majority manufacturers” in teeming

Northern cities, racially tense Southern

districts and new Western settlements

laid out two paths for stealing elections —

steal the cast or steal the count.

Understanding how these swindles

worked can help shed light on what we

should and shouldn’t worry about in 2020.

Stealing elections often started with

the U.S. Postal Service — central to this

election as well. In a nation that was over

80 percent rural, post offices were a choke

point for political news. But they were run

by deeply partisan postmasters, ap-

pointed by the very congressmen they’d

help elect, and they frequently “lost” the

opposition’s newspapers or correspon-

dences. And because parties privately

printed their own ballots in those days,

post offices and newspaper publishers

could buy up all the paper in town, mak-

ing it difficult for rivals to get enough tick-

ets. Even the telegraph wires couldn’t be

trusted: In the contested presidential

election of 1876, Western Union operators

sent Democratic politicians’ private mes-

sages straight to Republican headquar-

ters.

The tricks grew more confrontational

on Election Day itself. Most states lacked

voter registration systems, so partisans

hung around the polls, challenging illegal

voters — on account of age, race or resi-

dency — and intimidating legal ones they

believed would vote for the rival ticket..

Challenges could be oddly intimate, like

the elderly Democrat in Civil War-torn

Missouri who was threatened by a young

man whom “I have known ever since he

was a child.” They could also lead to atro-

cious brutality. In the South at the end of

Reconstruction, white Democratic rifle

clubs “policed” the polls. They invented

the term “bulldoze” in 1876 to describe the

use of a “dose” of the bullwhip to terrorize

African-American voters.

Unlike today, there actually was wide-

spread fraud in casting ballots, what Rud-

yard Kipling called the uniquely Ameri-

can “art of buying up votes retail.” A glass

How to Steal an Election

OPINION

BY JON

GRINSPAN

A curator of

political history at

the Smithsonian’s

National Museum

of American

History and the

author of the

forthcoming “The

Age of Acrimony:

How Americans

Fought to Fix Their

Democracy,

1865-1915.”

A crowd of men

accused of voter

fraud in the

1876

presidential

election argue

with law officers

in New York.

Let’s End

Minority Rule

PABLO DELCAN

OPINION

.