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The Myth of American Democracy

Despite what many Americans might think, the concept of representative government in the US has never been truthfully exercised.

By Hector Miranda Plaza, February 26, 2021

Since its inception and throughout its entire history, the United States has held itself up as a beacon for liberal representative government. The Founding Fathers believed the political system they created to be based on, in the words of George Washington, “the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government”.

Throughout the 20th Century, the United States stood as one of the sole republics amongst monarchies and authoritarian regimes, first during WWI, then WWII, and lastly the Cold War. And, while it has been true that many times the US has outshined other countries in its citizens’ ability to have a say in their government, to say that it is wholly true that the US is a representative democracy would be wrong.

Firstly, to address the elephant in the room, it’s important to clarify that, technically, the United States is not a democracy; it is classified as a federal republic. Nor did the Founding Fathers ever even intend it to be one, as they believed democracy to be, as Benjamin Franklin expressed, “two wolves and a lamb voting on what they will have for lunch”.

The only reason it is referred to as one by politicians and the public alike is because it’s a buzzword signifying the supposed role anyone can play in governance. However, even accounting for the government being structured as a republic, the US falls flat on its head in being representative of its citizens.

Arguably the greatest shortcoming of the American voting system is the “first-past-the-post” system of vote organization. Under such a procedure, winning an objective majority of all votes cast is not necessary to win an election. Rather, the candidate with the largest number of votes, irrespective of the percentage of votes they garnered, wins. While this may seem acceptable at face value, such a system makes it so that voting for any candidate other than the two largest ones is futile, as all other votes other than those for the winning candidate are discarded.

It is this tendency for voters to only choose from two candidates that has led to the two-party system, and the phenomenon of voting for the “lesser of two evils”. This has also, in no small part, contributed to gerrymandering, a process by which whichever party is in power redraws voting districts to give them as large of a majority as possible. Needless to say, having only two real choices is wholly undemocratic, as there are more than just two political ideologies.

The case of Presidential Elections is not immune from this lack of representation either due to the Electoral College, which guarantees each state at least three votes in presidential elections. This guarantee effectively makes it so that states with little population have a disproportionate say on the election.

For example, Wyoming, the state with the smallest population, has one elector for every 192,920 people. A state like Florida, with 21.5 million people, on the other hand, only has one elector for every 740,690 people. If each vote counted equally, that discrepancy would be like people in Wyoming voting more than three times.

Defenders of the Electoral College argue that it preserves the interests of the rural states from the tyranny of the majority. What this does not consider is the demographics of the US; half of Americans live in just nine states, and that number is set to decrease to eight by 2040. In seeking to prohibit a tyranny of the majority, the Electoral College fosters a far more nefarious tyranny: that of an ever increasing minority.

The most unacceptable influence of a minority, however, is by business interests. Through lobbying, big businesses and the rich can directly influence the policies enacted in Congress by offering reelection campaign contributions or cushy post-retirement jobs to politicians, who in return tow their interests into the Senate and House.

This is best shown by the fact that the opinions of those who are in the bottom 90% of income earners have, statistically, nearly no impact on policy, while the top 10% of earners have nearly complete sway. This, combined with all the aforementioned flaws in the government, makes it undeniable that the very concept of representative government in the US is not just flawed, nor even broken, but wholly absent and false.

So then, what can be done to solve these problems? Luckily, the solutions are quite straightforward, as many other countries implement systems that can wholly remedy these ills. The first-past-the-poll system can be replaced with ranked choice voting, in which voters rank candidates in order of preference.

Under ranked choice voting, in the event that no candidate obtains a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least amount of votes is disqualified, but those that chose them as their preferred candidate do not have their votes discarded. Instead, their votes go to whichever choice of theirs was ranked highest and is still in the running. This process repeats itself until a candidate obtains a majority, ensuring that the result is that which is most amicable to all. 

As for gerrymandering, it can be easily solved by putting the power to draw districts in the hands of independent committees, instead of the bipartisan committees that currently draw them.

The Electoral College can be replaced with a popular vote, ensuring that candidates cannot win the Presidency without getting at least more votes than anyone else, unlike what happened in the elections of 2000 and 2016. In fact, there is already a plan to effectively nullify the Electoral College by using it.

Called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, this agreement binds signing states to cast their votes in favor of whichever candidate won the popular vote, regardless of their state outcomes, once the total number of electors from states binded to the compact reaches 270.

Currently, the Compact holds around 196 electoral votes, and if successfully enacted would ensure election results accurately reflect the votes cast.

Lobbying is harder to fix, though. Thanks to court cases like Citizens United v. FEC, PACs, SuperPACs, and a host of other organizations representing monied interests can have effectively unrestricted influence in government. In addition to this, given that those that write laws in Congress are directly influenced by lobbyists, the government will not solve the problem.

However, even now there are grassroots movements to end lobbying from the ground up. Organizations like RepresentUS are fighting this legalized corruption on local and state levels, and they have made great strides in pushing back against money in politics.

The United States has a long road ahead of itself if it even wishes to dare call itself a representative democracy, but the road to change has been paved by others elsewhere. Voting methods, such as ranked choice voting, independent district drawing committees, the popular vote, and the banning of lobbying have all been implemented elsewhere in other representative democracies to great success. Because of lobbying and money in politics, however, politicians and the government cannot be trusted to enact these changes on their own.

It is the civic duty of every American to protest, petition, raise ballots for, and spread awareness for the overturning of this sad state of affairs. America has always stylized itself as the world’s greatest democracy, but it has never been true; only its citizens can make it a reality and truly claim that honor.

Hector Miranda Plaza is an author for and co-founder of Young Patriots Magazine.