Eberhard Becoming a Democracy

How We Can Fix the Electoral College, Gerrymandering, and Our Elections
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9894740-3-0
Verlag: Sightline Institute
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 180 Seiten

The United States wasn't built as a democracy. The Senate doesn't represent people. Both sides hate gerrymandering and the courts refuse to fix it. Our right to be heard is defeated by voter suppression and an Electoral College system that concentrates power in a handful of states and too often reverses the popular vote. But within our flawed system, we have the tools to tackle our most stubborn election problems by flexing state and local power (no constitutional amendments or courts required). Kristin Eberhard, Director of Democracy at Sightline Institute, thoughtfully researched how the U.S. election system is unjust to many by design, and walks us through 10 big but practical ideas for making our elections free, fair, and secure. A field guide to better elections for both sides of the aisle, Becoming a Democracy illuminates the meaningful, concrete actions that we can take to transform our elections and make sure everyone's vote counts (and that we all get to vote in the first place).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Eberhard, Kristin

Leseproben

Section I: Free Voters to Vote Make it easier, cheaper, and more secure for all Americans to vote. We’ll start our journey toward a better democracy in an obvious place: voting. When most people think of a healthy representative government, they think of that most concrete and fundamental right allotted to every one of a country’s citizens. Voting should be an easy, efficient, inclusive, secure process that makes everyday people feel that their voices matter and makes them want to vote. Unfortunately, this is not the case in the United States, as the following four chapters will discuss: •It can be hard to get and stay registered to vote, from registering in the first place (chapter 1) to dodging the suppressive tactics of voter roll purges and Voter ID laws (chapter 2). •It can be a hassle to vote, with distant polling places, long lines, and expensive, questionably secure voting machines (chapter 3). •Some states have stripped the right to vote from millions of people on the basis of felony convictions, the definition of which varies greatly from state to state. This is frequently the case even after those people have served their sentences (chapter 4). These conditions are no accident. Some are the result of policy and legal decisions that have systematically disenfranchised certain groups of people for decades or even centuries, and some are more recent incarnations motivated by partisan politics. Others have resulted from a failure to modernize, despite opportunities to do so and proof that new programs would better serve the public. Below, we’ll briefly discuss three major components of this suppression. States control who votes and how, with widely varying effects on voting rights Most Americans would consider the right to vote to be fundamental. But at its founding, fewer than 10 percent of people living in the United States were allowed to vote. The Constitution was silent about who could vote, so states decided for themselves. Mostly, they decided that only white, Protestant, property-owning men could exercise that right. Over time, Americans amended the Constitution to allow men of color to vote (the 15th Amendment, in 1870), and eventually to allow women to vote (the 19th Amendment, in 1920), and finally to allow people who can’t afford to pay to vote (the 24th Amendment, in 1964). Today, most Americans assume everyone has the right to vote. Not so. Though poll taxes and literacy tests are technically no longer part of our elections process, some states have found ways to institute policies with much the same effect, and the Supreme Court has let them. These states make it difficult for voters to register or to stay registered, forcing them to jump through hoops only to later purge them from voter rolls anyway. Or they require voters to show identification they don’t have or might have difficulty obtaining. Or they make it hard to vote, holding elections on a workday and limiting polling places so that long lines at the polls force some Americans to choose between casting their votes and keeping their jobs. Or they take away voting rights from people with felony convictions and never give them back, even when those people have served their time. None of these practices encourages citizens to exercise their democratic right. Rather, these suppressive practices are part of the reason the United States has some of the lowest rates of voter participation among wealthy nations. Disenfranchisement by design: A closer look at racism embedded in voting rights laws The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, gave formerly enslaved people born or naturalized in the United States the right of citizenship. But the amendment also created a gaping constitutional loophole: section 2 allowed states to deny people the right to vote for “participation in rebellion or other crime.” This clause gave states a reliable and expansive qualification by which to strip former enslaved people and their descendants of voting rights. The architects of state criminal disenfranchisement laws were not vague about their purpose, either. They intended to stop Black Americans from voting. Florida, for instance, which established its state constitution after the Civil War, passed a raft of “Black Codes” that made it easier to convict Black men of felonies and then permanently disenfranchised all felons.1 Not far away in Virginia, a delegate to that state’s 1902 Constitutional Convention addressed reporters: “I told the people of my county before they sent me here that I intended, as far as in me lay, to disenfranchise every negro that I could disenfranchise under the Constitution of the United States, and as few white people as possible.”2 In a supposed justification for this, he reminded the convention’s attendees that in the South, 6 whites out of 10,000 were in prison compared to 29 Blacks out of 10,000 — a result, he doubtless intended to infer, of moral inferiority rather than racist laws. (The United States now imprisons many more people, and the racial disparity has only gotten worse: as of 2014, 46 of every 10,000 whites and 272 of every 10,000 Blacks were in prison.3 Most are serving time for drug offenses.4) The Virginia Constitution that delegates helped ratify included a clause that disenfranchised any Virginian who committed any of a broad swath of crimes, including “treason or any felony, bribery, petit larceny, obtaining money or property under false pretenses, embezzlement, forgery, or perjury.”5 The legacy of that sweeping law? Today, Virginia is one of three states6 whose constitution permanently takes away people’s right to vote if they are convicted of a felony. The Constitution does not guarantee the right to vote, and the Supreme Court does not reliably protect voting as a “fundamental right” The first ten amendments to the Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights, and they protect freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to gather in an assembly, and other rights. But an important right is missing: the right to vote. Several subsequent amendments have given piecemeal voting protections for people of color, women, and people who can’t pay poll taxes,7 but none goes so far as to state that all Americans have a right to vote. But that’s okay; the Supreme Court justices can read those amendments, all of which reference the “right to vote,” and conclude that Americans have the right to vote, correct? Maybe. While the Bill of Rights states broadly that its rights “shall not be infringed” for any reason, the amendments related to voting all name specific ways that voting rights cannot legally be denied (such as on the basis of race, skin color, or sex), leaving open to interpretation whether states may find other, more creative ways to limit voting rights. Here is another angle: the Court has found some rights merely implied in the Constitution to be fundamental rights, deserving of the same respect and protection as those explicitly laid out in the Bill of Rights. These include the right to marry, to engage in interstate travel, and, yes, to vote. But unfortunately, the Court has been inconsistent on this last item, sometimes declaring boldly that the right to vote is indeed fundamental, but other times treating it as a privilege rather than a right.8 It is important that the Court recognize voting as a fundamental right, because then it will almost certainly strike down any law that infringes on that right or is “burdensome” to those wishing to exercise it. In some cases where the Court has declared voting to be a fundamental right, it has applied a strict scrutiny test to the burdensome law in question. This means the entity supporting that law — say, a certain state legislature or the U.S. Congress — must prove that the law passes three tests. The law must be 1.justified by a compelling governmental interest, 2.narrowly tailored to achieve that compelling interest, and 3.the least restrictive means of achieving the compelling interest. In other words, the defenders of the burdensome law must basically say, “We know this law is infringing on an important right, but it has to, and there’s no other way!” The Court then asks, “Okay, if you have an incredibly important purpose, you might need to infringe on basic rights, but is there any other way for you to accomplish your purpose in a less burdensome manner?” Often the answer is yes, and the law is therefore struck down. The strict scrutiny test has worked to strike down a poll tax9 and limits on who is eligible to vote.10 But again, the Court applies it only in cases where it recognizes voting to be a fundamental right. In cases where the Court has not recognized voting as a fundamental right, it generally has given great deference to governmental entities, applying the more lenient rational basis test. The rational basis test says that as long as a law is rationally related to a legitimate government interest, the Court will uphold it. The state whose law is in question can usually claim some interest in preventing fraud or ensuring election integrity, and the Court then upholds that state’s law. This...