The majority of Americans blame President Trump for the government shutdown. In an interview with the BBC, Stephen J. Yates, former Deputy National Security Adviser to the Vice President to Dick Cheney, explained that our presidential selection system means that the people’s opinion does not matter (6:50).
Founders Misinterpreted Again
Levitsky and Ziblatt claim that the founders “sought…an elected president…reflecting the will of the people,” but they wanted “some kind of built-in screening device.” So, they invented the Electoral College. Pages 39-40. Made up of “locally prominent men in each state” it would be the “original gatekeeper.”
As historians have amply shown, this version of history is, to put a word for it, wrong. Some among the drafters strongly preferred direct election of the president. The slave and small state alliance had won inequitable, anti-democratic power in both the House and Senate, and they did not want anything short of this unfairness to be on their side when it came to choosing the president. No one thought that the electors would “screen.” Instead they would negotiate compromises among the different states, probably fail to produce a majority of electors for anyone, and then kick the process to the House.
This good book’s description of the history of the Electoral College is not one of the authors’ best moments.
Florida Governor-Elect Seeks to Delay Implementation of Voting Rights Restoration
In November 2018, Florida voted to re-enfranchise more than 1.4 million people who had completed felony sentences. However:
“Opponents, including Republican Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis, say before the amendment can be implemented, the legislature needs to pass a bill to clarify its terms and fulfill its intent. Supporters say it should be implemented immediately. The disagreement is generating confusion and the threat of lawsuits.”
An Authoritarian Streak
Levitsky and Ziblatt claim on page 36-7 of “How Democracies Die” that “Americans have long had an authoritarian streak [comprising] a sizable minority – 30 or even 40 percent – of the country.” This frightens them, with reason.
But they utterly neglect to point out that a minority of this size can elect a president solely, exclusively, only, for no other reason than that the presidential selection system creates this possibility.
The Founders never had in mind rule by the minority. Indeed, they specifically required majorities and even super-majorities for all important action.
Brazil Is About To Show The World How A Modern Democracy Collapses
From Travis Waldron:
“Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro is a threat to Brazilian democracy — and a model for authoritarianism that leaders around the world will follow.”
He Played by the Rules
In their thinly veiled screed against Donald Trump, Harvard Professors Levitsky and Ziblatt assert, “We should worry when a politician…rejects…the democratic rules of the game.” Page 21. But Donald Trump played by the rules when he focused on swing states; assumed the Republicans would win the states they always win regardless of whether they nominate Winnie-the-Pooh or the Man-in-the-Moon; and ignored the states that any Democrat, Democratic Socialist, or other left-leaning candidate, would carry.
He didn’t reject the rules. The rules were anti-democratic to begin with.
Gatekeepers of a Small Tent
Harvard Professors Levitsky and Ziblatt write in “How Democracies Die”: “Although mass responses to extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. Put simply, political parties are democracy’s gatekeepers.” Page 20.
First, when it comes to democracy, better to trust the people rather than the professionals who occupy powerful positions in political parties. Asking the foxes to guard the chicken house is a bad idea.
Second, if parties are to be gatekeepers, then they should both insist that the president must win a national popular plurality. Only then will the parties need to build big tents that include the many factions necessary to win a national vote. If they are going to guard a gate, for the sake of democracy it needs to be a gate to a big tent.
Polarization and the Electoral College
In “How Democracies Die,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write that “if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns through history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.” Page 9.
The presidential selection system not only does not temper polarization, it highly motivates candidates to adopt polarizing positions. The reason is that swing states are typically concentrated regionally. As candidates focus almost exclusively on winning these states, they appeal to local issues likely to inflame two evenly balanced constituencies (which balance is the definition of a swing state). The moderating influence of the great majority of Americans is irrelevant under this system.
President Trump and Senator Warren Agree
Using Institutions Against Democracy
In their good book, “How Democracies Die,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write at pages 7-8: “Institutions become political weapons [that] elected autocrats [use to] subvert democracy…democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy…to kill it.”
But the presidential selection system exemplifies how an anti-democratic institution automatically and routinely kills democracy, without any malign agent needing to lift a finger. The current system tells candidates not to bother to seek a popular majority in running for president. No presidential candidate has manipulated the electoral system to obtain an unfair win, with the arguable exception of the 1876 election, because it works like an evil charm to fend off democracy without requiring any bad actor to grab the controls.
No Wolf Crying Here
At page 6 of “How Democracies Die” we find this: “Those who denounce government abuse may be dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf. Democracy’s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.”
The presidential selection system’s defenders, however, never have claimed that it is democratic. They celebrate its anti-democratic character. It did not erode from a democratic ideal toward anti-democracy. Instead it was born in sin, as a means to assure that the slave states would not have to deal with an abolitionist president. And until 1860 they rested comfortably with the result.
Indeed, this system has continually been attacked, with impeccable logic, in the spirit of democracy. Nothing in the Constitution has drawn so many attempts at reform by amendment, and states continually are presented with ways to make the system democratic.
“Legal” Subversion
Professors Levitsky and Ziblatt assert at page 5 of “How Democracies Die” that “Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts.” They do not, but should, note that the winner-take-all system of choosing electors state-by-state is completely a function of state legislative action, and that it leads to the systematic discarding of all surplus votes for the statewide winner and all the votes for runners-up. The total of discarded votes is greater than 60% of all votes cast for president. Throwing away most votes is a subversion they might have mentioned.
Lessons from Venezuela
At page 4 of “How Democracies Die” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt outline Hugo Chavez’s rise to autocratic power in sad, broken Venezuela. They note that in 2012 he was re-elected in a contest that was “free but not fair.” Yet they fail to acknowledge that the American presidential selection system also is “free” without being “fair.” There is nothing fair about a system that conducts a national vote in which the candidates ignore more than 80% of the population, and the winner does not need a national plurality.
How Democracies Die: Some Comments
Among other things, “How Democracies Die” has one of the best covers of any 2018 book. In the substantive parts of the short, compelling book, Harvard Government Professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have sketched an important jeremiad against anti-democratic, authoritarian tendencies – risks to the American democracy that they say are all too real. But, as this blog will show, they have committed some real howlers by failing to assess the way the presidential selection system contributes to the risks they warn about.
Small Shifts, Big Facts
In What Happened, at page 406, Hillary Clinton wrote that “if Comey caused just 0.6 percent of Election Day voters to change their votes….only…in the Rust Belt, it would have been enough to shift the Electoral College from me to Trump.”
This deserves unpacking.
She meant that the margins of the Trump plurality in the swing states were so narrow that a shift of six-tenths of one percent in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin would have caused all the 46 electors in these three states to come from the Democratic slates instead of the Republican slates. Trump’s 304 electoral count would have been reduced below the requisite 270. (He actually won states with 306 electors, but two cast protest votes against him.)
However, Donald Trump had a rock-solid plurality in enough states to total 230 electors. In Florida, not in the Rust Belt, he picked up another 29, leaving him only 11 electors short of the requisite 270.
If Minnesota and New Hampshire votes had shifted slightly from Clinton to Trump, he would have won 14 more electors from these two states, and won the Electoral College without getting any electors from the three states identified by Clinton.
If we are talking about shifts, Trump easily could have won by even a bigger margin of electors.
The fact is that Donald Trump had multiple ways to win 270 electors.
Because her base of “blue” electors was smaller, Hillary Clinton was the underdog in the election.
Clinton won the national vote, but it was not contested. Neither candidate ran a national election. Neither pursued a national majority. The system provides no reward for any candidate to appeal to all or even most Americans. This is not the way to obtain the consent of the governed, and to make candidates listen to everyone. That is why states should change the way they choose electors.
Not Quite Right
In What Happened, Hillary Clinton, at page 387, wrote that the Electoral College was an “archaic fluke of our constitutional system….that…gave disproportionate power to less populated states and therefore was profoundly undemocratic. It made a mockery of the principle of ‘One person, one vote.’”
This is the way she and most lawyers and politicians were taught, but it is inaccurate in three ways.
First, the winner-take-all system, and for that matter, even the phrase “Electoral College,” are not in the Constitution. Any state can change the way it chooses electors, and if even a few states allocated even a few electors to the national winner, then both campaigns would seek national pluralities.
Second, if campaigns had to win national pluralities to get to 270 electors, then by definition every vote would count equally. The Constitution does not block this move, or thwart the principle of ‘One person, one vote.’ States can make this the fundamental principle in choosing the president if even one or two of them decided to award electors to the national vote winner.
Third, the “system” is not undemocratic because it empowers “less populated states.” These states in fact are almost without exception taken for granted and ignored by both parties in the general election. What’s undemocratic is the way the residents of virtually all states, and especially small states, have no say on what the major party candidates say, promise, and, when elected, do. The system is undemocratic because the vast majority of voters live in non-swing states and so are taken for granted and ignored in the general election.
Long-Ignored Americans Are Reshaping Politics
“Far from the bluest strongholds, a huge demographic swathe of forgotten Americans is remaking politics, and it is not the one getting most of the press. The new upsurge is not centered in the progressive urban enclaves where most national pundits live; nor is it to be found among the grizzled men in coal country diners where journalists escape to get out of the bubble. Neither of those poles looks much like most of America anyway. “
https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/middle-america-reboots-democracy/
Election Day Blues
In her memoir of the 2016 election, What Happened, Hillary Clinton wrote about the Election Day, on page 378: “After twenty months…it all came down to this. All over the country, 136 million people were going to…make a decision that would shape the future of the country and the world.”
This was not accurate. Far less than one percent of that number—which counted, roughly, all voters—were going to make a decision that mattered. These were the swing voters in the handful of swing states who would constitute the plurality that awarded all electors in these states to one candidate, despite the closeness of the margin in these states.
In all states, all those who voted for the statewide runner-up would see their votes systematically discarded. In all states, all those above the one who established a plurality would see their votes disregarded. More than 60% of all votes would be given no practical weight.
Moreover, in 43 states the plurality was foreordained months before the election. No decisions made near the election day had any consequence in the non-swing states.
Only in the seven swing states—Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida—were Election Day decisions relevant, and even in those states what mattered more were the machinations of turn-out encouragers and discouragers, including Internet bots, leaflet distributors, and disinforming phone calls. Far less than one percent of the actual voters truly made a decision that mattered.
The Majority of Countries are Now Democratic
From the Pew Research Center:
“As of the end of 2016, 97 out of 167 countries (58%) with populations of at least 500,000 were democracies, and only 21 (13%) were autocracies, both post-World War II records . . . Broadly speaking, the share of democracies among the world’s governments has been on an upward trend since the mid-1970s.”
Base vs Base?
In the New York Times, Philip Klein says the incumbent president will “relish” a clash between two bases in the electorates.
The country as a whole does not contain two equally sized blocks of voters that disagree over the policies that divide Klein’s “bases.”
Most Americans do not want the government shut down, do not think we need to recreate the division of East and West Berlin along the border with Mexico, and do want the government to pay attention to the bear market, the risks of missile deployment in North Korea and the threat to security, peace and democracy in war-torn areas of the globe.
Klein’s “bases” happen to be roughly equally numerous in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, at least as of the 2016 election. It is only because the presidential selection system makes the pluralities in these states determinative of who wins 270 electors that any incumbent president can “relish” the current fault lines in American politics.