The recently concluded election was characterized by claims that it was an election to save democracy. While the threat Trump and MAGA pose to America’s form of government is obvious and very real, that argument ignored a very unpleasant reality: We the People no longer choose our public officials. We are no longer a democratic republic. In the 2010 redistricting, Republicans managed a bloodless coup with RedMap, completing a process that had been developing over a number of years. While most of us went about our daily business, we failed to notice that a majority of voters no longer decided elections.
If you doubt the accuracy of that statement–if you think it’s overly dramatic–Ballotpedia has the data to disabuse you.
An uncontested election is one where the number of candidates on the ballot is less than or equal to the number of seats up for election. Candidates running in uncontested elections are virtually guaranteed victory. On average, between 2018 and 2023, 58% of elections covered by Ballotpedia have been uncontested, ranging from a low of 50% in 2021 to a high of 64% in 2020.
Through November 2024, Ballotpedia has covered 76,780 elections in 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories. Of that total, 53,428 (70%) were uncontested and 23,352 (30%) were contested.
The current year-to-date rate of 70% uncontested elections is the highest rate Ballotpedia has covered at this point in the year since data collection began in 2018. The second highest rate of uncontested elections was in 2020, at 65%. The lowest rate at this point was 50% in 2021.
When it comes to the type of election being analysed, Ballotpedia finds that 78% of the 2,845 law enforcement elections it covered have been uncontested, making law enforcement contests among the highest uncontested rates. Interestingly, school board races have had the lowest uncontested rate at “only” 49% of the 6,984 covered so far.
On November 5, 2024, Ballotpedia covered 40,646 elections in 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four territories. Of those, 26,218 (64.5%) were uncontested and 14,428 (35.5%) were contested.
Some of the “highlights” (actually, “low lights” would be more accurate) of the report included the following:
Iowa had the highest percentage of uncontested elections, with 1,614 (85%) of the 1,902 elections covered by Ballotpedia uncontested.
Both New Jersey and Puerto Rico had no uncontested elections (0%). In New Jersey, all 17 of the elections covered by Ballotpedia were contested, and all 130 elections covered in Puerto Rico were contested.
Of all the state, district, and territory general election races covered by Ballotpedia on November 5, 2024, Michigan had the highest total number of races at 8,146. Of those, 6,455 (79%) were uncontested.
The most uncontested office type was constable, with 97%, or 39 of the 40 covered races being uncontested elections. Clerk and Treasurer were the second most uncontested office types in Michigan. The combined total number of races for these two offices was 2,688, with 2,522 (93.8%) uncontested.
In Michigan, there were more city council races than any other office type covered, with 1,254 of the 1,732 elections, or 72%, uncontested.
If you think the foregoing data is depressing, the site reports that it underestimates the actual number of uncontested elections.
In some states or for some office types, uncontested elections are canceled, meaning they do not appear on any ballots and are often excluded from other election-related materials including public notices and candidate lists. While Ballotpedia attempts to identify these elections and their winners through direct outreach to election officials, this is not always possible or feasible. The uncontested elections in this analysis are those Ballotpedia was able to identify regardless of whether they were ultimately canceled.
Additionally, this analysis does not include elections where no candidates filed to run.
Permit me to belabor the obvious: elections that offer voters no choice can hardly be considered democratic. The prevalence of gerrymandering–redistricting processes that allow politicians to choose their voters and deny those voters the ability to choose their elected officials–has utterly corrupted American electoral systems. The Supreme Court’s cowardly refusal to rule out the practice has insulated a patently undemocratic process.
In some states, as we’ve seen with reactions to abortion bans, citizens do have recourse to referenda or initiatives–mechanisms that are unwieldy and require massive effort, but at least threaten a check on the most outrageous acts of legislators. Not all states offer those remedies, however–Indiana is one that doesn’t.
So here we are. While Democrats had also engaged in gerrymandering in some states, RedMap’s success allowed the GOP to seize control of the House of Representatives and numerous state offices despite the party’s minority status. The failure of Democrats to contest numerous, presumably “safe” seats reinforced the belief that election results were already “in the bag,” encouraging voters to stay home on election day.
I don’t know what you’d call the system we have had since 2010, but it sure isn’t democracy.
While uncontested races can be seen as a problem, it looks like the most typical situations are essentially non-political, local community administrative positions. The issue there isn’t gerrymandering but personal agendas and recruiting pipelines.
There were 25 uncontested US House races in 2024: 13-R & 12-D. So again, the lack of opposition, while not ideal, is less of a partisan problem.
The deeper issue is the US Constitution’s (and SCOTUS’s consequent) blindness to the existence and massive role of political parties.
Districting isn’t Constitutionally mandated. A different SCOTUS could find districting to have been so historically abusable as to be unconstitutional and find in favor of apportionment on a different basis total votes by party — House votes by R’a receive 55% of the total, so R’s get 55% of that state’s seats.
“The failure of Democrats to contest numerous, presumably “safe” seats reinforced the belief that election results were already “in the bag,” encouraging voters to stay home on election day.”
It was not only the voters who stayed home that lost this election; the sitting officials in House and Senate made no move to stop Trump’s control during his too brief break between presidencies. McConnell began the move in the SCOTUS takeover even before Trump’s presidential appointment in 2016; preparing the way for the MAGA coup on November 5th. The U.S. is now mulling the possibility of removing the Syrian rebels from the list of terrorists after they ousted Assad; Trump meets all requirements of terrorist that Assad displayed for 50 years and now has immunity to put his terrorism into action. His threats to jail all who tried to convict him of sedition and treason leading up to and including January 6th Insurrection will come to pass if action of those within the government do not simply perform the responsibilities and to the jobs we elected them and pay them very well to do.
We have lost much more than democracy; we have lost the humanity which has s been America’s call to those in need, as posted on the Statue of Liberty. Today, we cannot even feed ourselves as a nation; if all imported food products were stopped we would be left with empty refrigerators and pantries with proof in the empty acres of once productive farmlands.
Gerrymandering is so successful these days because of the increased power and availability of computers.
Prior to the mid-90s, the best computers most people had available would have been unlikely to be helpful. Computer simulations were starting to be used by this point, where they’d look for optimal solutions given various constraints and parameters (such as would be needed to find the best gerrymander) but your top-end 486 processor would need many days to produce even a pretty simple result. (I was completing my computer science degree at that time, and had courses where we programmed simulations like this.) You’d also need to find people to do the programming, which wouldn’t have been as easy.
So, until about the early-to-mid-2000s, people doing the gerrymandering would have largely had to rely on manual human inspection to produce them. They would still have been anti-democratic, of course, but they likely weren’t especially horrible.
I figure the feasible and reliable computing options that had become available by the mid-2000s is precisely what led to the 2010 redmap plan. Now, you could easily produce precise maps that would optimise the results you desired.
So, once again, new technology causes problems for an immature humanity. At least this time it wasn’t explicitly the internet that caused the downfall of democracy. I wonder when we’ll become mature enough not to abuse new tech so obviously and terribly.
And maybe we’re actually figuring out the most likely solution to the Fermi paradox. 😛
Here’s what we have to focus on over the next four years while Republicans gloat over the fact that by focusing solely on politics instead of the resulting government, they achieved their goal of putting liberals and our damn democracy in our place.
We must rebalance our patriotism to accept politics as the ugly means to the end of Constitutional governance. The Declaration of Independence’s guidance could not be clearer or more compelling.
We all hope this revolution will not involve the death and destruction of what we are trying to save, and we have to do it without Mr. Lincoln’s gentle folk wisdom.
However, we cannot achieve the Constitution’s vision without the country suffering cultural damage and the death of MAGA. Can we save the Republican Party from themselves?
I don’t know that just yet, and I may not live long enough now to see the necessary victory over MAGA and restoration of who we have always been but, and this is a big but, we also have to accept what none of us can control, the Earth full of humans just like us, and progress in the next four years to another place we will make for ourselves that is unknowable from here.
I just saw a news item on MSNBC that Chris Wray will reign from his position as Director of the FBI even though his 10 YEAR contact isn’t ending. Like all others in Congress and the current administration who will not stand up to Trump he is following that old advice to rape victims to “Just lay back and enjoy it.”
Who are these people we have been supporting and donating money (sometimes money we don’t have to donate) to keep democracy, Rule of Law and the Constitution of the UNITED States of America safe and strong? Gutless wonders who have been in government for decades are just laying down, waving white flags as the MAGAs trample over them. How and why can and should we continue to support those who are not supporting themselves at this time?
How fast will Trump end all aid to Ukraine to turn that country over to Putin as he did Pakistan and Afghanistan where our abandoned military bases quickly filled with Russian troops? Ukraine takeover was at the center of Trump’s FIRST impeachment and loyal Americans at all levels of administration were quickly removed from office.. How quickly will the military aid to Bibi and Israel be increased to aid their takeover of the middle east? They have already safely moved into Syria. The word “democracy” will be struck from our vocabularies as being treasonous with Trump’s immunity supplied by his personal SCOTUS. There is nothing to stop him from using an Executive Order to removed the three loyal Americans sitting on the Supreme Court today; only safe till noon January 20, 2025.
We seem to have forgotten that those rebels in Syria who removed the terrorists are no different that the Revolutionaries who removed the King of England from ruling America.
JoAnn mentioned our food system – the US has one growing season while the global south has nearly year-round production. However, climate change is negatively impacting the global south because of the pollution generated by the US. How smart is that? And, it will get much worse since Trump promised the Oil Barons to deregulate and drill baby drill.
I just received a news flash that Time Magazine named Trump “Person of the Year” once again. Billionaire Benioff wanted to bring respect back to the magazine, but normalizing a narcissistic authoritarian for the masses will not get it done. I’m curious if Trump will drill for oil on Marc’s 600 acres in Hawaii! LOL
Koch and ALEC have done an excellent job buying up state governments. They were able to scoop up Indiana with little effort since our voters are Low Information Voters (LIVs), just like the southern states. They control around 23 states and the news companies on TVs in those markets.
Snopes and others have been tasked if Einstein predicted that our oligarchy would control communications. He didn’t “predict it” – he said it already happened before he wrote his manifesto in 1949. He also said:
“Under a capitalist society like the US, political parties and politicians are corrupted by financial contributions made by oligarchs, so that the system cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.”
As I’ve said numerous times before, we cannot vote our way out of this mess because we are not a democratic republic. It’s a fool’s game to redouble your efforts by working with the DP because the oligarchy owns and controls both political parties and has since our inception.
Huge mea culpa; of course my first sentence above should say Chris Wray will RESIGN…no reign. One little letter missing my entire rant is changed in that paragraph.
I can imaging how difficult it might may Wray’s life to have stayed on, but he is making Trump’s life that much more easy by leaving. Like most ogres, by tradition, this orange one is so able to bully, and intimidate people!!
So,Todd has been right. As for the end of democracy, I reckon I’ve been gaslit the previous 14 years,eh?
Mitch D. My understanding is that by Wray resigning his position Trump cannot get his man into position for at least 90 days. A complicated but effective move that will keep Patel from power during those first three months of Trump’s reign.
Why run for office? Most voters distrust all politicians and all institutions. You have to give up your career and, perhaps, impact your partner’s career. You have to do the slimy job of raising money (unless you are rich). Everything you say and do will be under scrutiny.
Apply all the above and, in addition to few contested elections, look at who we get!
I’m wondering how many death threats Christopher Wray and his family have received in the last month and has the number increased significantly since the election? I know Tony Fauci and his family received a ton of them, to the point where he had to have private security.
It’s an interesting way to govern and not one any American should accept. Nonetheless it seems to work.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2022/jan/25/nashville-tennessee-gerrymandering-congress-republicans
Wray maybe getting out before trump fires him and he loses his retirement. just for the record,in this world here in America, Bidens son will be a target now, even before he was pardoned. maybe dad sees that,and its his matter. fact we need a pardon system over the cheap shit i hear about condem and distroy from both sides. the cutting up of election maps are mainly due local squaterings,and people who dont care and dont have aclue who they really are voting for, the local foundation of the town hall seems closed,for social media crap. . the campaigns seems endless, and the otherside should have used the geerymandering as a main issue by any party. . unless its bought out front and center to,whoever is changing to select its voters,over the voter selecting. theres little mainstream news about it,or why. medias today only follow the money. media is complacent to the party of their choice. (who owns it,and who controls it) there is no doctrin today on fairness,since many private news/rumor/cheap rehtoric services can and do as they please. murderdoch has the republican empire under control now. few if any make hay on that point. the DNC is its own failure. whereas they could have looked back at Hilary and the Obama question,instead found another minority who isnt gonna win. the 2020 election was still part of Bidens center establishment. Harris never had a chance while trump was sucking up all the air. maybe if everyone got their tired ass outta bed to vote it may have changed the outcome. (of course some pardons may have made some diffrence)
If the threats to any politician or ? isnt finding backlash by the FBI now, imagine how bad it will get under trump.
Trump fired FBI Director James Comer and chose Wray as his replacement, but apparently Wray has not been subservient enough to suit tfg. Since tfg has made it clear he will fire Wray, it makes sense to me that Wray has chosen to resign. He will be more in control of his own future and the history books will not list him as being fired as the FBI Director.
Okay, I got sidetracked from the main issue. Down here in sunny southwest Fla, the Republicans will run someone as a Democrat, who has no interest in running and won’t campaign. That way they are insulated from people (liberals) changing to their party in order to vote against them. A few years back a candidate who did that actually pulled in someone with the same last name as his opponent. Imagine that! Many of the old folks were confused.😯
From today’s The Status Kuo blog:
“A lot of people are bemoaning the resignation of Wray as FBI Director. Don’t obey in advance! Fight all the way!
I had the same initial reaction. But there may be more going on here, a larger game being played. As David French, whom I usually disagree with, points out in an OpEd:
* * *
By stepping down now, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a “legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.”
Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1. Trump will have to select someone else to lead the F.B.I. immediately, or the position will default to the “first assistant to the office.”
In this case, that means the position would default to Paul Abbate, who has been the deputy director of the F.B.I. since 2021, unless Trump chooses someone else, and that “someone else” cannot be Patel, at least not right away.
The bottom line is that the Senate has to do its job. Wray is foreclosing a presidential appointment under the Vacancies Reform Act, and — as I wrote in a column last month — the Supreme Court has most likely foreclosed the use of a recess appointment to bypass the Senate.
So a resignation that at first blush looks like a capitulation (why didn’t he wait to be fired?) is actually an act of defiance. It narrows Trump’s options, and it places the Senate at center stage. In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the advice and consent power was designed to be “an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters.”
Patel is just such an “unfit character,” and now it’s senators’ responsibility to protect the American republic from his malign influence — if, that is, they have the courage to do their jobs.”
There are a lot of great motivated people in the Democratic Party in Indiana. Overall, the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to be as motivated, doesn’t seem as well financed, and not all that inviting to help candidates who aren’t wealthy enough to support themselves while running for offices. I decided during the 2020 election cycle to run for office, but not for that cycle. I wanted to be involved in the election to gain knowledge, understanding, and experience because before that time I was a full-time worker all my life and didn’t have the resources or availability to get involved, let alone run for any office. I took some of the online “training”, but nitty gritty wasn’t involved in that. I had regular civics classes in school and even ran for a class office once. I had no confidence in doing so then, and no confidence that I would be able to make any difference in 2020. One of the Democratic offices in Indiana took note of my interests and capabilities online and contacted me to see if I would volunteer to work full time in that election. At that time, I was also in the throws of trying to make a living without a job due to a horrendous three-year experience with new management in my latest well over twenty-year career. But, of course, volunteering full time was no option for me at that time. The Democratic office tried to see if there was any way to help support my interests if I filled the position they needed. Obviously, “no” was the answer. After the craziness of the 2020 election not getting top brass imprisoned right away, nothing seemed worthwhile in pursuing involvement in our elections. That still didn’t keep me from supporting and promoting Democratic candidates though. I even designed a specialty promotion image and made it available online and several people bought it on T-Shirts. Nearly Every day I supported social media efforts to get the message out about all kinds of candidacy efforts and trying to offset corruption. And every change I had I spoke about the real and meaningful issues with others and would have spoken to groups if opportunities arose. I used to be a speaker across the U.S. and Canada at different times in my life. But there were no opportunities. I don’t know if it would have helped after seeing the outcome of this election. I believe the future is bright for Democrats once the current so-called “elected” people have been in office long enough to undermine and shred everything they can. At least as long as it doesn’t become irreparable, like they want it to be. Until there are any real possibilities liberal and progressive people can do any good again, my donations have stopped (I don’t have much anyway thanks to right wing efforts to undermine everything), my interest in running for any office has stopped (and probably isn’t a possibility anyway), and my votes are dwindling for democrats because there are so many better candidates in third parties. I’ve never been much of a third-party advocate, but I would be if there was much of a possibility of third-party candidates winning (every level of elections needs some form of ranked choice voting or the like). It seems that as long as third parties are blocked from winning offices there’s going to be nothing but predominantly anti-democracy candidates hoarding all of the power. At this point I’ll probably eventually move to a much more Democratic state where I can at least feel more comfortable living without such threats as the dictatorial classes pose over our everyday lives. Are the dictatorial classes any less prevalent in Democratic states? Probably not. But at least they support more people’s interests instead of trying to plow over people’s lives like Indiana has almost all my life. No employee protections, pseudo right to work state, and undermining people’s naturally free will choices that they aren’t going to actually be able to stop anyway no matter what they do (at least legally according to constitutional protections). No, it’s not worth another year of my lifelong struggle to be or do any better. I can take my social security and move elsewhere, where at least what little income I have can have possibilities of helping some real democracy and people who at least care for people instead of undermining every ounce of liberty we’ve had. No, I don’t give up, but I still have some choices available to make for myself and making choices for me is what I’m choosing to do going forward. All my best wish go to everyone who is actually “fighting” for better, we need all the better we can get at this point. The Powell Memo has ruined anything and everything I have loved about my country. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLezSwXkkdokWZ3BaXNHoIp019hs8LIcQu