We Americans talk a lot about democracy. Those conversations multiplied during this year’s election cycle, when it became obvious that democracy was under attack by a MAGA base that preferred Trump’s promised autocracy. That said, those conversations rarely focus on the Founders’ approach to democratic governance, and the constitutional mechanisms they employed as a result of their concerns.
It is a truism that the Founders weren’t fans of what they called “the passions of the majority.” In addition to limiting the right to vote to those they trusted with that power–White guys with property–they crafted a system that limited the operation of democratic decision-making; the Bill of Rights was a list of things that government was forbidden to do even when a majority of voters wanted government to do them. The limitations were founded on that libertarian premise I frequently cite, a belief that government action is legitimate when necessary to prevent citizen A from harming the person or property of citizen B, but not when government is trying to restrict an individual”s personal liberties, the choices that–in Jefferson’s famous words–neither pick a neighbor’s pocket nor break his leg.
The Founders’ decision to restrict the areas that were remitted to democratic decision-making is why many people who don’t really understand that basic framework often claim that America wasn’t intended to be a democracy, but a republic. To be accurate, our system is a democratic republic, in which we elect representatives who are supposed to respond to the democratic will of the people when legislating in the large number of policy areas where majority rule is appropriate.
Those of us who have been sounding the alarm over America’s retreat from democracy have pointed to the growing lack of proper representation–and the numerous systemic flaws that have separated government’s performance from the expressed will of its citizens. Thanks to pervasive gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the filibuster, and the composition of the U.S. Senate, among other undemocratic systemic mechanisms, elected officials have increasingly felt free to ignore even clear expressions of popular sentiment.
That retreat from representative democracy isn’t simply a federal phenomenon; it occurs with regularity at the state level. Two recent examples may illustrate the point.
Example one: In the wake of the Dobbs decision, several state legislatures imposed draconian bans on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. Polling clearly showed that–in most of those states–large majorities of voters opposed those bans, and subsequently, in states where the electorate had the opportunity to oppose the bans through referenda (a democratic mechanism not available in my state), they overturned them.
Example two: Right-wing ideologues have waged consistent war against public schools. In a number of states, legislatures send tax dollars to private schools–predominantly religious schools–through voucher programs. I have posted numerous times about the negative effects of those programs: their failure to improve educational outcomes, their disproportionate use by upper-middle-class families, and the degree to which they deprive public schools of critically-needed resources.
When citizens of a state are able to vote on those programs, they lose.
In ballot initiatives, voters delivered a stunning rebuke to school vouchers, which siphon scarce and critical funding from public schools—which serve 90 percent of students—and redirect it to private institutions with no accountability.
Although the outcome of the 2024 election may test the resolve of the most committed and determined public education advocate, educators and their allies can find strength and inspiration in what happened in Nebraska, Colorado, and Kentucky. In those states, support for public schools was put on the ballot and won a resounding victory.
As the NEA President noted,
“Voters rejected diverting public school funding to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools, just like they have done every time vouchers have been on the ballot. The public knows vouchers harm students and does not want them in any form.”
Thanks to the distortions in our electoral systems, voters in the United States have been steadily losing the right to democratically direct their governments. The 2024 election was different only because the further threat to democratic decision-making was so transparent. The truth is that, thanks to the operation of the cited anti-democratic mechanisms (aided and abetted by low levels of civic literacy and engagement and funded by the plutocrats), the voice of the people has become more and more irrelevant.
The cranks and ideologues have used those poorly-understood mechanisms to attain and retain public office, and they no longer feel constrained by the demonstrable wishes of even large majorities.
If and when the resistance manages to overcome MAGA, that will only be a beginning. We haven’t had majority rule–aka democracy– for quite some time.
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