U.S. desperately needs electoral reform

10 Steps to Repair American Democracy

By Steven Hill. 196 pp. PoliPointPress. $11 paperback.

America has never been a democracy and is never likely to be one. The people do not rule. America is a plutocracy, oligarchy and, under President Bush, often a theocracy.

Many of the proposals made by author Steven Hill are essential to repair the torn fabric of democracy in this nation. But, unfortunately, nearly all are impossible politically.

The conservatives who control the nation will see to it that almost none of these changes will be effected. And, they have the lopsided political system on their side.

America covenanted with slavery from the outset. Under the unamended Constitution, blacks were not citizens. They could not vote. Yet they were counted as three-fifths of a person for apportionment of the House of Representatives.

This proviso gave the South an undemocratic control of Congress for seven decades leading to the Civil War. Eight antislavery bills were passed by the House. All were defeated in the Senate.

Today the Senate is so far out of joint that representatives of 15 percent of the population can kill a bill like national health the country needs so badly. Wyoming with a population of a mere 500,000 has two senators while California has just two senators for 38 million people. The Senate may be the least representative legislative body in the world. It guarantees that America will always be a conservative nation.

Seven percent of the U.S. population lives in the 17 least populated states yet they have 34 senators. Senate rules require 60 votes to shut off debate. Hence, conservative senators easily defeated essential measures like a House-passed bill prohibiting striker replacement.

Badly needed: direct election of the president. The Electoral College is antiquated. Four times the presidency has gone to the loser of the popular vote.

Badly needed: voting for president on Sunday or making election day a national holiday.

Needed: instant runoff voting. Voters would list first and second choices. If the first choice doesn’t win, votes would go to the second choice. The goal: a 50 percent winner rather than a minority winner.

IRV would eliminate spoilers like Ralph Nader who prevented Al Gore from winning the presidency. Moreover, it would end the badly skewed first-past-the-post, winner-take-all American way, which often provides minority winners at state, local and national levels.

Or, if IRV is too complicated, hold two-round voting as in presidential elections in France. The two highest vote-getters compete so that the winner has a majority rather than a plurality.

Needed: proportional representation. It worked well when Illinois used it. PR would elect more women and more minorities to Congress, better reflecting the diversity of the nation. PR is used by most of the established democracies in the world.

Badly needed: public financing of all elections, state and federal. This would take the money out of politics.

Badly needed: free air time on television and radio. The airwaves are public. The Supreme Court, in one of its most outrageous decisions ever, ruled in 1976 that money was speech.

Badly needed: a congressional act to give the vote to all ex-felons who have served their prison time. America alone in the free world denies ex-felons the right to vote. Florida alone has barriers keeping 950,000 ex-felons from voting.

In some Southern states ex-felons can never vote. In other states the hoops they have to jump through to get their civil right restored are Byzantine.

“Seven million Americans…are behind bars, on parole or are on probation,” Nation magazine recently noted. “They are disproportionately African-American and Latino…just another way to spell Jim Crow.” Such voters are more likely Democratic.

Badly needed: universal voter registration. Under this reform, every citizen turning 18 would be registered by the government. “If we had universal voter registration we would immediately add 50 million to the rolls…mostly minority, poor and young adults,” Hill writes.

Needed: a national election commission to set standards and uniformity for all 50 states to follow.

Needed: regional primaries in presidential races. Say: one in New England, one in the Middle Atlantic states, one in the Midwest, one in the South, one in the Rocky Mountain states and one in the West.

One of Hill’s proposals, however, is off base. He proposes term limits and/or mandatory retirement at 70 or 75 for Supreme Court justices. This would not be a reform. Justices Thomas and Scalia were reactionaries the day they got on the court. Justice Stevens is 86 and a liberal.

That aside, America will never be a progressive nation until most of Steven Hill’s proposals are adopted. The irony is that the Bush administration constantly preaches democracy to the world yet America is one of the least democratic of nations.