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The Myths of the World’s Greatest Democracy

Close your eyes and imagine a political system that creates affirmative action for low-population states over those with high populations. Every 10 years the boundaries of the state political districts are re-drawn behind closed doors by political insiders, favoring incumbents and punishing outsiders. The resulting national legislature looks nothing like the cross-section of Americans, with 86 percent of the representatives being White, 87 percent male, the old far better represented than the young, a plurality being millionaires and 60 percent employed in either law, real estate, insurance or finance.

Keeping your eyes closed, imagine that this political system is so stacked in favor of incumbents that only about 10 percent of the representatives face credible opposition in any two-year election cycle. That 10 percent of races that are competitive attract political pollsters, message managers and other campaign consultants who simulate just enough responsiveness to voter concerns to get the votes of the “swing voters” who will give the winning candidate “50 percent plus one” votes. This “winner-takes-all” voting scheme results in the disenfranchisement of up to 49 percent of the residents of some political districts, who become “political orphans” because they are represented by someone with whom they have little in common politically.

Meanwhile, imagine that this “winner-takes-all” system leads to a mud-slinging, lowest-common-denominator brand of campaigning where slogans and posturing replace substantive discussions of important issues. The interests of those entrenched in a party are ignored in the rush to appease the elusive “swing voter.” Yet voters and candidates are discouraged from venturing outside the two-party system for fear of being called “spoilers.”

Open your eyes, and you will realize that the system described here is the much-heralded American political system. According to Steven Hill, author of the newly-released Fixing Elections: The Failure of America’s Winner Take All Politics, the “Winner Take All” nature of our electoral system was the best available in the 18th century, when the alternative was monarchy. However, most of the world’s democracies have adopted “proportional representation” and other more democratic ways of voting that have evolved since then, and we should too.

Fixing Elections is a fascinating, well-written page-turner that describes how our political system evolved, why it is not working and how we can fix it. I read its 303 pages in a single sitting, and found it a rich source of new ideas, plus a treasure-trove of resource notes that can lead the interested reader to more materials on democratic voting practices.

Steven Hill has been a powerful and visionary writer and activist for reform of our nation’s voting practices for many years. San Francisco-based readers know him as the architect and campaign manager of last year’s Proposition A, the plan to elect top city officials by instant runoff voting (a more cost-efficient and democracy-inducing way to elect officials than the old paper ballot runoff system).

Asian Pacific Americans have a lot to learn from Fixing Elections, because we as a community are disproportionately hurt by the unfair election practices now in place. For example, while we are over represented in urban states such as California and New York, political power in this country favors those from small population states such as Wyoming. With less residents that the District of Columbia (population 572,000, as of February 2002), for example, Wyoming (population 494,000) has the same number of United States Senators (two) as the far more populous state of California (population 4.2 million). With only 4,100 APAs in Wyoming, or 0.8 percent of the population, our chance of becoming an elected official is small.

When those back room deals are made to set district lines after the decennial census, we are not usually included in those deals. Why else was New York City’s Chinatown, one of the largest APA enclaves in the nation, lumped together for so many years with a mostly-white, fairly conservative enclave across the water in Staten Island?

Fixing Elections is an especially good antidote for those who say that our current economic woes can be fixed by throwing out a few bad apples and continuing to rely on the veracity of our business and elected leaders. As Hill so clearly points out, the economic and political systems are interconnected, and both are broken.

Ironically, while a great myth in this society is that we have the greatest democracy in the world, Hill proves convincingly that we do not:

• On page 232, read about the growing distance between the views of the electorate and the policies being enacted by our representatives (big donors have a bigger impact than constituents, in many cases).

• On page 235, read how Winner Take All democracy does not lead to moderate, centrist, stable, or majoritarian government

• On page 13, read how the growing racial divide in this country is being exacerbated by the growth in one-party states (Dems control most positions in Massachusetts and Maryland, for example, while Republicans control in Idaho and Nebraska).

• On page 18, read about the growing contradictions being faced by Democrats who must keep minorities happy while not losing white swing voters, and Republicans who must reach out to minorities while not losing their white base.

The ultimate truth that is put forth by Hill is that most other countries have electoral systems more advanced than ours. As the electoral fiasco of 2000 proved to many observers, ours is an unfair system that systematically disenfranchises many people. Whether you are a Republican in San Francisco, a Democrat in Idaho or an APA almost anywhere, Fixing Elections is a must-read on your road to real (not simulated) political empowerment.

For more on Steven Hill and Proportional Representation, go to www.fairvote.org. To read an excerpt and reviews of Fixing Elections, go to www.FixingElections.com.

Reach Phil Tajitsu Nash at pnash@campaignadvantage.com.