Flaws in US electoral system

Manoj Joshi

Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

Exactly a week from today, on November 3, the US will have its presidential elections. These will, perhaps, be one of the most consequential elections the country has ever had. American democracy itself is at stake. Trump may have his die-hard supporters, but any objective assessment of his presidency would be that he has brought the US to a tipping point.

Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 lost the popular vote, but won the vote of an electoral college.

Trump has undermined the integrity of the electoral process by making false claims of electoral fraud, his supporters have sought to derail the mail-in voting process, and the President himself has suggested that he may not accept the verdict of the election. He has earned the fanatical support of a minority of mainly white Americans, but in sufficient numbers to place a political stranglehold on his Republican Party which has stood by as he has undermined the institutions of governance and subverted the Supreme Court.

There are concerns over armed right-wing militias mobilising if things don’t go their way on election day. It has come to such a pass that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, has had to rule out military involvement in any election dispute. Even now, we are not sure how the election will play out. Given Trump’s record of lawless behaviour, anything is possible.

There are many factors responsible for this situation. In part, it is the outcome of globalisation that took the jobs of many US communities. Then, automation made many jobs obsolete. Successive governments did little to deal with these issues, leaving angry disaffected people who are attracted to Trump’s populism and white nationalism.

This has been compounded by the archaic US election system. Two centuries ago, the US adopted a system where the person with the largest number of votes does not necessarily win. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 lost the popular vote, but won the vote of an electoral college.

So, next Tuesday, even if Biden wins the popular vote, he may lose the presidency, unless his margin of popular vote is bigger than 6 to 7 per cent. This rule of the minority translates itself in other institutions like the Senate and the Supreme Court.

The Senate, where each state gets the same number of Senators, was aimed at providing a sense of equality for the entire country. But in the two centuries since it was created, the demography of the country has completely changed. So, California with a population of 40 million is represented by two senators, as is Kansas with a population of 3 million, or Oklahoma with 4 million. And it is this skewed Senate which confirms nominees to the Supreme Court.

America’s problems go back to its very founding. At the root lies a constitution which was designed to serve a sprawling agricultural country peopled by white people, many of who had black slaves. The US is a nation of immigrants and just about 10 years separate the arrival of the first whites and the first blacks in the early 17th century. The only difference being that while the former came willingly, the latter did so otherwise.

Cut to the founding of the US and its constitution in the late 18th century. The document does not mention ‘slave’ or ‘slavery’ at all, even though more than a quarter of the population at that time were black Americans, most of them held in slavery. Many states were admitted into the union, with three-fifths of their slaves being counted for their representation and taxation.

The sorry story of discrimination against black Americans comes down to this day. Wherever it can, the Republicans gerrymander electoral districts to keep out black districts. They purge voter rolls based on flimsy pretexts to exclude poorer people, especially blacks.

It’s hard to believe, but a poor Indian peasant got the right to vote in 1950, before the black man did in the US in 1964.

There is an interesting coincidence in the voter behaviour in India and the US. In both countries, it would seem, elites—whites in the US and upper castes in India—have fretted about the prospect of having a real democracy where the majority rules. Barack Obama’s election triggered the upsurge of white nationalism in the US, where there is a belief that traditional American values are under threat which may even necessitate people taking law into their hands to protect themselves.

What emerges from all this is the deep fissures in the US polity where the ideological divide between the Republicans and Democrats makes bipartisan cooperation on issues of national importance difficult. The most recent example of this is on the issue of working out a public health and financial response to the Covid pandemic.

A minority of whites can delay the process, but the US will become the multi-ethnic democracy it is on track to be, sooner, rather than later. This was evident from the protests following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis which set off what may have been the biggest wave of protests in US history. But the process does not look to be an easy one. A militant minority, with a sense of entitlement, is ready to do virtually anything to protect its privileges. Therein lies the danger to the US, and by extension to democracies around the world.

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