America’s flawed democracy

These days you will hear, as you have heard every four years in a post-election America, that the people have spoken. Yes, they do speak. But then their voices are often made subservient to a system which ends up disrespecting it.

America needs to ensure a proper democratic system for itself. Despite all the acclaim it has received over the decades about its pluralism, for some very good reasons certainly, there are all the indications that suggest its political system is fundamentally flawed and does not adequately respect voters' preferences. Sit back and think.
At last count, Hillary Clinton had a total of 60,212,217 votes in the bag, in contrast to Donald Trump's 59,875,788. And yet she lost, solely because of a patently undemocratic machine that has been in operation for a very, very long time. It is called the Electoral College, designed to give the states of the Union proportional powers to use their clout in selecting, every four years, a President and a Vice-President. The ticket which garners the most votes in a state carries the entire state. It does not matter that the popular vote nationally may be higher for the candidate or the team declared as the losers. The dignity of the states supersedes the overall voice of the electorate.

That is a flawed, broken system at work. Clinton clearly won the presidential election, but her victory was commandeered by the Electoral College. Trump got 290 of the votes in that questionable college, leaving Clinton with 228. In other words, the loser was turned into the winner, despite a majority voting for Clinton at the national level.

It is not the first time that such a travesty of democracy has taken place in America. Think back on the presidential election of 2000, when the eminently qualified Al Gore beat George W. Bush in terms of the popular vote. He had the support of 50,996,582 Americans on Election Day. Bush was slightly behind, with 50,456,062 votes. In a proper democratic system, Bush would be conceding the election to Gore, but the Electoral College, that patent impediment to an expression of the popular will, gave him 271 votes to Gore's 266. And thus the winner and better candidate 'lost' the race for the presidency. Then again, do not forget the controversy around Florida, where a long vote count was on. At that point, the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the count. Bush was declared the winner. That even the Supreme Court can thwart the popular will in America was made manifest in 2000.

This year, it was the turn of the much better prepared and more richly experienced Hillary Clinton to 'lose' to an absolutely unqualified candidate for President. America's questionable political system handed the White House to Trump.

The system, now that it has deprived two winning candidates, in terms of the popular vote, of the presidency in the last sixteen years, causes worry. The time may have come when American lawmakers, academics and political pundits will need to revisit the system and have it meet the generally accepted global standards applied to the election of men and women in public life.

The flaw in the American system comes through in an observation of how other elected officials enter upon office. Mayors, Governors, Congressmen and Senators are all elected directly, without the pernicious shadow of the Electoral College coming in the way. It is only the President and the Vice President who must remain, despite winning overall, at the mercy of the Electoral College. Again, the Electoral College is discriminatory in its treatment of the states. States with large populations, such as California, command as many as 55 Electoral College votes. There are states with no more, some fewer, than two Electoral College votes. These states with a paltry number of votes know full well that their weight matters little when it is the so-called battleground states – Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio – which will decide the outcome of a presidential election.

This flawed political machine which has just delivered the election to Donald Trump has been grinding away since the early 19th century. Andrew Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams at the presidential election of 1824; Samuel Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876; and Grover Cleveland was beaten by Benjamin Harrison in 1888. And they were all winners. They got more votes than those who 'defeated' them.

Besides the loopholes undermining the system of choosing Presidents and Vice Presidents, the American approach to democracy has always been a threat to its judiciary, especially the Supreme Court. Any time a seat in the Supreme Court becomes vacant, it becomes the responsibility of the President to select a nominee who in his opinion will deliver judgments in line with his political philosophy. Thus it is that under liberal Presidents, liberal-minded judges have made it to the Supreme Court. In times of a conservative White House, as in the Ronald Reagan era, conservative and often parochially inclined judges have been promoted.

The American political system remains notorious for the manner in which a Congress dominated by one party may block all attempts at governance by a President belonging to another party. Yes, we refer to gridlock. In the last eight years, a Republican Congress checked, in unabashed partisan manner, all attempts by President Barack Obama to have vital legislation passed. He was left with no choice but to enforce his decisions through executive orders. He has been unable to find a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last April, in the Supreme Court, because prejudiced Republicans such as Senator Mitch McConnell vowed to reject his nominee. They will now have their own man on the bench, now that Trump has made it to power. In the 1990s, House Speaker Newt Gingrich led Congress into enforcing a shutdown of the government because he and his friends would not agree to fiscal measures advocated by President Bill Clinton.

Better democracies than America's are at work elsewhere in the world. In India, Britain and Europe, the first-past-the-post method of choosing people in leadership positions may not be perfect, but it does not permit any Electoral College-like machine to come between voters and the choices they make. Germany does a much better job of ensuring, through its five percent vote threshold for political parties, that proportional representation reflects the actual will of the electorate. France has always elected its Presidents in an absolutely transparent way, through its system of an electoral run-off or second round if the leading candidate does not manage to obtain at least fifty per cent of popular support at the polling booth.

Back in 1969, a real opportunity came for the US Congress to do away with the Electoral College through going for a direct election of the President and the Vice President. The proposal was simple: if the winning presidential and vice presidential team did not obtain at least forty per cent of the popular vote, a run-off would be called.
The move was approved by the House of Representatives. It was shot down by the Senate.

America now needs, quite clearly, to revisit the idea of a direct vote if its democracy is to have the kind of substance that will make it a more credible enterprise.

It is a shame when accomplished men and women, like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, who win presidential elections must nevertheless walk away into the sunset – because an Electoral College has decreed that those who have lost in the national vote count are the true victors at the election.