American democracy is being degraded by voter distortion. The latest issue relates to the US Postal Service cutbacks in service, which could threaten the mail-in voting efficacy of the presidential election. The issue is that the pandemic will cause a tidal wave of mail-in votes while the service cut-backs will delay their receipt and counting, thus delaying and confusing resolution of the vote. The head of the Postal Service is a Trump donor/appointee, who promises this won’t happen but can’t guarantee it. If anything, postal enhancements during this unique time would be the prudent thing to do by anyone hoping to avoid election friction.
But the Post Office threat is just one of many examples of voter distortion. Others include excessive voter qualification, voter list purges based on bad information, gerrymandering, and polling place closures and inefficiencies, which discourage people to vote by requiring an unnecessary extended time to vote. And, of course, at the very highest level, is presidential denial of foreign election interference despite unanimous security agency conclusions otherwise. Finally, there is the electoral college, which has been complained about for 200 years without being fixed.
There are many tricks states use to suppress votes. Thirty six states have unusual voter ID rules, 7 of which include strict photo ID requirements. These rules tend to suppress legitimate black, poor, Latino, and immigrant voters. Twenty-one million Americans do not have government issued photo IDs for various reasons, such as not having a driver’s license. Some states require certain citizenship proof documents at the polls but few people commonly carry around such documents. Nationwide, 1 in 13 black voters are denied the right to vote due to state disenfranchisement laws. In 2018, 70% of voters purged from Georgia voter lists were black (32% of the population is black).
In addition to all the racist and partisan state trickery, at the federal level the Electoral College is the biggest threat to a “one-vote” democracy ideal and it is an anachronism. Originally established as a compromise by Founders who feared what “the masses” might do and who negotiated for a system based more on states’ than individuals’ rights in a time when communication was less instant than today, the Electoral College system allows for presidents to be elected with less than the majority popular vote. It has happened 5 times. Each state is assigned presidential electors equal to the number of their House and Senate representatives. Whoever wins the majority of a state’s popular vote gets 100% of the electors. That means that 49% of voters could vote for B but A still gets 100% of a state’s electoral votes. Only 2 states, Maine and Nebraska, do not have this “winner take all” rule. In the past, 9 elections had rebellious electors who refused to follow the rule, but the US Supreme Court just ended that with a decision to ban it. With this Electoral College formula, it is easy to see, particularly with the voter distortions noted above, that the will of the people does not necessarily translate to the election of a president of popular choice. A recent Pew poll revealed that 58% of Americans would like to abolish the Electoral College. It is likely to endure, however, and presidential campaigning will thus continue its swing state focus, which further distorts a true vote based on national will.
If all of this continues, will we even recognize ourselves at some point soon? This will be especially true if American institutions and morality continue to be degraded as is currently the case.