When Americans choose the new president, she/he with the most votes may not be the winner. The electoral system in the US undemocratic?
For a long time, the US saw itself as an exemplary democracy: A place other nations could look to when building their own democracies after gaining independence or leaving authoritarian regimes. This is also manifested in the metaphor “city upon a hill”. Politicians from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama have referred to the US as a shining beacon to which the eyes of the world are directed. In 1961, President-elect Kennedy said that the world still looks to the US and its democracy and that “our governments, in every direction, at every level, national, state and local, should be like a city on a hill.”
Even on January 6, 2021, the eyes of the world were on the USA. It was the day when a mob of right-wing extremists, encouraged by then-President Donald Trump, attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the democratic transfer of power after the 2020 elections. Even in a 2023 poll by the agency of the Associated Press in collaboration with the University of Chicago, only 10% of participants said that democracy in the US was working extremely or very well. So what is the state of American democracy today before the 2024 presidential election?
THE AMERICAN CONGRESS DOES NOT INSPIRE FAITH IN DEMOCRACY
“I think it’s fair to say that Americans don’t have a lot of faith in government institutions right now,” Michael Berkman, director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy and professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University, told DW. “They look at a Congress that’s not working well at all, and they’re faced with some pretty intractable problems that the government hasn’t really addressed, like gun violence and climate change.” With their inability to elect a leader, the Republican majority in The House of Representatives paralyzed Congress for weeks in October 2023. But even without a shutdown like this, passage of any legislation in both houses of Congress — the House and Senate — is slow because of deep-seated partisanship between Republicans and democrats.
HARSH POLARIZATION
“It is extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, to pass legislation even when the overwhelming majority of the public supports a certain measure,” criticizes Vanessa Williamson, senior fellow in governance studies at the US Brookings Institution. “There is a very serious dysfunction in Washington,” she told DW. Sharp polarization, the gap between Democratic and Republican supporters, means at least half the country is likely to be extremely unhappy with many decisions the elected government makes.
After the 2020 election, many Republicans (led by Trump) were so unhappy with the election results that they tried to ignore them, falsely claiming that the election was “stolen” until eventually, a mob of those who believed the claims stormed the Capitol. A peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of democracy, and this almost didn’t happen in the US. “I think what happened on January 6 and the refusal of one party to accept the results of the election is very damaging to a democracy, because accepting the result of an election is very central to democratic politics,” Berkman points out.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE: POPULAR VOTE VICTORY IS NOT KEY
And it is not surprising that trust in democratic institutions has declined in recent years in the US. But there is even more that you might not expect from a country like the US. “In addition to the recent manifestations of democratic erosion, the United States has many anti-democratic practices of a very long period,” says Williamson. Bottom line: The winner of a presidential election is not necessarily the one with the most votes. Most recently, Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election even though his opponent, Hillary Clinton, garnered approximately 2.9 million more votes than him. The reason for this conundrum is the Electoral College. In the US, each of the 50 states has a certain number of electors depending on the size of the population. The candidate who wins the majority of popular votes in a state is the one who receives the electoral votes of the federal state. Sound complicated? Here is an example.
California as the most populous state has the most electors in the Electoral College: 54. The candidate who can convince the most Californians to vote for him will receive all 54 Electoral College votes, even if he wins by a narrow margin popular vote difference. Smaller states like Vermont or South Dakota only have three Electoral College votes, but the system is the same. To win the presidency, a candidate must win enough states to increase his number of Electoral College votes to 270 electors or more. Someone who wins states by narrow margins can thus become president, even though more Americans voted in total for the other candidate.
THE SENATE, “A DEEPLY UNDEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION”
Another part of the American political system that does not reflect a perfect democracy is the upper house of Congress: the US Senate. Each US federal state has two senators in this House – regardless of the size of the state’s population. This means that in some states, a senator represents several hundred thousand people, while in another, several million people “share” a senator. When the Senate has a decision to make, each senator’s vote carries exactly the same weight, even though they represent vastly different numbers of people.
Berkman calls the Senate “a profoundly undemocratic institution.” Williamson criticizes that, as a result of the way the Senate is set up, “our most populous regions are deeply underrepresented in the legislative process.” The US may not be a model democracy, but Americans have not given up on it. More people are getting involved. Voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election was more than 65%, the highest it had been in more than 100 years. “We’ve seen increases in political participation over the last eight, 10 years,” Berkman points out. “I think this is important.” (DW)
