Our Partial Democracy:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal".
"That liberty [is pure], which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone."
"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions."
Good words, powerful words, from Jefferson. A glorious ideal, which has made Americans proud of their country, and proud of ourselves for creating the first and longest-lived modern democracy.
But the reality has fallen far short of the ideal. In 1792, when the first elections under the new Constitution were held, the franchise was so severely restricted, that it would be more honest to call it an oligarchy of wealthy white males, rather than a democracy of all the people.
The reality:
1. Half the population was excluded until 1920, when women got the vote, after a long and bitter Suffragist struggle. In 1870, the Utah Territorial legislature gave women the vote, but the U.S. Congress took it away in 1887. In World War 1, President Wilson jailed women for publicly pointing out the hypocrisy of fighting a war to bring democracy to Europe, while continuing to deny the vote to half the adults in the U.S.
2. Blacks had to wait until the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870. But this extension of the franchise was brief. The 1876 election was much like the 2000 election: a virtual tie, a disputed result, and (after a lot of partisan wrangling and back-room dealing), a President was chosen by highly creative and non-Constitutional means. Part of the deal was the withdrawal of the Union Army from the South, which let Southern whites carry out a reign of terror against the freed slaves, and disenfranchise them all for 80 more years. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution had no champions, and was ignored until the 1950s. Even today, as we saw in the 2000 voting in Florida, powerful interests who don't like the way blacks vote can find ways to disenfranchise them.
3. Native Americans were totally excluded, for a century. As late as 1884, the Supreme Court was ruling that the 14th Amendment didn't apply to Natives. Over the next 60 years, citizenship and the franchise was extended piecemeal. The restrictions were often absurd and arbitrary, such as the 1888 law which gave citizenship to Native women who married white men (but not to Native men who married white women, or to Native women who married men of races other than white).
4. Chinese were excluded from becoming citizens (and thereby, from voting), by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1925, Filipinos were barred from citizenship unless they have served three years in the U.S. Navy.
5. Even when non-anglos weren't explicitly excluded, English-language and literacy requirements often had the same result. It wasn't till the 1965 and 1970 Voting Rights Acts, when literacy tests were finally banned.
6. Property requirements and tax requirements were nearly universal in the early Republic, excluding the poor entirely, and much of the middle classes as well.
The reality: the Founding Fathers didn't quite trust the People enough to let them directly choose the President, and this flaw has never been fixed:
7. The Electoral College stands between the People and their President. In many States, the Electors were chosen by the State legislatures, not by popular vote. As late as 1828, two States were still choosing their Presidential Electors this way.
8. The Electoral College means that, whenever the popular vote is close, we are at risk of the absurd and undemocratic result, where one candidate gets the most votes but someone else becomes President. 2000 was not the first time this happened.
9. The winner-take-all system of allocating each State's Electors, gives an advantage to candidates whose support is concentrated in one section of the country. A candidate whose support is spread evenly throughout the nation, and who is probably more acceptable to more of the entire nation, is at a disadvantage. This can lead to disastrous results, such as the election of 1860, where Lincoln won with less than 40% of the popular vote. In that election, there were two sectarian candidates who were highly unacceptable in large parts of the nation (Lincoln and Breckinridge). There were two other candidates, who would have been acceptable to the entire nation. If the President was chosen directly by popular vote, and if we had an instant runoff system, Douglas would have won in 1860. But, because his support was spread throughout the entire nation, and because of the Electoral College system, Douglas lost, and the result was the Civil War.
The reality today:
10. Candidates for President spend more time chasing money than votes. Wealth and income are highly concentrated: The income of the top 1% of Americans is more than that of the bottom 40%. And it has been getting steadily more concentrated since the early 1970s: The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43% between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9%; since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most (they have just 3.6% of national income, down from 4.4%).
Contributions to politicians are even more highly concentrated than wealth and income. Millionaires and the homeless have an equal right to go to thousand-dollar dinners with their candidate. But a freedom which only a tiny fraction of the population has the means to exercise, is destructive to democracy. The poorest half of the population gives essentially zero money. The middle class gives lots of small contributions, which doesn't add up to much, and doesn't buy influence. The big money, the money that gets candidate's attention, that buys access and influence, comes from the wealthiest of Americans, a tiny elite, who have an effective veto over any candidate for President.
The Supreme Court has blessed this concentration of power, by ruling that money has a constitutional right to free speech, giving the Almighty Dollar a legal status equal to flesh-and-blood humans.
Admittedly, it's hard to find exact numbers on the concentration of contributions, because current law allows laundering contributions through multiple committees and organizations, making it impossible to know where it comes from. But contributions can't be less concentrated than overall income and wealth are.
Each extension of democracy in the United States, since the Revolution, has required a huge struggle, and was fought bitterly by those who benefit from limiting the freedom of others. Today, the next step in perfecting our democracy, is limiting the power of money in politics.
The Suffragists and Abolitionists asked, "Are Jefferson's ideals to be a hollow slogan, or a reality?" It's a question which still needs asking, today. |
