| | | washingtonpost.com
...Scholars who study democratic breakdown, like myself, can point to a laundry list of reforms that would stabilize U.S. democracy and diminish the risk of American autocracy. After all, most other democracies aren’t facing the same existential risks to their systems that we are, so we can learn from them.
In most functioning democracies, politicians don’t draw their own district maps. Their campaigns aren’t driven by effectively unlimited cash flowing in from special interests. Prominent media outlets aren’t headlined by conspiracy theorists or white nationalists. Citizens get a voice proportionate to population size. The judiciary isn’t politicized and senior judges don’t serve for life. Elections are managed by nonpartisan technical experts, not elected partisans. Central pillars of the U.S. system are fundamentally undemocratic.
There is, however, no mystery over what would fix U.S. democracy. Other countries have confronted similar issues — and solved them. We could follow suit by borrowing their best ideas, such as replicating Canada’s nonpartisan election management system, and setting out stricter campaign finance limits. We could adopt media impartiality rules, like the British, or implement elements of proportionality in our elections, like the Germans. And that’s just the low-hanging fruit.
Other innovative reforms would also be effective. They include implementing open primaries with ranked-choice voting to dampen the voices of political extremists, passing a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to vote, or drawing electoral districts to maximize competitiveness, thereby fostering political compromise and consensus.
More unconventional thinking would help, too. Given the population disparities between Wyoming and California, Julia Azari, a political science professor at Marquette University, told me that she favors the concept of major cities also being represented by senators. Lee Drutman, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, has long advocated reducing polarization by using proportional representation to elect the House of Representatives, drawing on the Australian model. Neither is likely any time soon. Both are worth discussing.... |
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