Commentary Ensuring our democracy survives and flourishes will be a monumental effort
o Supreme Court recently ruled that Trump cannot appear on the primary ballot because he “having previously taken an oath…to support the Constitution of the United States…engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same…” Whatever the history of this third clause of the 14th Amendment, its real value is to help prevent our democracy from turning into a dictatorship. If the person wanting to be the next president engages in insurrection, this allows us to prevent them from occupying our democracy’s most powerful position, knowing that they might do it again.
If it was their second time around, that president would have learned from the first experience and would proceed with more careful strategic planning. And (s)he would have over three years to appoint fellow conspirators to gain an irreversible lock on power.
Democracies are not immune from takeovers. “Why Democracies Collapse,” by Diskin, Diskin and Hazan evaluated the collapse of 30 democracies, identified the factors required for a collapse, and showed that if this combination occurs, collapse is very likely to happen.
Wikipedia has a great list of all the various actions that were taken by Trump or on his behalf in furtherance of his attempt to maintain power, in spite of his losing the 2020 election. (“Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election”)
This almost-successful effort included:
• The attempted coup at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (From one of the court cases, “If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.”)
• Pressuring the Justice Department to declare that the election was corrupt.
• Promoting the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify the results. (Fortunately, he did his job.)
• Filing over 60 lawsuits about election results, with only one barely successful.
There are many angles that someone committed to maintaining power can pursue.
And, apparently, the courts are where to gain the most power (the Federalist Society seems to agree), especially in the (unregulated) Supreme Court. We’ll soon find out how the Court chooses to act, or not. With the wrong Court, even the current two-term limit might become irrelevant.
The situation is made far worse by the gross inequities of our Electoral College system, the parallel inequities in our Senate, and the gerrymandering that goes on to distort the representation in the House to swing the balance of power.
According to a CNN Jan. 1 article (“Opinion: The Supreme Court could make a Trump victory virtually impossible”), it’s reasonable to assume that the 2024 winner will be decided by the Electors of the projected swing states. They constitute 97 Electoral College electors of 538 total, or about 18%: Arizona(11), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (16), Pennsylvania(19) and Wisconsin (10).
Individual voters in the other states will likely have no effect on the outcome, because in the Electoral College, if a state votes mostly D or R, and you vote the other way, you are essentially irrelevant — it’s the majority that determines 100% of the state’s Electoral College votes. The only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, where individual districts’ outcomes determine how their Electors vote. And, remember, both George W. Bush (2000) and Trump (2016) won with a minority of the popular vote. So much for “Let the people decide.”
The Electoral College further distorts the popular vote by having one Elector for each House and Senate seat. So, Wyoming has three Electors for a population of 576,851, or 192,283 per Elector. At the other extreme, California has 54 electors for its 39,538,223 population or 732,189 per Elector. Thus, each Wyoming resident counts about 3.8 times as much as a California one.
In the Senate, half the votes are controlled by states that total less than one-sixth of the country’s population. So, per person, these states have over six times the power. Don’t expect Congress to save us.
Finally, the Jan. 2 story “Democrats fear electoral bloodbath in North Carolina” describes GOP state lawmakers approving a redistricting (gerrymandering) plan in October that sets the stage for Republicans to pick up at least three seats, and maybe four, in the 14-member delegation. This would double the GOP’S slender House majority on Capitol Hill. Is this fair?
Ensuring our democracy survives and flourishes will be a monumental effort, but there is a lot of support for doing so, except from those whose power benefits from maintaining these inequalities. Let’s not make it harder by risking it further.
Steve Pomerance is a former member of the Boulder City Council. Email stevepomerance@yahoo.com.