Reimagining American Democracy

By Ben Garfield ‘22

In 2015, two men began campaigns for President of the United States, both with an idea of speaking for those silenced by political elites. One of these men, Bernie Sanders, couldn’t win his party’s primary with this brand. The other, Donald J. Trump, went on to win the American Presidency. To many, Trump and Sanders represent two vastly different options for a vision of America. But both provided a vision of populism, bringing the power back to the people. And maybe they had a point. In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential Election, when Donald Trump was named the winner despite earning fewer votes than his opponent, Hillary Clinton, supporters of Clinton began railing against the Electoral College system, which prevented the winner of the popular vote from becoming president. But 2016 wasn’t the first time this happened. In 2000, Al Gore won more votes than George W. Bush, but Bush took the electoral college and the presidency. In 1876 and 1888, it happened as well, but the country found a way to move on. After 2016, however, supporters of Hillary Clinton didn’t really move on. Instead, many began to see Donald Trump as an illegitimate president, and the American democracy as a broken. Except they forgot one thing: America is not, and has never been, a democracy.

Upon departing the constitutional convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a passerby whether there’d be an American republic or monarchy. He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it”. Most Americans didn’t believe they lived in a democracy until the passage of the 17th Amendment, which requires that U.S. Senators be chosen by the people, not state legislatures. But American democracy, as a modern concept, didn’t come to being until the Cold War.

American government, or at least the federal government, was not supposed to respond to the needs of the people. That’s why we have state and local governments. They’re supposed to make changes that apply to people’s lives, not the feds. But since the Great Depression greatly expanded the size of the federal government, Americans have simply held an expectation of what the federal government is supposed to do. However, the institutions of our government are supposed to be slow. People expect that, after each election, they’ll see new, major changes to our country immediately. But it should be obvious to Americans that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, or even can work. Take the 115th Congress, for example. From 2017-2019, Republicans had control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Presidency. But they managed to pass just one major legislative achievement for the Republican party, the tax reform bill. 

Nonetheless, the American people expect results. Many of them have come to the conclusion that, because nothing is happening to change their lives, there must be something wrong with the people in charge. But what if there isn’t? Instead, let’s reimagine American “democracy”. Now, America can never be a direct democracy. Why? Because for one thing, it’s too big for that to really work, and two, the American people will never raise taxes on themselves directly (see: Colorado Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights). Now, instead, let’s imagine another system, one that maybe makes a little more sense. But let’s suspend a lot of the limitations here, and just imagine that this was all more easily possible to do, and then evaluate whether or not it would make the system better.

First, let’s get rid of states. States allow for the Senate, which can be argued is fairly undemocratic, since Wyoming has the same amount of representation as California. Which, if we have a representative democracy, isn’t very representative. Instead we have these “megaregions” of the country. They’d be based around major metropolitan areas and, hopefully, encompass parts of the country that are fairly similar to each other. These borders would be flexible, in order to keep the sizes of these megaregions relatively equal in population size. They’d each elect a governor and legislature using rank choice voting. And each of these regions would be broken up even further into districts, each with multiple representatives in the new American Congress. We’d keep the House and Senate the way they are, the only difference being where the representatives would come from. Each megaregion will have 3 or 4 senators, elected by the whole region. This allows us to have a deliberative body like the current senate, as this remains a good way for the laws of the land to be debated by our elected leaders. 

The most important part of this, however, is the way with which we’ll elect representatives. Instead of each district having one representative being from one of two possible political parties, we’ll instead have multi-member districts. Each district would elect multiple representatives elected via rank choice voting. Voters would rank candidates in order of preference, and the 5 or 6 candidates that receive the most votes would represent that district in Congress. The same method goes for Senators elected by the entire megaregion, and rank choice voting would be used in all elections. This would, if applied correctly, end parties in the U.S. Candidates would run on what they believe in, not based on a party’s platform. Party structures that lead people to be disengaged with the system wouldn’t exist. We’d see more coalition building around common beliefs, and more compromises to benefit as many Americans as possible. 

Finally, we’ll keep the presidency, but elect them via rank choice voting on a national scale, in order to choose the candidate most acceptable to all voters. Of course, there’s more that must be worked out before this system could ever work, but at its core, it might be what’s needed in order to bring America back together as a country, and maybe even make us more of a democracy than a republic. Hamilton and Madison argued in the Federalist Papers that the constitution should be rewritten every 40 years or so. This one hasn’t been rewritten. It’s got some pretty good ideas, but then again, we’ve got 320 million people and the internet now. Something’s gotta change.