The electoral college, the small state bias in the Senate, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the influence of money, these inequities in our system, and more, subvert the liberal premise of democracy: the right of each citizen to claim an equal voice in choosing our government. Counting votes on Tuesday must be only the first step in a movement that ensures that every vote counts.
Have you voted yet?
I voted last Saturday by dropping off my ballot at an early vote center.
You might be surprised to know that I did not vote for Joe Biden.
I didn’t vote for Trump either.
And neither did any of you.
Because, in the United States, we don’t vote for the President. We vote for electors to the Electoral College. The electors vote for the President. Which they will do on December 14, this year.
Now you might say that this amounts to the same thing. But even when the popular vote and the Electoral College agree (and they don’t always: see 2016, see 2000 and three other times in our nation’s history of Presidential elections) the Electoral College is undemocratic.
And that’s a problem.
Here’s why.
Whichever candidate wins in California on Tuesday will win all 55 of California’s electors. Even if your candidate wins 49.9% of the vote, if the other candidate wins 50.1% of the vote, that candidate will win all of the electors. If your candidate loses in the state where you vote, your vote for President doesn’t count.
On the other hand, the winning candidate wins all the electors whether they win by 50.1% or by 99.9% of the vote. So if your vote is the first additional vote after your candidate already won a majority, your vote for President doesn’t really count either.
In 2016, in California, Hillary Clinton received 4.3 million more votes than Donald Trump. In other words, Hillary Clinton received 4.3 million more votes than she needed in California to win all of California’s 55 electors. But those millions of extra votes here didn’t count when Hillary Clinton lost by a total of 77,744 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, combined. If the 46 electoral votes in those three states had gone to Clinton instead of Trump, Clinton would have been our President. But under the rules of the Electoral College, 77,744 Trump votes in those three states counted while 4.3 million extra Clinton votes in California did not.
That should disturb you, as a Unitarian Universalist, regardless of which candidate you voted for.
We began our worship service this morning by remembering the 7 principles of our Unitarian Universalist faith. The fifth principle is, “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large.”
Democracy is the liberal form of government, just as Unitarian Universalism is liberal religion. Liberalism, meaning classical liberalism, not the political left Liberals, is a set of principles that define a method of resolving conflict in various fields of human society, such as science, economics, government, and religion. The liberal principles describe a process of open participation, free debate, evidence, reason, persuasion, and incremental approaches toward social goals. In our liberal religious faith we seek the truth not by deferring to a powerful authority, like a Pope or a sacred text, instead we all come together to share our individual ideas and experiences and together discover larger truths and grow in faith. In our liberal government, every citizen has a vote, every citizen has an equal voice in choosing our leaders, and every citizen participates in shaping the political decisions that affect our lives.
That’s democracy. That’s “the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large.”
So it should matter to you, because it matters to our faith, when our “society at large” uses a system of voting for President where some people’s votes count and others do not.
The Electoral College is just one instance where our country’s democratic process is not completely democratic. Here are some others.
About half of the US population currently lives in just nine states. But every state is represented by two senators regardless of population. California’s two senators each represent about 20 million people. Wyoming’s two senators each represent about 300,000 people. The 47 Senators in the Senate minority actually represent 15 million more Americans than the 53 Senators who control the Senate majority.
The unfairness in the Electoral College and the Senate combine to skew the Supreme Court. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and now Amy Comey Barrett, were all nominated by a President elected by fewer than half the voters, and then confirmed by Senators elected by fewer than half the voters.
In the House, representation is fairly equal based on population across the states. But how the states are internally divided into congressional districts can be very unfair.
In many states, the state legislature draws the district map following each census. That gives the majority party the ability to gerrymander the districts to favor their party over the other. You can “pack” all of the opponent party’s voters into just a few districts – and leave the rest for your own party. Or you can “crack” your opponent party’s population by splitting them off into several districts where their power is diluted.
Gerrymandering affects representation in the US House and also within a state’s legislature. In Wisconsin, in 2018, Democrats won every statewide office on the ballot, and Democratic candidates for the state assembly won more than half of the total votes cast statewide, but they only earned one third of the assembly seats.
A further threat to our democracy comes from initiatives that discourage voting itself. Some politicians have decided they have a better chance of winning if they create a process where certain people can vote more easily than others. They create complicated hoops to jump through for registering to vote, for requesting to vote by mail, for returning your ballot, for verifying your signature. They limit polling places and hours to make it easier to vote if you have access to a car or if you have a job where you can set your own hours.
Voter intimidation keeps unwanted voters away from the polls. Spreading disinformation and doubt about the legitimacy of our elections, whether the lies come from Russia or from the White House, manipulates the vote toward a favored candidate and away from democracy.
And lastly, the outsized influence of money in our elections moves us away from a truly democratic process. The Citizens United decision from 2010 allows unlimited political spending from individuals and corporate PACs, as long as they aren’t coordinated with the candidate. It’s not democracy for the Koch brothers, Michael Bloomberg, or Sheldon Adelson, to have more say in our government than you or I.
But even you and I are now contributing incredible amounts of money to ever more expensive campaigns. Of the ten most expensive Senate races in U.S. history, seven of them are happening right now (you’ll recognize this list of states if you’ve been watching the race for control of the Senate): North Carolina, Iowa, Arizona, Montana, South Carolina, Maine and Georgia.
So what do we do?
First, vote on Tuesday, if you haven’t already. Your vote in Santa Clarita really counts in the close race between Garcia and Smith for the Congressional House seat. And your vote counts on the many state and local issues concerning taxation, school funding, affirmative action, fair employment practices, rent control, and so on.
Then take a deep breath.
And then soon enough, let’s return to the work of repairing, preserving, and strengthening our democracy.
After you vote. After you’ve taken a breath. Here’s what we do next:
The Electoral College. Eliminating the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment; that’s possible, but unlikely. But there is a simpler solution. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win election. If several states, controlling 270 electoral votes between them, agreed that they would all give their electoral votes to whichever candidate won the national popular vote then the Electoral College winner would always match the popular vote winner. Such a multi-state compact already exists, currently representing 196 electoral votes. California is in the compact. We could work to convince a handful of more states to join us.
The Senate. The Constitution provides for equal representation for each state in the Senate: two Senators per state. There’s no need to change that. Instead, we could add more states. With a vote of Congress and the signature of the President we could welcome 4 new Senators from two new states: Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.
BTW. Washington DC would have a larger state population than both Vermont and Wyoming. And Puerto Rico would be our 30th largest state by population, about the size of Utah and Iowa. That’s a lot of American citizens who currently have no representation in the Senate.
The Supreme Court. The Constitution mandates a Supreme Court but allows Congress to decide how it’s organized. Congress can set the number of Justices. Congress can limit the kinds of cases the Court hears on appeal. Congress could even mandate a higher majority for how a case gets decided, say 7 to 2 instead of just 5 to 4. I like the idea of instituting reforms that rein in the power of the Supreme Court and that encourage the democratically elected Congress to take back their responsibility to set the nation’s laws.
The solution to gerrymandering is already in place in 21 states, including California: draw districts by non-partisan commissions rather than state legislators. We should encourage more states to make this reform.
To counter voter suppression Congress should pass a new voting rights act to restore the portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 and to add additional protections against new suppression tactics that have emerged in the last 50 years.
And campaign finances. Overturning Citizens United directly would require a constitutional amendment. But Congress could support robust public funding for campaigns as an alternative to private campaign funding. And Congress could strengthen existing laws forbidding coordination between candidates and PACS.
This fall, this congregation, and many UU congregations nationwide participated in a variety of efforts focused on Tuesday’s election. We mailed letters and postcards. We staffed phone banks. We worked to get out the vote. And on Tuesday we will vote our values, if you haven’t already voted.
“Oh we give thanks, for that precious day.”
We have suffered through a very difficult 4 years. The people have suffered. The nation has suffered. Democracy has suffered. Whichever way the vote goes on Tuesday, we are in need of healing. Our ragged spirits need healing. Our democracy needs healing. Healing our spirits may mean withdrawing from politics for a time. Healing our democracy, though, requires re-engaging.
The long-sought, and eagerly awaited decision of Tuesday’s election cannot be the end of our 5th principle work. Some of our nation’s democratic structures were never truly democratic, and should be reformed. Other systems have become less democratic over time and need to be returned to their democratic form and strengthened. It’s time to heal our democracy. Voting is where democracy begins, not where it ends. Tuesday is the time to count the votes. And then soon after, it will be the time to ensure that going forward every vote counts.