In the US, we have always had a tug-of-war between those who want a government by the people and those who want a government by the elite or the few. When the country was founded, there were those who preferred to be ruled by the British monarchy. We can go back and read those discussions. Loyalists or Tories weren’t idiots or fools. They were Americans who had close ties to England and wanted the security of the British Empire. As I recall, there wasn’t much discussion surrounding these Tories in my US History textbook. The discussion focused on Jefferson, Adams, and Washington. Democracy and Freedom. Democracy was always painted as the best option.
Our democracy is a system of government in which the majority of the people can usually dictate what they want most of the time, right? Our constitution allows us to elect representatives to the US House and Senate. Those representatives then vote in our interest to pass laws that benefit us. We also get to elect the president of the United States through the Electoral College.
We need to think about our democracy. This may be the first time in 40 or 50 years that we really need to decide how we want to proceed. We have one major party, the Republican party, who has embraced Donald Trump as its leader. It is clear from his last tenure as president that Donald Trump has no desire for the checks and balances that we find in the Constitution; Donald Trump would gravitate toward a type of government that resembles a monarchy. Is that what we want? This is not some existential exercise instead, this is about how we move forward.
If we want to throw out our democracy, then that’s fine. On the other hand, if we truly want a democracy, let’s make it work for all of us; let’s make a democracy that works for the poor, the middle class, and those hard-working Americans on the assembly line. I want a democracy that works for farmers and the hourly workers in the intercity. If we want a democracy that works for all of us, we must start now.
Let’s start with our elections. Do we really need an electoral college? I think the Electoral College is something that worked in the past, but I’m not sure that we need it now, so let us amend the Constitution and directly elect a president. This is a popular vote. Period. Done. No shenanigans. Now, let’s look at our representatives. In order to elect our representatives to the House, we have to live in a specific district. In theory, each district is dictated by the census and local population. Our state legislature dictates our districts and how they decide to divvy up our state population. This is most commonly known as gerrymandering. This is another big problem. If we have a state with a majority of people belonging to the Ironhead Party, for example. Yet, with election after election, the Flat Earth Party continues to win because of gerrymandered districts. This is wrong, this is hurting our democracy. So, instead of allowing state legislatures to draw district maps to benefit their particular party, we need to have a computer program to put in the parameters we want for our districts. Now, districts will be fairly distributed throughout the United States. We need to put 6 Federal judges in a room for one month. They can come out of the once they have agreed on a formula. The people vote on the formula, which should also be written into our constitution.
