Is This Any Way to Run a Democratic Election?

Stephen J. Wayne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000650587
• Edition: 7
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The 2016 and 2018 elections are over, but looking ahead to the 2019–2020 election cycle, the debate over the fairness and accuracy of our electoral process has never been more contentious. Hacking, fake news, a "rigged system, " voter ID challenges, Super PACs, and an Electoral College defying the popular vote count all lead to a common question and concern: Is this any way to run a democratic election?

New to the Seventh Edition:

• New data and timely illustrations from the 2016 and 2018 elections, looking ahead to 2020 election.
• The growing importance of social media (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter) and its impact, good and bad, on recent campaigns.
• Foreign interference in the 2016 and 2018 national elections.
• The integrity of campaign communications—hacking, rumoring, instantaneous news, and the effect of fact-checking.
• Money: the role of Super PACs and billionaire donors; the impact of campaign spending on the candidates and on election outcomes.
• New connections between the "Did you know that" chapter introductions to the exercises at the end.
• More online references in the suggested readings.

1 Democratic Elections

What's the Problem?

Did you know that . . .

• most Americans do not vote in most elections?
• more than 6 million citizens could not vote in the 2016 and 2018 elections because of past felony convictions?
• two out of the last three presidents did not receive the most popular votes when they were first elected?
• most members of Congress have little opposition in running for renomination, and some have no opponents in the general election?
• since 1964, more than 90 percent of the House of Representatives and 80 percent of the Senate have been reelected?
• no principal third-party presidential candidate has received any electoral votes since 1968?
• there were more ballots discarded or undercounted in New York City and Chicago in the 2000 election than there were disputed ballots in the controversial Florida presidential vote that year?
• about $6 billion was spent on federal elections in the 2015–2016 election cycle and $5 billion on the 2017–2018 midterms?
• there is only one federal agency—with six commissioners and a staff of a little over 300 people—that oversees this massive spending?
• most election news coverage and political advertising in presidential elections is negative?
• most of the information people receive about the election reinforces rather than challenges their preexisting attitudes and partisan leanings?
• the administration of elections is so fragmentary that the government does not know how many people were turned away at the polls, how long people stood in lines waiting to vote, how many ballots were voided or simply not counted, and how many voting machines malfunctioned?

Is this any way to run a democratic election?

These facts suggest that something is terribly wrong with our electoral process. They raise serious questions about how democratic the American political system really is. They also point to the major problems within that system: low voter turnout; fraudulent, error-prone, and discriminatory voting practices; uneven and inadequate administration of elections by state and local officials; high costs and unequal resources for candidates running for office; short, compartmentalized, and negative news media coverage; and contradictory, often inconclusive results, and even worse, elections in which the winning candidate loses the popular vote. Let’s take a look at some examples of these problems.

Contemporary Election Issues

Low Voter Turnout

People fight for the right to vote when they don’t have it. Americans certainly did. In 1776, British colonists, protesting taxation without representation in Parliament, declared their independence with a rhetorical flourish that underscored their right to alter or abolish a government that wasn’t fulfilling the purpose for which it was intended.

Now, almost 250 years later, in a country that prides itself on its long and successful political tradition and on its fundamental democratic values, a majority of the electorate does not vote on a regular basis. Why do so few people vote? Does it have to do with how candidates run for office, how and when elections are conducted, or whether the public perceives that elections do not really matter, whether they make a difference in people’s lives or in the country’s future?

Congress considers low turnout to be a problem, a sign that the democracy is not as healthy as it could or should be. During the last several decades, it has enacted legislation to encourage more people to vote. At the end of the 1970s, an amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) was passed to permit political parties to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money building their grassroots base and getting their supporters out to vote. Yet turnout continued to decline.

During the 1980s, amendments were added to the act to broaden its applicability and facilitate minority participation in the electoral process. Yet the turnout of most population groups continued to decline.

In 1993 a “motor voter” bill, designed to make it easier for people in all 50 states to register to vote, was enacted, yet the percentage of the registered adult population decreased in the years following the passage of the law.

In 2002, Congress enacted the “Help America Vote Act,” which provided money to states to computerize their voter registration lists, buy better and more modern voting machines, and allow for provisional voting for people who claim that they registered but whose names do not appear on the lists of eligible voters in the precinct in which they live and vote. Millions of new voters have been registered since the enactment of the 2002 legislation, but registrations lists remain inaccurate. People die, move, or fail to register properly. Since many of the states’ registration lists have been computerized, they can also be hacked.¹ Today a little over 70 percent of the citizenry is registered to vote.²

Since 2004, turnout has been increasing among the voting age population in presidential elections and in 2018 in the midterm election. That’s the good news. The bad news is that four out of ten eligible voters do not vote in presidential elections, and at least five out of ten voters do not vote in the midterm elections.³ Voting in the parties’ nomination process is even lower; seven out of ten do not do so.

The issue of nonvoting raises serious questions about the vibrancy of America’s civic culture and the validity of its democratic political institutions. With so many people not voting, do elections reflect the judgment of all the people or of a small and unrepresentative proportion of them? Similarly, to whom are elected officials more responsive—the entire population, the adult citizenry, their electoral constituency, or the people that actually voted for them? Do elections with low participation rates still provide an agenda for government and legitimacy for its actions? If they do not, then what does?

Fraudulent, Error-Prone, and Discriminatory Voting Practices

The Constitution charges the states with the conduct of federal elections. The states set most of the rules for registration, ballot access, and absentee voting; they determine the period during which voting occurs, the procedures for exercising a vote, and the manner in which votes are to be tabulated and reported. Local electoral districts within the states often designate the polling places, administer the election, and provide the ballots or machines for voting. As a consequence of the decentralization of election administration, there is considerable variation in voting procedures among the states and even within them.

Political parties indirectly affect the vote by the influence they exert on elected and appointed state officials. In fact, for most of the nation’s first 100 years, the major parties actually ran the elections. They rallied their supporters, got them to the polls, and made sure they voted “correctly” by designing and distributing color-coded ballots on which only the names of their candidates appeared. They also had poll watchers observing the color of the ballot that indicated how people voted.

Allegations of fraudulent practices, including voting by noncitizens and the deceased, casting multiple ballots in the same election, and under- and overcounting of the votes, were rampant. The adoption of the secret ballot and the administration of elections by state officials were responses to these unfair, underhanded, and undemocratic election practices. The development of machines and computers to tabulate the vote was another. But problems persisted because most state legislatures still enacted election laws and drafted legislative districts to benefit those in power.

Registration and residence requirements have been used to limit the size of the electorate. Equal geographic representation in one of the two legislative bodies (prior to the 1960s) gave rural areas a disproportionate advantage. In some states, the laws were administered in a discriminatory and haphazard fashion, making it more difficult for some people, particularly minorities, to vote.

Not until the 1960s did the Supreme Court and Congress address some of these issues.⁴ The Court ruled that population and population alone had to be the criterion by which representation was determined; it enunciated the principle of “one person-one vote”. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was intended to end discriminatory practices and effectively extend suffrage to all eligible citizens. Registration requirements were eased, voting hours were extended, absentee voting was facilitated, and for a time, money for party-building activities was exempted from federal contribution limits.

These laws and judicial decisions went a long way toward extending the franchise, encouraging turnout, and ending some of the practices that undercut the democratic character of U.S. elections. But they did not eliminate all of those practices and some created others in the process. Nor did they improve the actual conduct of elections. After the 2000 election controversy in Florida, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report concluding that African Americans in that state were much more likely than white voters to be turned away from the polls.⁵ Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) deduced that between 4 million and 6 million votes for president in the 2000 election were not counted, some because of registration foulups, some because of voter confusion and error, and some because of faulty equipment.⁶ In 2018, illegal collection and completion of absentee ballots in one congressional district in North Carolina led to disputed and uncertified election results and prompted state officials to conduct a new election.

These problems remain. Registration foul-ups, inadequate parking, long lines and waits to vote, insufficient numbers of poll workers, machine and computer malfunctions, and poorly designed ballots continue to hamper the fairness of the electoral process. In a more recent development, 34 states have enacted voter ID laws; 17 of them require photo IDs in order to vote. Supporters of these new regulations, primarily Republicans, argue that the intent of this legislation is to prevent voter fraud. Opponents, primarily Democrats, say the laws’ real purpose is to reduce the number of minority voters. They have cited evidence that the turnout of Hispanic, African American, and mixed-race citizens has declined more than that of the white majority in states with strict ID laws.⁷ Although the Supreme Court has upheld the right of states to require identification before voting, several district and appellate courts have invalidated some of their laws as discriminatory.

Can an election be democratic if citizens have to overcome these hurdles in order to vote? Can the results be regarded as legitimate if the votes of a sizable proportion of a state’s population, enough to have changed the outcome of the election, are not correctly counted? Can the election represent the will of the people if the ballots are confusing to voters, and if some of the votes were not properly cast and thus voided?

A lot of people do not think so. Six months after the Supreme Court’s decision that effectively determined George W. Bush’s victory in Florida and thus in the Electoral College in 2000, 26 percent of the American people indicated that they still did not regard him as the legitimate president; 16 years later, 15 percent did not regard Donald Trump as the legitimate winner.⁸ Even Trump had doubts about the integrity of the election, alleging during his campaign that the results were likely to be rigged with fraudulent voting by deceased citizens and illegal immigrants. He also indicated that he might not accept the results of the election; after he won in the Electoral College, he claimed that he lost the popular vote because 3 million illegal voters cast ballots “for the other side.”⁹ His claim was not substantiated, however.

High Costs and Unequal Resources

Campaign finance is another issue and has been one for decades. The federal election campaign finance system has broken down. Laws designed to limit spiraling expenses, reduce the influence of the wealthy, bring donors and their donations into full public view, and decrease the need for nonstop fund-raising by candidates have not worked as intended or at all. Despite Congress’s desire to limit the amount of individual and group contributions to candidates running for federal office, document electoral activities of nonparty groups, and more fairly equalize financial resources available to all candidates, the amount of money raised and spent in federal elections has increased, fund-raising continues to be an ongoing operation by candidates and their campaign organizations, party committees, and nonparty groups. These nonparty groups have proliferated, their revenues and expenditures have grown, and unaccounted for “dark money” continues to flood into the electoral arena.¹⁰

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Brief Contents
• Contents
• Special Features
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Democratic Elections: What's the Problem?
• 2 Popular Base of American Electoral Politics
• 3 How Representative Are American Elections?
• 4 Has Money Corrupted Our Electoral Process?
• 5 News Media Coverage: Fair or Unfair? True or False?
• 6 Are American Parties Still Representative?
• 7 The Nomination Process: Whose Is It Anyway?
• 8 Campaign Communications: How Much Do They Matter?
• 9 Elections arid Government: A Tenuous Connection
• Index