⊠serious flaws in the infrastructure of American democracy remained. The only reason that these flaws did not lead to another [2000 presidential election debacle] is because the margin of victory exceeded the margin of litigation. (Tokaji 2005, p. 1206)
From âFullâ to âFlawedâ Democracy
Writing in the aftermath of the first presidential election since the infamous 2000 election, Dan Tokaji observed how the same cracks in the election administration edifice continued to threaten democracy. Unfortunately, eleven years later, not much had changed. The year 2016 was a carnival-like time in American politics: many events were seemingly bigger than they appeared, while the gigantic personalities like carnival barkers promised fanciful policies with no basis in political reality. In the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Republican candidate Donald Trump maintained that the upcoming election would certainly be ârigged,â particularly if he were to lose. After a stunning November upsetâTrump captured the requisite Electoral College votes even as he failed to secure the popular voteâhe continued to claim that the election had indeed been rigged. Specifically, he alleged that widespread voter fraud was behind the millions of votes that separated his vote share from his opponent Hillary Clinton , and that 3 to 5 million illegal ballots had been cast (Phillip and DeBonis 2017). Although no evidence of such widespread fraud was forthcoming from either Trump or his corroborators, cries of electoral foul persisted in the wake of the lowest-turnout presidential election in twenty years. By January of 2017, members of the intelligence community began to release information pointing to Russian interference in the election. With mounting evidence of Russian operatives hacking into the Democratic National Committeeâs server and breaching several statesâ voter files, the entire U.S. intelligence community stood united in their claims that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election (McFadden et al. 2018).
In addition, questions loomed about the extent to which procedural election measures such as ID verification perpetuated voter suppression , particularly of historically marginalized groups. By early 2017, both sides of the partisan divide were convinced that fraudulent and/or unethical interference in the election had taken place in an effort to manipulate the outcome. Indeed, Americans of all stripes believed the American election system to be rigged, but they disagreed on how it became rigged and how we might someday correct it.
Additionally, in early 2017, as a culmination of decreased American confidence and diminished trust in political institutions over the span of years, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) downgraded the United States from a âfullâ to âflawedâ democracy per their Democracy Index . Each year since 2006, the EIU (sister company to the Economist magazine) has ranked 167 countries on its Democracy Index ranging from Authoritarian Regime to Full Democracy based on sixty indicators across five categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture, and civil liberties. Based on a âfurther erosion of trust in government and elected officials there,â (Economist Intelligence Unit 2017), the United Statesâ ranking fell for the first time since the index was created. The EIU noted that American citizensâ trust in political parties, elected representatives, and governmental institutions had declined; this decrease in overall trust placed the United Statesâ ranking lower than nations including Uruguay and Mauritius. Nevertheless, the United States was not the only nation facing a declining Democracy Index score; the global community reportedly faced a âdemocratic recessionâ in 2016, culminating in no regions increasing their average rank (Economist Intelligence Unit 2017). Just as the impeccable credit rating of the United States had taken a dive in 2011, the characterization of being âflawedâ marred the polished democratic face of the country as the global community watched.
How did we get here? In this darkly surreal political milieu of elections, it nearly impossible to separate pretense from reality. Elections have arguably been granted more resources than ever before. Beginning in 2002, the landmark Help America Vote Act (HAVA) legislation has allocated billions of dollars in federal support for elections and codified a new national presence in election administrationâan area that had been largely within the purview of local governments. Furthermore, HAVA implemented significant state-level reforms and heightened public and media scrutiny applied to them. These election reformsâchanges to the electoral system aimed at improving elections to be fair and truly reflective of public sentiment expressed through the voteâseemed to portend a sweeping transformation of the manner in which Americans would vote. However, almost two decades after the 2000 election, many of the same or similar issues continue to plague the system.
These contradictory circumstances form the puzzle of American electoral reform in the United States: how have we allocated vast resources to fix documented problems in election administration without making consistent, significant dents in solving them, and often creating new ones in their wake? Is there a common thread that weaves throughout this history of critical voting pathologies and reforms that can help us understand the complicated tapestry of American elections to make our elections more fair and democratic? In other words, how do we âunrigâ our democratic elections?
Why Do Elections Matter and What Is so Important About Election Reform?
At this point, the reader of this book may wonder: Why care so much about an event that typically occurs only once a year, with major elections occurring only every other year? Why do elections even matter? Although democracy is a form of government that presupposes âthe people rule,â democratic republics such as the United States of America substitute the direct rule of the people for elected proxies who make authoritative decisions informed by and held accountable to âthe people.â For the cynical, elections are a means of satisfying a popular need to believe that oneâs voice is being heard. It quells the masses and reduces the probability of revolt. For the more optimistic, each election is a fundamental mechanism of accountability for those in power. Theoretically, when the elected continue to make choices that go against the will of the majority, they will be voted out of power in the next election. In this way, it behooves elected officials to keep a close eye on the pulse of their constituents, so that they will make decisions within a range of parameters that represent the boundaries of their constituentsâ political preferences. As the public will not register strong preferences on every issue, elected officials will have some latitude to vote their conscience. But regular, frequent elections are there to remind them that there are limits that influence their decisions; elected officials serve at the pleasure of the people. In this way, ââŠelections are the link between citizens and their elected officials ⊠it is the ballot box that allows voters to send their elected leaders mandates for policies âŠâ (Atkeson and Saunders 2007, p. 655).
It follows that if elections are a critical mechanism to ensure that a government remains responsive to the people, the elections themselves must be free, fair, and legitimate; this necessarily requires the full participation of those deemed eligible to vote. In other words, election outcomes should reflect the will of the people, not a manipulated result of duplicitous intervention. If elections lack these characteristics, democracy is arguably a farce. As Austin Erdman, former Registrar of Voters of San Joaquin County California , stated, an election must be an enterprise âthat is inclusive, not exclusive. We should be doing anything we can to make it easier for the voterâ (interview with Austin Erdman, former San Joaquin County, California Registrar of Voters). On the other hand, with so much at stake, it is also critical to ensure that only individuals who are qualified to vote (based on criteria established by society) are able to cast ballots. Protocols must be in place to prevent interference by ineligible voters or other entities seeking unmerited power, and to actively root it out where it exists. In turn, a fundamental conflict has emerged with regard to elections: access versus integrity.
Election Integrity vs. Access
Scholars who assess the extent to which elections are democratic tend to focus on these two key values: integrity and access (Kropf and Kimball 2012; Tokaji 2005). Election integrity is said to be high when people cast votes legitimately in the absence of fraud or manipulation. This is a critical aspect of democratic elections for many reasons. In a democracy, the perception of legitimacy of elections and election results is the lifeblood of a thriving political system; without this perception, political systems break down as individuals opt out based on an ultimate sense of powerlessness, or act up in ways that can provoke violence. This sense of external political efficacyâthat my vote counts in the way I intended it and elected officials pay attention to meâlubricates the gears of democracy. Devoid of this, the democratic government apparatus exists, but is not functional because individuals will refuse to participate in a system that systematically ignores their demands. A full democracy is downgraded to a flawed one, both metaphorically and in measurable Democracy Index terms.
In contrast, highly accessible elections are characterized by the maximum participation of eligible voters. Governments establish a set of criteria to determine voter eligibility that is prescribed in law. In the United States, these criteria have become less burdensome over time (e.g., eliminating sex- and race-based restrictions as well as land ownership provisions) and have consequently led to expanded suffrage. As election reforms are made to improve one of these key valuesâintegrity or accessâit may come at the cost of the other value. Thus as measures are strengthened to ensure that only highly verified, eligible voters are casting votes in elections, there is often a drop-off in voter turnout among individuals who may well be eligible but are unable to provide evidence at the time of the election. On the other hand, when restrictions are eased or convenience measures enacted to increase participation, some may argue that it opens the door to election fraud .
For example, permanent vote-by-mail (VBM) is a convenience measure intended to expand voter turnout by eliminating the need for voters to show up at a specific polling place on a single Election Day. As opposed to traditional voting, VBM enables voters to complete their ballot anywhere within an extended period of time and simply mail it to the elections office for receipt by Election Day. This increased potential for access, however, has led some critics to voice con...