While every election cycle teaches us something about the American people and our system of government, 2020 is especially instructive. It seemed interminable, confusing, and probably will have lingering effects.
Although the coronavirus pandemic had an impact on the election process, there are permanent conditions that shaped how the overall election unfolded. Here are some lessons I suggest we should learn from the election cycle this year that many of us would like to forget.
- Our elections last too long
and are too expensive.
This is not just a matter of never-ending breaking news or of misspent capital. During the long battle between two political philosophies, each side has the opportunity to hear thousands of repeated campaign messages. Repetition not only establishes memory ascendence; it can alter decision making as well.
While not the only reason for the polarization, the sheer repetition of messages conditions us to react emotionally to news and political discourse. The more repetition, the more likely emotional reactions crowd out the possibility of rational discourse. These emotional reactions range from fear or anger to boredom, and provide scant opportunity for energetic and engaged discussion, researching possible social costs of promoted policies, polite disagreements, or negotiated compromises based on the common good.
A legally defined campaign season during which contenders who have sufficient percentages of support in public opinion have government-funded access to public media might more likely provide such opportunities.
Political campaigns on social media outlets should also be confined to the election season. Whatever shape the final reform might take, it should concentrate official campaigning into a restricted season. This is a fairly common practice among modern democratic nations.
The United States' campaign season is the longest and most expensive by nearly three times compared to other representative governments, and there is no law to prohibit it from becoming even longer and more expensive.
- Our system needs to be more democratic.
This is because a system that excludes some and favors others can create a detached and alienated citizenry with little confidence in all things governmental.
From bottom to top, our government, both national and state, is designed to be unrepresentative of the actual distribution of political thought and feelings in a given constituency. Our winner-take-all system deprives losers of voice and power.
For example, in Arkansas, on any given political belief such as a woman's right to a legal abortion, gun control, election reform and so on, a majority of Arkansans may believe one way, but our representatives to Washington believe another.
In the last election, 35 percent of the presidential votes from Arkansas went to Biden, yet all six of our electoral votes (100 percent) went to Trump. If you are consistently liberal in your politics and you live in Arkansas, you have no voice in Washington, D.C.
From all appearances, our representatives in Washington ignore voters of the minority party for four to six years, depending on their office. We do a disservice to the electorate by suggesting that we live in a democracy.
Compared to other democratic nations, the U.S. ranks 21st in how representative we are, and we are close to being declared a "failed democracy" by the Economist Intelligence Unit (a research and analysis division of The Economist Group).
Our system raises expectations and the inevitable disappointment that comes from watching one's candidate lose or deal with the consequences of victory. While imperfect, a system that is organized upon the principle of proportional representation encourages diversity and negotiated government policy, not my side or theirs.
In our system, hopes are high and disappointments are dramatic, due to the fact that losing may mean you're out of the game for several years. In a proportional system such as a parliamentary one, you are still in the game with your membership in parliament.
Of course, transforming our system from a representative republic, which is designed to guard against democracy, into a system that reflects the composition of the constituency would require a constitutional convention that might be so contentious as to be dysfunctional. Still, there is no shortage of suggestions about how to make us a more democratic nation.
At the top of the list are these: eliminating the Electoral College, reforming how legislative districts are defined (banning gerrymandering), term-limiting Supreme Court justices, passing a new voting rights act that encourages higher voter turnout and makes barriers to voting illegal, ending the filibuster, eliminating "dark" money, granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and lowering the voting age to 16.
It's ironic that a battle cry of the American revolution was "no taxation without representation," yet today 14 million legal residents (green card holders) pay payroll, property, and sales taxes, sometimes for years, yet cannot vote.
- Make our political system less cumbersome and more agile.
Our political system functions slowly and deliberatively, and this often creates stalemates. Our government appears uncaring to many voters.
For environmentalists, watching the ineffective and counter-productive policies and practices that favor the fossil fuel industry can led to cynicism and resignation. Our government is designed to be inefficient. I learned this in civics class with Mr. Hamn at Roosevelt Junior High in Tulsa, Okla.
He explained how the three branches of government guard against rash and ill-conceived legislation. Mr. Hamn taught us that while our system of checks and balances is supposed to promote rational decision-making, it makes quick responses to emergencies difficult and adaptations to social change laborious.
Since World War II, presidents have used emergency powers to circumvent Congress' war authority, and generally accomplish what they think should be done. This is partially the result of the inertia and dysfunction that is built into the U.S. governing system.
To the citizenry, careful deliberation may provoke frustration and polarization. For example, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently said there is no need to craft a coronavirus stimulus plan that the president will refuse to sign. But what about the citizens' needs? Wouldn't it make more sense to have economists and other social scientists use their objective analyses to arrive at a budget that would accommodate the unemployed and homeless working poor and benefit the overall economy?
Instead, we have a stalemate based on differing ideological perspectives about the proper role of government.
Perhaps rule changes in both houses could expedite the passing of bills and curb the power of committees to kill legislation that has popular support. Forcing votes in the Senate on measures passed in the House of Representatives might also untangle stalemates. A dysfunctional government does little to make legitimate whatever laws it passes and to inspire confidence in our system that would encourage informed voting.
Understanding the reasons that the 2020 election was so worrisome for many citizens is not just a matter of the personalities of those running for office, but the consequence of the nature of our republic, the pressing need for campaign reform, and the need to re-examine what kind of representative government we might need to prepare for difficult future challenges.
Jeff Nash is a retired sociologist living in Fayetteville.