Blair Bobier
Here in California, crisis is giving way to opportunity. The state’s apocalyptic budget situation has yielded an equally dramatic solution: retooling state government through a citizen-initiated constitutional convention.
The rest of the country would be wise not only to pay attention, but to follow suit. California, the ungovernable, holds lessons for the United States, the ungovernable. And if history is any guide, what happens in California – from political movements to cultural revolutions to technological innovations – winds up being replicated throughout the nation.
The California constitution is a veritable Tower of Babel – an unwieldy, self-contradictory document badly in need of reform. The U.S. Constitution, a model of innovation at the time of its adoption, is similarly ill-suited to govern the lives of its increasingly diverse citizenry. Created by and for an exclusionary elitist society, the original Constitution established a government for a fledgling nation that was then a thin strip along the Eastern seaboard with a population of 2.5 million people. Not only did the original document enshrine slavery as an accepted practice, it created a number of blatantly anti-democratic institutions.
The past few decades have seen a number of campaigns focused on romanticized notions of “taking our country back,” as though the country actually belonged to “We, the People” in the first place.
In truth, it never did: the Declaration’s pursuit of happiness was not meant to include people of color, women and working-class citizens; all have been enfranchised, but only after years of struggle. Now the most dangerous threat to American democracy is the stubborn and misguided belief that we actually have one. The Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, expanding corporate influence over the electoral process, should challenge this unfounded assumption.
Despite our imperfect national origins, this much should be self-evident in the 21st century: Each and every American should have an equal voice in our country’s political process. Yet the Supreme Court’s decision, equating money with speech, defies this logic as well as the basic tenets of democracy. Is there any doubt that corporate cash buys access and influence far beyond that of the ordinary citizen? Equating cash with speech subverts the fundamental principle of one person, one vote because the more cash one possesses, the more votes one can buy.
Congressional action to address the court’s decision would be, at best, an imperfect solution since the court is the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution. That leaves one option: amending the Constitution. Our modern, multi-ethnic, transcontinental nation must embrace systemic change if we have any hope to match our ideals of democracy with the realities of our political practices.
In addition to restoring free speech, the Senate and the presidency must be transformed as democratic institutions. The Senate is remarkably unrepresentative: California’s 38 million people have equal representation with the 500,000 residents of Wyoming. The composition of the Senate, the vestige of an ancient compromise related to the perpetuation of slavery, threatens any legitimate claims this country has to democracy. One has to wonder: would a genuinely representative Senate, uninfluenced by corporate lobbyists, still be debating whether to provide all U.S. citizens with the same access to health care that the senators themselves enjoy?
Like the Senate, the Electoral College is a historical anachronism born of horse-trading and expediency. Since its electoral formula is based, in part, on the composition of the Senate, it, too, is unquestionably anti-democratic. Whether one person, the president, should have ultimate responsibility for the governance of 300 million people is best left for another debate. For now, suffice it to say that, at a minimum, that individual should be elected by a majority vote of the people.
Although George Bush’s 2000 election is perhaps the starkest example of the shortcomings of the Electoral College, it must be noted that Bill Clinton was twice elected without a majority vote. This irrational electoral process is not only undemocratic, it results in a political beauty pageant devoid of serious scrutiny or debate. Using instant-runoff voting to elect our president, as the Republic of Ireland does, would encourage consideration of a diversity of candidates, allow for substantive debate and ensure that our national leader has the broadest support possible.
Free speech for all, a representative government and a democratically elected president: “The world’s greatest democracy” should settle for nothing less.