The United States Another Minoritarian Nation

[Music]

we americans whether rightly or wrongly

are proud

of our democratic tradition we don’t

have a simple

democracy we have a representative

democracy what our framers would have

called a republic

and in a republic it is the majority who

is to win

a republic is majoritarian

but other nations and important points

in their past

have not been majoritarian south africa

before the end of apartheid liberia

under the control of african american

nationals iraq with sunnis in baathist

iraq

syria with the alawites rwanda with the

tutsis these nations at those moments

were not majoritarian

they were minoritarian they had systems

that protected a minority

that gave the minority a power to rule

over

the majority that made them minoritarian

okay so the simple idea i want to convey

to you in a couple minutes that i’ll

have your attention here is that

whatever

the united states has been the united

states

is becoming a minoritarian

nation now you might hear that and say

becoming women didn’t have the right to

vote in america until just

early in the last century african

americans halfway through the century

before the populists for much of

american history

had no right to vote and even today

immigrants have no right to vote and

most teens

have no right to vote you could say

america has always been

a minoritarian nation and in that sense

it is true

but i mean something different here i

mean

among those we say should count

among citizens among voters among those

america is becoming a minoritarian

nation and this

i want to argue is new okay here’s what

i mean

the american government is divided into

four critical institutions

congress is divided between a senate and

a house

the executive is ruled by a president

and the judiciary is governed by a

supreme court together

these institutions have built a

precariously

majoritarian representative democracy

here’s why it’s precarious think about

the efficiency of a vote in our

democracy and by that i just mean

how popular votes translate into

political power

so if a vote is 100 efficient it

perfectly translates

into political power if it’s less than

100 efficient

it’s not perfectly translating into

political power

so the house of representatives is the

closest we have to a perfectly efficient

democratic institution

over the past 20 years democrats have

achieved a 97 percent efficiency while

republicans have achieved 103

meaning for every vote they get they get

more than that in effective political

representation

the presidency is a little less

efficient in the period

1796 to 2020

the democracy has succeeded 89

of the time meeting 89 percent of the

time the winner of the popular vote

has been selected as the president the

current

supreme court is much less

democratically efficient

five of the current justices were

appointed

by presidents who were not selected

by the popular vote in their first term

which means we have a 44 democratic

efficiency

in the supreme court and certainly the

worst institution

for democratic efficiency is the united

states senate

between 2020 2020

the democrats had a 95 efficiency in the

united states senate and the republicans

likewise had 103 percent meaning their

votes

mattered more but even more important

because the senate

has two senators per states and states

are wildly different in their population

that means that a small proportion of

america

has the effective ability to block what

the majority

of the people in america might want now

in 1790

what that meant is that states

representing 26 percent of the

population

had the capacity to block legislation in

the senate

but those numbers have only gotten worse

in 2010

it was states representing just 18

percent

of the american population who could

block what the united states senate did

and when you count the filibuster in

2010

states representing just 12 percent

of the american population would have

the capacity to block the united

states senate from passing legislation

that the house has passed and that the

president

would have signed so if you look at that

system you say

it if it’s majoritarian it certainly was

precariously majoritarian and we can see

some of that precariousness too

in the 2020 election in the 2020

election if you look at the votes for

democrats

in every one of the major democratic

institutions

the democrats achieved a majority they

got more votes than republicans in the

house

more votes than republicans in the

senate and more votes than republicans

for the presidency

and indeed the system awarded control to

the democrats in each of those three

institutions but with the presidency

it was extremely precarious though joe

biden

beat donald trump by more than 7 million

votes

if just 26 000 votes in three states

had gone for donald trump donald trump

could have been elected

president in the house of

representatives so if america

is a majoritarian republic it is a

precariously

majoritarian republic at least that has

been

our past okay but here’s the thing if

we’ve been precariously majoritarian

i fear we’re about to become

minoritarian

because of changes that are happening

right now

so consider what we could call the

techniques of minoritarianism

the first technique is vote suppression

after this last election where an

extraordinary number of people

voted because of techniques that enabled

everybody to participate

easily states across the country

are beginning to impose restrictions on

the freedom to vote

to make it harder for democrats to vote

than for republicans

the new york times reports over 200

bills

are now being considered in legislatures

across the country

number two gerrymandering because of the

way

politicians draw districts and because

2020 triggers a new redistricting

cycle in this new cycle because

republicans control

more state houses the republicans will

be able to gerrymander those districts

to produce majority control when they

only have

the minority of the votes as the new

york times reports

the gop could retake the house in 2020

based solely on the gains from newly

drawn

districts and then number three

something we’ve never seen in american

history what we could call

faithless legislature laws states are

considering laws that would give the

legislature the power to flip

the results in a presidential election

if the legislature doesn’t like

who the people voted for if we were

precarious

this precariousness is ending but not in

a good way

this precariously majoritarian democracy

is becoming predictably minoritarian

now elsewhere in other countries you

might expect the judiciary to step in

elsewhere the courts would step in and

demand representational

equality in the face of these types of

changes

ours has at least historically

in 1963 the supreme court declared

against a system

that benefited some minority over the

majority

a principle of one person one vote

constraining how legislatures

might have the power to muck about with

this principle of majoritarianism

but this supreme court has been very

different

it has never resisted this slide to

minoritarianism

it has upheld id rules that

disproportionately burden

democrats it has held up unequal access

rules that disproportionately burden

democrats and it is upheld partisan

gerrymandering

which disproportionately burdens

democrats it is only

ever accelerated minoritarian rule

in the series of decisions about money

in speech the supreme court has upheld

the power

of the rich to participate in our

political system

more powerfully than the rest of us it

has entrenched the power of money

over the people meaning it is entrenched

minoritarian democracy

at least when it comes to money in

politics

i think we have to accept the judges

won’t save us here

and so the question is who could well

the most obvious institution that could

save us from this minoritarianism

is the united states congress and indeed

right now

congress is considering a statute called

hr1

for the people act which is the most

important democratic reform

in two generations to have passed the

house of representatives

what hr one would do is not address the

electoral college because congress

doesn’t have that power directly

and he can’t address the senate because

the power of the senate is entrenched

in the constitution but it radically

reduces the capacity of states to

suppress the votes

of disfavored political parties and it

ends partisan gerrymandering meaning

everyone would have an equal

freedom to vote in districts that were

drawn not for partisan advantage and

most importantly to me

it changes the way money affects

politics giving politicians the capacity

to run their campaigns without depending

upon

the tiny few to fund their campaigns it

does that

and so much more this would be the most

important change we’ve seen

radically entrenching the ideals

of majoritarian democracy but here’s the

catch

for hr1 to pass it must pass the united

states senate

and to pass the united states senate

given the filibuster rule

it needs 60 votes

so that means we need a super majority

to secure majoritarianism

in america in this sense

we’ve produced a minoritarian nation

in this sense america is a rock

okay so that’s a depressing story and if

bad

science fiction is to be believed then

perhaps this hopelessness

is a reason for hope

you say we’re on the brink of

destruction and you’re right

but it’s only on the brink that people

find the will to change only at the

precipice

do we evolve only at

the precipice if the senate can end the

filiposter

and pass h.r 1 then we will have evolved

in america

if not then i fear that this list of

minoritarian nations needs

one more added to the list

the united states for no good reason

and at great loss to the whole of the

world

you