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