11 ways to fix America's fundamentally broken democracy
The United States has a president who received nearly 3 million fewer votes than his Democratic opponent. Currently, over half the country lives in just nine states, which means that less than half of the population controls 82 percent of the Senate. It also means that Republicans hold a majority in the Senate despite the fact that Democratic senators represent more than half of the American people.
Intentional efforts to make it harder to vote, such as voter ID laws, are increasingly common throughout the states — and the Supreme Court frequently approaches such voter suppression with indifference. Gerrymandering renders many legislative elections irrelevant — in 2018, Republicans won nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Wisconsin state assembly, even though Democratic candidates received 54 percent of the popular vote. Wealthy donors flood elections with money, as lawmakers spend thousands of hours on “call time,” dialing the rich to fund the next campaign.
And looming over all of this is the problem of race. In some states, Republican lawmakers write voter suppression laws that target voters of color with, in the word of one federal appeals court, “almost surgical precision,” knowing that a law that targets minority votes will primarily disenfranchise Democrats.
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It all begins with securing our right to vote
1) First things first: Get rid of the filibuster
2) Stop voting rights violations before they happen
3) Eliminate registration as an obstacle to voting
4) Make it as easy as possible to vote
5) Stop running elections on the cheap
6) A tax credit for all voters
Making American democracy more democratic
7) Fix Senate malapportionment
8) Allow the states to neutralize the Electoral College
9) Stop gerrymandering
10) Public financing for candidates
11) Prevent Trump’s judges from sabotaging voting reforms
The article expounds on each of these points in detail. There are some great ideas here. Of course, as long as Republicans have any power, they will resist these ideas. They won't want to change anything that keeps them in power.
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