OPINION: Democracy dies when the minority rules

Just wonderin’ as I write a day before the 2024 election: Do public school teachers still tell their students the big lie that I learned in the good ol’ days?

“We live in a democracy. Majority rules.”

Four times in our nation’s history, a president was chosen with fewer votes than his opponent. Two of these instances happened recently.

In 2000, George W. Bush was elected with 47.9% of the vote, beating Al Gore who drew 48.6% of the ballots.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton received almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump, who was elected president.

By the time you read this column, we may know whether it has happened again, or not if the election was as close as the polls indicated.

Regardless, we are living in perilous times.

Many people think so. I’m not including voters who the former president has terrified with false claims about nearly everything.

Our times, our future, our progeny’s future is threatened by the loss of democracy.

If it happens, it’s because of the Electoral College, in which electors from our states and territories vote for president. Each state and territory has a number of electors based on its population.

This trumps (small t) the popular vote.

However, this isn’t the only way that the majority may not rule.

Other ways include gerrymandering, adopting rules that make it difficult for social classes of citizens to cast ballots, and other such antidemocratic strategies.

Gerrymandering, which both Democrats and Republicans have used, occurs at state, territorial and local levels.

Political parties change geographical voting districts in manners that restrict the power of their opponents.

It is both antidemocratic and legal; but it isn’t new.

The corrupt practice dates to 1812 when Eldridge Gerry, as governor of Massachusetts, signed a bill that created a partisan district in the Boston area that was compared to the shape of a mythological salamander.

It was so drawn to benefit the Democratic-Republican Party. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused as late as 2019 to block partisan gerrymandering and it is highly evident in some states in our current election.

Coincidentally, I’m reading David Daley’s “Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-year Plot to Control American Elections.”

He asserts that Republicans have taken over the Supreme Court through the appointment of hard right-wing justices who now, with a 6-3 majority, have politicized the high court.

Daley asserts that the Supreme Court undermined the 1965 Voting Rights Act with its 2013 decision on Shelby County v. Holder, and in later cases. He gives many examples.

He reports that the far-right Federalist Society is now positioned via GOP fiat to ensure that as long as the party controls the White House no Supreme Court justice will be nominated without Federalist Society approval.

As evidence, Daley quotes Donald Trump’s statement in 2016: “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society.”

And, Trump spoke not only of candidates for the Supreme Court, but for all federal judgeships.

The Society also is working to elect state supreme court justices.

In 2010 SCOTUS ruled in the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission that corporations have the same rights as individual persons to make political contributions.

The result has been a flood of corporate money to buy politicians.

We also have billionaires donating millions of dollars to candidates of their liking; and finally, television ads and social media trivialize election issues.

Never a pessimist, it is increasingly difficult for me to be optimistic about America’s future.

Terence L. Day and wife, Ruth, have lived in Pullman since 1972. In 2004, he retired after 32 years as a science communicator on the Washington State University faculty. His interests and reading are catholic (small c) and peripatetic. He welcomes emails to terence@moscow.com. Give him a piece of your mind.