Out of the Woods

For a truly Representative Democracy

We are once again involved in many electoral campaigns where individuals offer themselves as representatives of a sizable number of citizens. People are running for national, state and local offices, for President, or the Senate as well as for quaint local offices such as “Registrar of Deeds.” Each candidate offers to represent voters in their specific job. So it is an opportune time to reflect about representation.

The elected representatives have a difficult job because they are expected to speak on behalf a large number of voters who disagree with each other in many important ways.  Some of the people who vote for a given representative are poor or are barely getting by, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and always owing money to the credit card company or a bank or perhaps a friend or family member. Others are, to put it plainly, filthy rich.  Many of the supporters of any representative are seriously interested in sports and are willing to see public monies used to build stadiums or race tracks. Others are into books and want to spend more money for their public libraries. The academic programs in colleges mean more to them than their football teams.

The elected representative clearly cannot speak for all these different groups. Moreover different sets of voters have very many different interests and concerns . There are too many of them for one representative to speak to or to support by fighting for relevant legislation.  In our system, it is quite unclear what I should expect from a representative I might choose to vote for. I have no guarantee that voting for one representative rather than another will advance my interests and the values that matter to me.

This is a real problem when a candidate runs for an office for the first time. But don’t voters know their representative who has been in office for a long time? You would think so. But the representative has an interest in getting the support of as many of his constituents as possible. He is better of if his stands in Congress are not so well known so that more of his constituents might be willing to vote for him, not knowing that he actually does not support one or the other of their interests. Unless representatives run unopposed in their districts or, if they run opposed, have little problem winning re-election, it is in their best interest to have their constituents remain in the dark about what they believe in and stand for.

This has a number of serious consequences for our democracy. Since I am not clear what my representative will actually stand for, choosing to vote for anyone candidate on the basis of issues  is not really possible. I do not have the necessary information for making a reasonable choice. I might just as well vote for a candidate whose family is really cute or who promises to be good company at a barbecue. Not knowing what a representative will stand for encourages voters to make their choices for irrelevant and often trivial reasons.

More seriously many voters abstain from participating in elections because they know that casting their vote for one candidate or another may very well not make any difference to them.  So why bother?
The representative, on the other hand,  does not feel obligated to take specific stands on behalf of the voters. It was never clear quite what the representative stood for and it was always obvious that the representative could not represent all the interests or all the values of the people who voted for them. In advocating  for very special interest groups—as they most often do-- the representatives are not really violating their commitments to their voters because they never made any definite commitment.

Other countries deal with the problem of whom the representative represents by having representatives clearly identified as members of specific political parties where these parties have more or less explicit written party platforms. When I vote in an election like that I have some reason to be confident that the persons I vote for will  share my values and represent my interests. ( Obviously that does not always work. ) But in such a system you need more than two parties. Where, as in the US,  there are only two major parties there is no way you can know, most of the time, what you are voting for. The person you vote for frequently does not represent you in any specific way.

In our existing electoral system with only two political parties representatives cannot be clearly distinguished from each other and so no one quite knows what they are voting for . The choices we are asked to make are most of the time completely irrational because we don't have any definite information about the difference between the candidates . Everyone stands for freedom and prosperity. What more specifically a candidate stands for we don't find out until after he or she has been voted in.

If we are ever going to repair our democracy we need to abolish the two party system.  Each voter is entitled to be offered a party platform that summarizes  the central concerns of this citizen.  Since there is a significant number of persons who are profoundly invested in the present arrangements that is not going to be easy. But it is essential.

A second change that is equally important is for some sort of proportional representation.  If, under our system, you vote for the losing candidate your vote will not count for anything. The promise of democracy where everyone's vote counts equally is not kept under the system of voting that we have. Under proportional representation, the proportion of voters a specific party wins determines how many representatives they will have. Above a certain minimum every political party will have some representation. Every vote is counted; every vote  makes a difference. There is no such thing  as wasting a vote.

Until we make at least these two changes in our electoral system , ours will be a democracy in name only.