Only Ranked Choice Voting Can Save American Democracy

Where it all started

Do you know who Cleisthenes (KLYS-thin-ese) is, without consulting your favorite search engine? I’ll save you the trouble. He is recorded in history as the father of democracy in early fifth century B.C. Greece. Now, you can look it up if you want because, like me, you probably did not know this if you have not studied it.

Here are a couple more trivia game winning factoids. The maximum number of initial democratic participants totaled less than 50,000. Only men over 30 were allowed to participate. And as that number grew over time, the efficacy of democracy became increasingly challenging, to the extent it is a wonder the system survived under the stress. Another trivia detail is that the Greek word democracy translates to “power of the people”. Can we all acknowledge that this definition fails to fit today?

One fact that is difficult to argue against today is that democracy has become a business in America. That certainly was never an early intention. In a business context, one “share” of democracy would be one vote. Dangerous forces have corrupted that idea over time, and that has led to a vote becoming an asset that can be bought and sold.

Are there any options left to save our democratic system?

I am growing in awareness that there is only one option for saving American democracy. That option is Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) on a national scale. At the very least, it will require enough states to change to this electoral form for the purpose of impacting the makeup of our federal legislative bodies. Barring the implementation of this voting process, we are politically speaking, a walking corpse. And the implications for life in America are at risk of becoming worse than that.

Do we really have democracy in America?

We have been programmed and propagandized all our lives to believe that democracy is a superior platform for building, growing, and managing a society. In theory, democratic governance is responsive to the people it purports to serve. One man, one vote, we are taught. Our desires and preferences will receive equal consideration in a democratic process. But wait, it is not quite that simple. What we actually have, we further learn, is a representative form of government. The representatives are selected through a purely democratic process. The question today is, how pure? Is there any purity to it at all? Many state governments are blatantly tampering with public access to the voting act so as to tilt the table in a specific direction.

The American version of democracy in action has devolved into a duopoly. Consequently, our constitutional framers must certainly be clawing their way out of their graves. We supposedly can have as many political factions as we wish, and we call them parties. But in reality, there are only two. And efforts to expand that number are met with resistance from every direction. For most of us, practicing democracy consists of nothing more that showing up at the polling places on election day, and choosing between candidates of one of two dominant parties. We are mostly convinced that we are throwing away our vote if we do not pick a candidate from one of those parties.

Does democracy even work as a means to manage governments and social needs?

It is also accurate to state that most of us have been growing increasingly dissatisfied with that experience. We have lost faith that we will see any social improvements or solutions to problems. Why is democracy touted to be the best form of governance there is? How would we know? We do not practice it and we do not experience it as an effective way to serve the greater good for our people. A popular aphorism about democracy, credited to Winston Churchill, is that it is the worst form of government in the world, except for all the others. Really? Is that the best defense of democracy we can come up with?

When it really matters, democracy steps aside

We are not as committed to democratic systems when it is necessary to accomplish vital and critical actions and outcomes. Consider the following two examples.

Example 1: There is practically nothing in our personal, day to day lives in which we apply democratic principles as a means of managing and pursuing desired outcomes. Think about that. A typical American family household is managed autocratically. Someone in the house has superior and final authority. The “man of the house” was sacrosanct a few generations ago. Efforts to expand on that or change it have been common for a while now. Authority might be shared more today be creating silos of household management. The adults, assuming there is more than one, might be the final arbiter of their particular silo. But democratic, it is not, where critically important decisions are concerned.

Example 2: This is also the case with businesses, both large and small. There is someone at the top of the pyramid who is in charge and has final say on anything they want. This is a totally autocratic system. In most cases, a business would not work otherwise. Sometimes we see stories about businesses that have found ways to operate on a consensus platform. But you probably can’t name one and are probably not using or consuming any products they make and sell. The head of most corporations would be called dictators if the companies were governments.

Democracy is an unnatural act, especially to our species

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
— John Adams

The reality is that democracy is very unnatural as a human construct for managing anything that really matters. We know instinctively that we want to either lead or be led. We do not know how to live with ambivalence. It confuses us. Someone must be in charge, responsible, and indisputably the final word. Decisions must be made in real life, and we want to believe there is someone willing to make them and command our respect and obedience. That is natural and logical.

Why do we insist on working so hard at a platform of social management that goes against our natural instincts so strongly? How did we become convinced that it makes sense to claim we desire a form of governance that has never actually worked harmoniously? Strong leaders constantly challenge its veracity and usually succeed in doing so. It is a constant battle. Practicing democracy never seems to find a natural order and flow. Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “…We have a republic, if we can save it.”

Even our elected representatives do not believe in our practice democracy

Let’s consider as another example our legislative bodies in Washington. Do the house and senate perform their actions in a democratic manner? Absolutely not. They select leaders among their group, and that leader absolutely dictates what will bills will make their way into a committee for review and approval, then the leader also controls with absolution the option for that bill to see a vote of the full body. There is no democratic purity about that process.

To be human is to instinctively recognize when we are working against the natural order of something. We pause and ask the question are we being taught that our methods are wrong? We look for alternative processes where our efforts seem to naturally fall in place. We honor the axiom that a sure sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Then we make intelligent adjustments to change course or methods and hopefully make progress toward our intentions.

Democracy fosters the illusion that we are equal in every way that is meaningful. Our collective will is supposed to serve the greater good. In practice, this requires a lot of self-sacrifice and subordination of our personal desires to the wellbeing of the majority. We have rarely exemplified that way of co-existing in America. The exceptions to that fact, recall the time leading up to World War II as an example, came about when our leaders at the time convinced us that our very survival depended upon our willingness to put our individual desires and pursuits on hold and work together to achieve a grand goal. In other words, fear was the driving force that brought us together. It was not motivation toward what we could gain, but rather fear of what we would lose otherwise. That is not a glowing endorsement for democracy.

In practice, we do not even attempt to be a truly democratic government and society. Our elected representatives do not work toward and honor democratic principles. In current times, they work hard to avoid them. We hear a constant stream of rhetoric about the wonders and merit of democracy from candidates seeking our votes. But they do not believe anything they are saying in public if we measure them by their actions once in office. If they are not on the phone begging for money, they are crafting ways to pass laws and regulations to benefit their major donors, while trying to convince the rest of us that what they are doing is for our general benefit and well-being.

So…what is the solution?

By now, if you are still reading this, you are saying to yourself, this author does not appear to believe in democracy at all as a form of sovereign governance. And I understand how one might conclude that from my comments herein. But that would miss the most important point. Would it really matter if I believe in democracy? I would argue that you don’t either. I arrive at that observation by your actions, or more concisely by your lack of them. Ask yourself, “Do I really believe in democracy, or am I just believing what I have been conditioned to believe?” While you are at it, ask, “What would I be willing to put on the line to conserve it?”

We are losing democracy in America. Electoral duopoly has failed us beyond repair. Unless we can find it in our collective will to move to Ranked Choice Voting, we cannot possibly move forward as a society.

My next post will focus on projected outcomes and predictions of the impact from Ranked Choice Voting.