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Capturing Democracy's Surge

Stuart Comstock-Gay and Miles Rapoport

In this extraordinary and groundbreaking election year, old assumptions about what a presidential candidate had to look like have been retired forever. The 2008 campaign would have produced the first female presidential nominee of a major party - had it not given us the first African American nominee instead. After the Democrats had made their decision, the Republicans delivered the second-ever female nominee for Vice President.

But well before anyone had been nominated or elected, democracy itself was the winner. The supposedly "frontloaded" Democratic race was longer and closer than anyone expected, with hotly contested results far beyond the usual battlegrounds. More than 58 million Americans voted in primary contests across the country this year. That's a 65 percent increase over the previous record of 35 million, set in 1988. Youth voter participation doubled over its 2004 level; in a few states, it rose fourfold and more. African Americans voted in numbers that conventional wisdom and party insiders had considered impossible. In states where people could register and vote on primary day, over 300,000 people made use of the opportunity. The number of people contributing to political campaigns through the Internet and other small-donor channels increased dramatically. So did the number of people working for candidates. More than two million people have given money to the Obama campaign this year. Nearly as many are said to have volunteered.

We should be inspired by the 2008 story - inspired to think hard about how to capture the transforming energy of a remarkable political year, and build it into our politics over the long term. That will mean major structural reforms of a kind that have been impossible to achieve up until now; otherwise, democracy could easily slip back into the shrunken and distorted condition that has been the modern norm.

Americans are struggling mightily today. That should be no surprise. In recent decades, economic policy decisions have consistently favored a wealthy few, while making life more precarious and volatile for others. Since the early 1980s, after-tax income has increased 176 percent for the highest-earning one percent of Americans; it has gone up just six percent for the bottom fifth. The agenda of a powerful minority has taken precedence because of the failure of our democracy.

Three parallel trends brought us to this pass: a drop in voter participation; a simultaneous rise in the influence of money; and a decline in civic engagement generally and confidence in government in particular. Voter turnout, which plummeted after Vietnam and Watergate, continued to decline until 2004. In its decline, political participation gradually became a mirror of our racial, age, and class divide, with the graphs of income and voting running along almost parallel lines.

Some citizens have been entirely pushed out of the process. More than five million Americans are currently without their voting rights as a result of a felony conviction - a policy with a greatly disproportionate impact on racial minorities. In some states, 25 percent of African American men have been declared ineligible to vote. Restrictive voter registration deadlines and other barriers have kept countless Americans from taking part. Federal and state governments have failed to implement the 1993 Motor Voter law, letting millions of poor people go unregistered. Young people have been notoriously disengaged from politics, despite the fact that youth volunteerism doubled between 1989 and 2005.

As voter turnout has declined, the influence of money has become more pronounced. At every level, campaigns have become exponentially more expensive, forcing candidates to spend vast amounts of time raising money and meeting with donors - and leaving them with woefully little time, photo ops aside, for encounters that might help them understand the concerns of ordinary people. Predictably, many government policies have been shown to benefit those wealthy supporters. Our money-infused system hurts everyday Americans, hurts candidates, and hurts American principles of fairness and equality. Many citizens understandably see our politics as an insiders' game of money and influence.

Voter participation went into its steep decline in the 1960s. That's also when Americans began to have less overall confidence in government and the officials who personify it. In recent polling, two-thirds of Americans have expressed distant and disconnected feelings about government, which they see as serving special interests over the common interest. Much of that response is the result of a systematic undermining of government by those who fear its potential to play a countervailing role to private wealth and power. When conservative strategist Grover Norquist promised to shrink government "down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub," he expressed what has been the dominant political ideology of the past three decades.

Our democracy's deficits have been a major contributor to economic insecurity and hardship, and a significant factor in the diminished sense of national confidence that has been a recurring theme of public opinion surveys recently. The administrative nightmares of the 2000 election, and some more since, have only exacerbated people's concerns about how America's democracy is managed.

America needs an election process that is efficient, trustworthy, and welcoming. We need a renewed sense of citizenship and service, and a government that people can believe in. The next administration should work hard to bring all voices into the democratic game, energetically expand voting and civic participation, and lead the country toward a new understanding of government's role.

These are not trivial afterthoughts to the real world of economic policy. In today's America, elections and civil engagement are questions of policy, not just process; and democracy policy ranks right up there with (because it has become inseparable from) health care policy, energy policy, trade policy, and the rest. We won't get our country right until we get our democracy right.

National Election Standards

To assure election integrity and rebuild voter confidence, we need a firm set of national election standards. Our elections are a patchwork quilt of thousands of different jurisdictions, which vary wildly in funding and competence. Many states do an excellent job. Others do not. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) was established after the 2000 Florida debacle as part of the Help America Vote Act, to oversee and help fund improvements in election administration. But it has been underfunded, and was by design not given any enforcement capability. The EAC needs the resources and the authority to set and enforce national standards in a number of critical areas. Key issues include voting machines with public software and stringent audits, accurate voter lists, adequate poll worker preparation, identification requirements that do not discourage voters, and expanded voter registration opportunities.

The Department of Justice must recommit itself to enforcing the voting rights laws now on the books. Over the past ten years, the DOJ has ignored the National Voter Registration Act and has shown little interest in upholding the Voting Rights Act. During the current administration, many DOJ enforcement actions were designed to shrink the rolls rather than expand participation. When confronted with evidence of deceptive voter practices in African American and Hispanic communities, the DOJ did nothing. It must energetically play its role in ensuring that all eligible citizens can cast a meaningful vote.

Expanded Access

We need a legislative agenda to move the country toward universal voter registration. Election Day Registration is a key and achievable reform; EDR states have voter participation levels 8 to 10 points higher than states without it. Voting opportunities should be expanded through early voting over a three-week period prior to Election Day, through the wider use of mail-in ballots, and through polling places with a sufficient number of machines and full accessibility. Residents of the District of Columbia should have full representation. Efforts to discourage people from voting through intimidation or deceptive practices must be outlawed and penalized.

Campaign Financing

The President should take the lead in enacting a comprehensive public financing system for federal elections. The presidential financing system is broken, and there is no public financing for congressional elections. Despite Obama's success, most candidates are still beholden to the high-stakes pay-for-play fundraising system. Senators Richard Durbin and Arlen Specter, and Representative John Larson have proposed a public funding system for Congress based on the successful model pioneered in Maine, Arizona, and Connecticut. Research by Americans for Campaign Reform shows that $6 per person would fully fund all congressional races. Small-donor interest should be encouraged alongside meaningful public financing.

Deliberative Democracy

Democracy has too often been discussed only in terms of elections. For democracy to be truly vibrant, citizens need to connect with the decisions that matter in their lives. Research and practice show there is tremendous value in deliberative gatherings to debate and discuss important issues. Whether these meetings are large-scale conferences or a series of weekly get-togethers, whether they are intended to address problems of racism, zoning, health care, or schools, these deliberative sessions allow a diversity of voices to be heard, and better decisions to be made. Efforts at active civic engagement have taken root in communities around the country over the last two decades, and they ought to be encouraged in multiple venues at the local, state, and federal levels.

Technology plays a role here, too. People who care about the same issues do not always live in the same physical communities. Through Web sites, blogs, Twitter, and even deliberative chat sessions, they can gather and deliberate online, to the great benefit of our democracy. These practices can help make citizens more committed not just to the topic at hand, but to civil society in general.

In addition, it is time to put citizenship education back into school curricula, so that the next generation knows how to play the democracy game. And while we're at it, our new models of engagement - deliberative and high-tech - ought to be part of that education.

Citizens should also be encouraged to engage in national service. One possibility is a program of universal national service linked to scholarship aid for college and occupational education. Such a program would have the dual benefit of making college more affordable and reviving a universal notion of citizenship.

A Citizen-Friendly Government

A critical element of reviving citizenship is restoring a belief in government as the place where we all, as citizens, come together to solve our common problems and plan for the future. An important starting point is to make government function in a way that is citizen-friendly. The next administration should work to increase the transparency of government and lift the veil of secrecy that all too often has been placed on budgeting and rule-making. Taking as a starting point the new law requiring the federal budget to be accessible on the Web, the administration should make ever-increasing amounts of information available online.

Ronald Reagan was a leader in undermining people's faith in government. The next president should lead in regaining the people's trust in government as a place where problems are solved. We need to not just rebuild our infrastructure, but to teach the public about the critical importance of maintaining it. Not just to increase Head Start funding, but to articulate the rationale for public investment in children. Not just to re-regulate areas of the economy that have run amok, but to explain why a fair set of rules and regulations is essential to economic growth. For these tasks, leadership will be as important as policy change.

Office of Civic Participation

Restoring our democracy will require an ambitious and multifaceted agenda. A new White House Office of Civic Participation could have a key role to play. This new body could work with agencies throughout the federal government to encourage collaborative governance, dramatically enhancing levels of participation in decision-making. It could also encourage new and more creative forms of democratic participation at all levels of government. It could support grant programs for civic participation initiatives in the non-profit sector. And it could be a focal point for meaningful election reform.

As a long-term mission, it could work to develop a new relationship between Americans and their government. As government becomes more open and more of a place of citizen participation, new understandings will emerge to replace the negative views currently held by so many. And new discussions on making American democracy as inclusive and vibrant as possible can occur. For instance, a White House Conference on Citizenship could begin to engage Americans in the understanding of citizenship itself, which could enliven our national discourse, and help shift the immigration debate away from polarization and toward a national dialogue on what it means to be American.

  1. According to political researcher Rhodes Cook, publisher of the Rhodes Cook Letter, cited by Tim Storey, "The Perils of Success," State Legislatures, September 2008.
  2. "Young Voter Turnout 2008 - Primaries and Caucuses," March 5, 2008, updated June 4, 2008, Rock the Vote. The report shows Mississippi increase (from 2004 to 2008) at 402%, Rhode Island 806%, Florida 247%. Every other state, except Michigan (with a decrease of 18%) showed increases ranging from 42% to 229%.
  3. Demos, "Democracy Dispatches," July 24, 2008. http://demos.org/democracydispatches/dd94.htm
  4. Sarah Liebowitz, "Donor From Atkinson Connects With Obama," August 19, 2008, Concord (NH) Monitor. "For $25, Ed Prouty got four minutes with Barack Obama. Like many others, Prouty has given money to Obama's presidential campaign. But the Atkinson resident made his donation at an opportune time: Prouty has the distinction of being Obama's 2 millionth donor…"
  5. Sherman, Arloc and Aron-Dine, Aviva, "New CBO Data Show Income Inequality Continues to Widen: After-Tax Income for Top 1 Percent Rose $146,000 in 2004," January 23, 2007, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
  6. Erika Wood, "Restoring the Right to Vote," Brennan Center for Justice, 2008. http://brennan.3cdn.net/8782cc82daf02b9431_29m6ibzbu.pdf
  7. Douglas R. Hess and Scott Novakowski, "Unequal Access: Neglecting the National Voter Registration Act, 1995-2007," Project Vote and Demos, 2008, http://www.demos.org/pubs/UnequalAccessReport-web.pdf
  8. "Volunteer Growth in America: A Review of Trends Since 1974," Corporation for National and Community Service, 2006.
  9. Meg Bostrom, "By, of for, the people?: A Meta Analysis of Public Opinion of government," Demos, 2005. http://www.demos.org/pub469.cfm
  10. Interview on National Public Radio, May 25, 2001, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1123439
  11. "Voters Win With Election Day Registration," Demos, 2007. http://demos.org/pubs/Voters%20Win.pdf
  12. S.936, "Fair Elections Now," http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.936:
  13. "About Public Funding: What It Costs," http://www.just6dollars.org/funding/whatitcosts