@ISSUE: How to make democracy more democratic

Tuesday is Election Day, when citizens once again will have an opportunity to express their preferences at the polls. Sadly, fewer than 40 percent of those eligible to vote will do so. Why? Frustration with the gridlock in Washington. Disgust with dirty campaigns. Dissatisfaction with the quality of candidates. Recognition that outcomes often are predetermined by gerrymandering. A sense that their vote won’t make a difference.

We asked four New Jersey political science professors for their ideas on how to fix the system. We asked them to reply to this question: “What are the most important electoral reforms needed to make our democratic system more responsive to the American people, and which reforms stand the best chance of being implemented?” Their answers follow:

Gerrymandering feeds dysfunctional politics

By Krista Jenkins

The most important electoral reform needed to make our democratic system more responsive to the American people, and the reform most likely to succeed, are not one in the same.

Over the past few decades, both political parties have engaged in partisan gerrymandering. Basically, this is a fancy way of saying district lines are drawn in a way to maximize the chance that one side or the other will win an election, simply by virtue of packing a district with those who identify with a particular party.

Depending on who controls the state legislature, one side benefits more than the other. Therefore, both sides have tacitly agreed to its practice since both parties will inevitably end up with legislative control sooner or later. Unfortunately, this means elected officials need not concern themselves with the interests of minority party voters in their district. The ideological polarization that defines political dysfunction can largely be traced to partisan gerrymandering. There are simply no electoral benefits to be gained by compromise, and members of Congress must be sensitive to their political base, lest they face a challenge in the primary to someone deemed more ideologically pure.

The mutual benefits gained by this system for both parties — safe, majority districts — belie any attempts to do away with this practice. Therefore, until voters force the hand of state legislatures at the time of redistricting, partisan gerrymandering will continue into the future, as it has defined our troubled recent past.

On the other side of the equation, reforms most likely to succeed are those that do away with voter identification laws that make it more difficult to exercise one’s constitutional right to vote. My claim that such reforms are the most likely to succeed may seem odd to some, given the Supreme Court’s recent unwillingness to intercede in the Texas case coupled with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s scathing dissent.

In that case, the court was asked to halt the application of Texas’ voter identification law — among the most stringent and, according to its critics, discriminatory, in the country — in November’s election. They did not, ruling instead that their involvement at this late hour would complicate the electoral process and possibly undermine voter confidence in the system.

However, I continue to believe that the arc of U.S. history clearly leans toward more rather than less enfranchisement. True, unabated increases in the disproportionately large minority prison population suggest the U.S. remains comfortable with widespread disenfranchisement. But, in general, voting’s place as the great participatory equalizer has been the foundation of suffrage and civil rights movements. This suggests to me that suspiciously restrictive voter identification laws will not withstand legal scrutiny and are likely to result in legislative action that is designed to undo any harm done to our representative democracy.

Krista Jenkins is a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University and executive director of FDU’s PublicMind poll.

Super PAC disclosure, weighing other views

By Brian Potter

Regardless of their political party affiliation, the overwhelming majority of Americans are dissatisfied with American politics. While there is no magic cure for this malaise, I offer three simple means of improvements that can be implemented easily and quickly.

The rapid rise of and lack of transparency in campaign funding, particularly through super PACS, generate suspicions of corruption. Individuals, corporations and other groups can donate without limits to issue-oriented campaigns, and do so anonymously (or report it after the election). Political expression, through financial donation or more traditional means of participation, cannot be anonymous in an accountable, constitutional democracy. Debate requires the opportunity to respond to an opinion and critically examine the source of the opinion.

Super PACs could immediately, easily and cheaply list their donors on a website, and television commercials could briefly show the website address. The Citizen United decision did not forbid requiring that donors be listed; requiring this falls under the powers of Congress, not the courts. Congress could pass in time for the next election cycle legislation requiring immediate disclosure of super PAC donations.

One of the main problems with Congress is that it passes few laws, yet some legislation, notably budgets, is necessary. In some years, Congress did not approve all 12 budget bills by the Oct. 1 deadline, and in a few recent years, it failed to pass a single budget bill. Federal spending does not stop, or even slow, when Congress fails to pass a budget as “stop-gap” measures or continuing resolutions keep the federal bureaucracies funded. Spending in the trillions of dollars continues, just without any sort of strategic plan.

One way to encourage members of Congress to pass budgets would be to require that they stay in Washington until their work on the budget is finished. Members of Congress have homes in Washington, so requiring that they stay at work is not cruel. However, it does deny them the ability to return home and hit the campaign trail, which is something of great importance to elected officials. Congress could easily pass a law requiring members to stay in the capital until a full annual budget is completed, giving politicians an incentive to compromise before they could return to campaigning.

This suggestion might provide for more accountability in budgeting but it will not solve all political gridlock in Washington or elsewhere. Gridlock occurs when politicians refuse to make compromises, reflecting their voters’ refusal to compromise, as encouraged by new forms of media and association. The abundance of information sources available today allows the American voter the opportunity to listen to a narrow set of views. We prefer to listen to and read opinions that agree with our own, and we can find these in the television channel, newspaper and online source that comes closest to our opinion. Sharing stories from these sources to friends on social media further enforces this narrowness of views.

We as voters must force ourselves to listen to opinions and information that we do not like. Conservatives should listen to National Public Radio and liberals need to read The Wall Street Journal. Challenge yourself to make a fair summary of the other side’s views, and learn from their views. The dissatisfaction we complain about in Congress at times stems from our own unwillingness to treat seriously the democratic rights we enjoy.

Brian Potter is chair of the Department of Political Science at The College of New Jersey.

Increase turnout by making Election Day a paid holiday

By Tom Cioppa

The most important electoral reform of all would be to make Election Day a national holiday. While the first Tuesday in November has been the date of national elections since 1845, there has never been legislation enacted by Congress to make Election Day a federal holiday.

What I am suggesting is a national day off. Businesses at the federal, state and local level would be mandated to close so that the public would have ample time and opportunity to vote. As a political scientist, one of the common complaints I hear from my students and the larger public is, “I just did not have time to vote. I had to work and could not afford to take the time off.”

This theme of not being able to afford to vote leads me to my second reform, which is to make Election Day a paid holiday for all eligible Americans who actually get out and vote. Now, many employers will balk at having to pay their workers for a day’s wages when no work is performed. I understand.

The solution? Allow Americans to use their civic duty as a tax write-off when they file their income taxes on April 15. Such compensation would not come close to being the equivalent of a day’s wages but it would incentivize the election process in a way that encouraged people to vote but would not force them to vote.

Crazy, you say? Well, consider the following: New Year’s Day is a federal holiday during which tens of millions of Americans not only get the day off but many of them also get paid a day’s wages for not working. Thus, we incentivize the act of partying on New Year’s Eve and the attendant hangover on Jan. 1 (with pay!), but we do no such thing when it comes to performing our single most important civic obligation: voting.

My third reform would be to abolish voter registration laws and allow Americans to vote at the polling station of their choice in their respective states. Such a move would accomplish two objectives. First, it would abolish the need for voters to declare their intention to vote before they actually did (filing a voter registration form). Second, it would provide the convenience of being able to vote at the closest polling station to one’s residence or place of employment. Of course, such a move might increase opportunities for voter fraud. However, this is easily remedied with a national voter ID card provided free of charge to every eligible American by the federal government.

The reforms suggested here are both politically and economically feasible and can be accomplished as soon as “we the people” are ready to enact them. What are we waiting for?

Tom Cioppa is a political science professor at Brookdale Community College and an adjunct professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden.

Elections suffer from lack of true competition

By Joseph Patten

One of the biggest problems facing American democracy is the lack of competition in U.S. House elections. Last semester one of my first-year students asked, “How is it possible that an institution with a 10 percent public approval rating enjoys a 95 percent re-election rate?”

We stared at each other for a moment, and then I spent the remainder of the class trying to answer that question. The short answer is because of partisan gerrymandering.

Partisan gerrymandering refers to the state legislative practice of drawing congressional districts to benefit one party over the other. The redistricting of congressional districts happens after the national census every 10 years.

The term “gerrymander” stems from a Gilbert Stuart cartoon in 1812 meant to embarrass Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry for twisting a legislative district into the shape of a salamander to benefit his party. The methods employed in partisan gerrymandering include “cracking” legislative districts to dilute the influence of one party and “packing” a district with the other party in order to strengthen the probability of electoral victory.

Isn’t there an inherent conflict of interest in allowing elected officials to draw the districts they run in? And isn’t this practice harmful to American democracy? After all, how many people would watch an NFL game if the rules were designed to help one team defeat another?

This is in part why the average margin of victory for incumbents is 36 percentage points (i.e., 68 percent to 32 percent) and why members have been averaging close to a 95 percent re-election rate over the past 20 years. We typically associate these levels of re-election rates with such nations as Iran and other authoritarian regimes.

This lack of two-party competition also is linked to increased dysfunction and heightened congressional partisanship, since single-party districts also tend to produce more ideologically extreme members of Congress. This in part helps to explain why Congress has become our broken branch of government in recent years.

Some states like Iowa have made great strides in promoting two-party competition in congressional elections by removing politics from the map-making process.

Other states like California hope to produce more moderate officials by adopting an open and nonpartisan “top two” primary system that sends the top two primary candidates to the general election even if they belong to the same party. The thought is that the more politically moderate of the two would win the general election since these elections include voters from the opposing party. States around the nation can benefit by adopting the Iowa model in order to promote two-party competition in legislative districts and/or the California model to produce more moderate public officials.

Joseph Patten is chair and associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Monmouth University.