https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/opinion/sunday/democracy-democrats-voters-disenfranchisment.html
Amid the political turmoil of the past few years, there have been faint rustlings of a democratic revival. States have begun to take steps to empower citizens by making voting easier and more inclusive. Since 2015, 12 states have adopted automatic voter registration; voters in Florida will decide in November on a ballot initiative to restore voting rights to felons; in New York and Virginia, Democratic governors have done so (in the case of New York extending these rights to parolees); and the District of Columbia may lower its voting age to 16.
These bright spots in an otherwise bleak political landscape hint at a path forward for American democracy. Seldom, if ever, have Democrats had so much to gain by increasing turnout. At the same time, the generational tide has turned decisively in the Democratic Party’s favor, with millennials poised to push the electorate steadily to the left. As these two trends converge over the next decade, major election reforms long written off as unrealistic will suddenly become politically viable.
While it is tempting to view elections as being decided in the moment, much of the groundwork is set in place decades earlier. Looking at survey data from the 1950s, political scientists observed that voters who came of age during the Great Depression identified as Democrats at much higher rates than prior and subsequent generations. The Great Depression and the remaking of American government during the New Deal left a lasting imprint on a generation of voters. A 2014 study by Andrew Gelman and Yair Ghitza demonstrates that the “political events of a voter’s teenage and early adult years, centered around the age of 18, are enormously important in the formation of these long-term partisan preferences.”
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Carrying out practical and proven policies to increase voter turnout will swell Democratic majorities, strengthen the party’s mandate to govern and shore up support for progressive policies. Medicare for All would be a much easier sell if 18-year-olds turned out like 80-year-olds.
So would policies intended to combat economic inequality. Among advanced democracies, turnout in national elections is a strong predictor of income inequality. The United States has both the lowest turnout and highest share of income going to the top 1 percent. This is unlikely to be a coincidence. There are good theoretical reasons to believe the two are related.
This makes democracy an issue to campaign on. The Democratic base understands that it is waging a battle for the future of the country. Many Democrats are rightly concerned about the state of our democracy. They are also painfully aware that our electoral system is biased against them. A rallying cry to put democracy back on the offensive will get the base to sit up and pay attention. Delivering on the promise will get them to the polls.
What the party needs now are leaders willing to champion electoral reforms. To any potential 2020 presidential contenders out there, know this: If you make comprehensive electoral reforms the centerpiece of your administration’s first 100 days, you will have all but guaranteed your re-election and the congressional majorities needed to push forward on the rest of your policy agenda.
Fixing our democracy is perhaps our best shot at getting Congress back to work on solving the serious problems facing the nation. Generational change is coming and with it an opportunity to fundamentally transform American government and who it serves, so long as Democrats insist on making voters mirror the population and do everything in their power to make it happen.
This is not about weaponizing electoral institutions for partisan gain; it is about delivering on the promise of American democracy. The nation is at its best when democracy is on the rise. Many of our most celebrated figures — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez — fought to enfranchise the disenfranchised and left a more inclusive republic as their legacy. Let’s finish what they started.
Adam Bonica (@adam_bonica) is a political scientist at Stanford.
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Read the rest of Bonica’s excellent article (with charts and graphs) at the above link!
Democrats need to get out the vote, get out the vote, get out the vote, get out the vote if we want to get “regime change” and avoid more years of toxic, anti-democracy minority government dedicated to further enriching and empowering the already rich and powerful and disadvantaging and disenfranchising the rest of us!
And, you can bet that with “voter suppression pros” like Kris Kobach, Mike Pence, Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, and the like out there, the White Nationalist GOP isn’t going quietly into the night! Indeed, they are going to pull out all the stops in a formidable effort to disable American Democracy and reverse demographics before they catch up with their “bring back the bad old days of a ‘Whites Only America'” program.