Notice again, the Republicans are against all these ideas. Third, create competitive voting districts by having nonpartisan committees draw congressional districts to make our elected officials more responsive to the country as a whole instead of narrow partisan groups/interests. Make voting easy, have national voting rules and regulations, maybe even require everyone to vote like they do in Australia.
#Tyranny of the minority full#
Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute) offer some solutions.įirst, we need to get money out of politics by amending the Constitution to limit campaign contributions or at least make full disclosure of all political campaign contributions. Mann (Brookings Institution) and Norman J. So what can “we the people” do to take back our government? In their book, It’s “Even Worse Than It Looks, How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism,” Thomas E. No wonder Congress has an approval rating of 10 percent. No wonder people have lost faith in our government. So much for Democracy and the will of “we the people.” Republicans are truly hypocritical when they invoke the phrase: “listen to the will of the American people.” And in the House of Representatives, the body that is supposed to most represent the will of the people, the Republicans have managed to keep control of the House by 234-195 by gerrymandering voting districts to create large safe Republican districts even though in the last election, Democratic candidates got about 1,000,000 more votes than Republican candidates. Example: Wyoming, with a population of 576,000 gets two votes in the Senate, the same as California that has more than 38,000,000 people. Fact: 21 of the smallest states represent only 10 percent of the population. In fact, because states with small populations are disproportionately represented in the Senate, they can block any legislation. In the Senate, with the filibuster and cloture rules, 41 Senators can thwart the will of 59 Senators. Republicans are opposed to all these ideas, and they are able to get their way by our distorted election process. Outrageous! Majorities also support comprehensive immigrations reform, keeping abortion legal, keeping Social Security and Medicare as is, funding food stamp programs for the poor, raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the super wealthy, closing loopholes for large corporations, reducing defense spending, closing Guantanamo and gay marriage.
The most glaring example of the will of the majority of the American people being thwarted by a minority (the Republicans) was the failure of Congress to pass background checks for gun purchases when polls showed about 90 percent of Americans supported such a bill. Our Constitution has worked well for us for more than 200 years, but I fear our government has now become too dysfunctional because of the opposite problem - tyranny of the minority. They also worried about tyranny of the majority, so they put lots of checks and balances in our Constitution so that wouldn’t happen. I think everyone would agree that they wanted to form a representative democracy - democracy being defined as a form of government ruled by the majority of the people. Publisher: Temple University Press,U.S.As we Americans celebrated the Fourth of July this summer, I was reminded of the principles our founding fathers believed in when they signed the Declaration of Independence and ratified the Constitution. It offers a unique explanation of why and how special interests dominate American national politics. Demonstrating the wide applicability of the theory, the book traces politiciansa behavior on a wide range of issues, including the Cuban trade embargo, the extension of hate crimes legislation to protect gays and lesbians, the renewal of the assault weapons ban, abortion politics, and Congressas battle to recognize the Armenian genocide. Tyranny of the Minority provides a aunified theory of representation,a based in social psychology and supported by extensive analyses of legislatorsa voting behavior, that explains how citizensa knowledge and participation affects candidatesa behaviour in campaigns and legislatorsa behaviour in Congress.
Why do politicians frequently heed the preferences of small groups of citizens over those of the general public? Breaking new theoretical ground, Benjamin Bishin explains how the desires of small groups, which he calls asubconstituencies,a often trump the preferences of much larger groups.
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