Roots of Dysfunction and the Health of State Democracies

            People interested in politics tend to focus on what goes on in Washington, D.C.  The national government is what we all hold in common, and it’s what Fox News, MSNBC, Jon Stewart and others talk about.  The national government has the ability to affect everyone, and it’s no wonder that our country’s zillionaires spend vast sums of money to place people who are sympathetic to their concerns in positions of power there.

            But a report issued yesterday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund (“CAPAF”) reminds us that the roots of all of the dysfunction we see in Washington often has its roots in local politics.

            CAPAF’s innovative report, “The Health of State Democracies” used 22 different indicators to evaluate ballot accessibility, the ability of voters to elect people who resemble them and the amount of influence average citizens have in the political process for each state and the District of Columbia. It found that “states offer vastly different democratic experiences for their residents,” and that even in the states that had the best overall scores, there could be “volatility from one category (of democratic performance) to another.”  Maryland, for example had the 10^th healthiest democracy overall, but it still only earned a score of D+ for the degree to which office holders in Maryland match the state’s gender and racial demographic profile.

            Overall, the report concludes that even in the states that had the healthiest democracies, there is still a lot of work to do.

            A large portion of the report addresses the ways that states limit access to the ballot.  The now familiar litany includes strict photo ID laws, limitations on early voting and failure to implement methods that facilitate registrations.  All of these problems, and more, the report repeatedly notes, tend to make it less likely that people of color, poor people and young people will exercise their constitutional right to participate in state, local and national elections.

            But the most interesting part of the report discusses the difficulty of non-establishment candidates to wage winnable campaigns for office.  Huge sums of money are now required to win offices in state and local elections. This is a formidable barrier for women and minorities to overcome. Said former State Senator Nina Turner (D-OH) who was on the panel that presented the report at CAPAF Headquarters yesterday, “Folks who are already connected have an advantage.”

            That advantage makes a big difference across the board. Establishment candidates have a vested interest in the status quo. They write the rules that govern elections and they draw the maps that define electoral districts.  They are in a position to choose the voters who will be asked to vote for them in the next election.  Those rules and maps apply not just to local elections but to all elections, including presidential elections and congressional elections.

            Dr. Nick Carnes, a Duke University political scientist wrote a book a few years back that demonstrated just how important economic class was to public policy.  He showed that had there been more career diversity in Congress during the Reagan years, many of Reagan’s policies would probably not have been passed.

            The impact of making it more likely that women and people of color can wage winnable campaigns for local offices, particularly with the help of public financing, would probably be as dramatic. 

            And apart from their influence on policy, making it more likely that women and minorities can win local offices would give them the experience and the network of supporters (and, in the world of Citizens United, donors) they would need to mount credible campaigns for national offices.

            We have big problems in this country and on this planet.  Public opinion surveys are consistently beginning to show that the public has reached consensus on what to do about some of them.  Unfortunately, we have a system that tends to benefit the few at the expense of the many, giving the needs and wants of the powerful more attention than those of everyone else.  A strong dose of democracy, as detailed by the CAPAF, is just what we need to build a better country.