This President undermines our institutions in his ongoing and exhausting attacks on Twitter, at campaign rallies, and in his encounters with the media.
Many of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries are causing damage at the agencies that they oversee (CFPB, EPA, HUD, DOEd). The Republican Congress has refused to do its job and oversee the Executive Branch. So far, the courts have pushed back against Trump’s most egregious efforts to steamroll our laws, which has thankfully limited the damage.
We need to avert our eyes from the ongoing disruptions in the White House and focus our attention on what is happening in a handful of states where democracy is at even greater risk.
For two years, Trump has falsely claimed that three million Americans fraudulently voted for Hillary. While in North Carolina, the evidence shows that voter fraud did in fact occur in the 9th Congressional District where incomplete, unsigned absentee ballots were collected. For details, see Prof. Andrew Hill’s scary rundown here. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/08/north-carolina-9th-district-democracy-222853
Gerrymandering has enabled a minority of voters to elect officials who dominate statewide offices, especially in NC, Wisconsin and Michigan. And those legislatures (all Republican) are doing their best to prevent the election of members of the opposition party and/or gut their ability to govern if they are elected.
Perhaps the courts will intervene, but voters in those states shouldn’t wait.
As much as the rest of the country thinks California is kooky, our citizens took measures that radically improved our statewide governance.
California voters took the ability to draw voting districts away from our Legislature and put it in the hands of a citizen’s commission.
Our primary process is complicated and our approach may need some revising, but the goal is for candidates to appeal to a broader group of constituents, so we have fewer ideologues on both the right and the left.
In an effort to increase voter turnout, our Legislature passed, and the governor signed, the California Voter’s Choice Act, which makes it easier for us to vote. https://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/news-releases-and-advisories/2016-news-releases-and-advisories/governor-brown-signs-landmark-election-reform-bill/
We can’t maintain our democracy, if we don’t participate. Nor can we maintain it if officials elected by a minority of voters can override the will of a majority of voters.
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