THE BROKEN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
The American Democratic system is broken and it took a catastrophic outcome on 9th November 2016 to bring this to the fore.
The basic premise of a democracy, as we all know, is for the people to elect their Government through a universal adult franchise, i.e. one adult one vote, without discrimination on ground of caste, race, religion or ideologies.
The two most common types of democracies which are prevalent in the world today provide for this election process.
The first and more widespread form is the Parliamentary Democracy system which is found in countries such as the UK and India.
Under the Parliamentary Democracy, the people of the country elect members of the legislature (Parliament) and the executive head of the state (Prime Minister) is appointed by the majority of the members of the legislature.
Under the Parliamentary Democracy system, the representatives in the legislature are elected from different constituencies thereby ensuring uniform and fair representation of the different regions and sections of the country’s population in the legislature. The number of seats in the Parliament reserved for each State is based on number of factors such as the size of the constituency, the number of people residing therein and other relevant factors. Thus the Parliament ends up being constituted by number of people who are representing their respective regions or constituencies. Once these people are part of the Parliament, each of them have equal weightage in electing the PM and the person having confidence of majority of the members of Parliament becomes the PM.
To illustrate, a place such as Delhi or Mumbai may have more density of population, yet the number of MPs that the people of Delhi or Mumbai elect to the Parliament may be lesser than the state of Uttarakhand, which may have a smaller population. In this sense, in a Parliamentary Democracy, there is not really equal weightage to the votes of all persons. A person living in Delhi thus has lesser representation for his vote, in the Parliament than a person in Uttarakhand, and consequently a lesser say in the consequential appointment of the Prime Minister.
However the premise in the Parliamentary Democracy is that the legislature is supreme and the representation in the legislature ought to be correlated to the diverse regions in the country with the diverse ideologies, cultures, religions and population. Insofar as the election of the particular member of legislature representing the region or constituency is concerned, each person of such constituency has an equal vote or say. In this sense, in a Parliamentary Democracy, the universal adult franchise holds good and there is equality of vote in terms of election of the representatives to the legislature by the various persons.
In case of a Presidential Democracy, the election of the head of the state, i.e. the President is made directly by the people of the country by way of a vote amongst the contesting candidates. Such is the system prevalent in countries such as USA.
However, the weightage of the votes of the people is not the same.
This is so due to the fallacy in the American system where the candidate who gets elected is the one who wins more seats i.e. more constituencies and not the one who gets more overall votes.
To illustrate, by way of a simplified example, consider the case of a country following the American system, with a total population of 100 people. Consider that 10 of such people live in constituency A, 20 people live in constituency B, 70 people live in Constituency C. Consider that the voting tally between two candidates turns out as follows:
Constituency A – Candidate X – 6, Candidate Y – 4
Constituency B – Candidate X – 11, Candidate Y – 9
Constituency C – Candidate X – 13, Candidate Y – 57
In the above situation Candidate X would get elected having won two seats i.e. constituencies A and B. However the total number of people who voted for Candidate X to be President were only 30 as opposed to 70 people who voted for Candidate Y.
Thus, the people living in Constituency A had higher weightage for their votes as opposed to those living in Constituency B or C.
Thus, as was seen this November, the total number of votes for Hilary Clinton were more than the number of votes for Donald Trump. The phraseology being used in the media for this is ‘popular votes’. However, this is not popular votes…it is votes period!
More Americans wanted Hilary Clinton to be the President. Yet she is not elected?
While the margin in the instant case may have been negligible, the same situation could well enough occur with a much wider margin where the candidate with more votes would still not become President of the great nation of the US of A.
Now that is a broken down, fallacious system if there ever was one.
No doubt it has yielded the wrong result this year. Yet it is perhaps not the first time this has occurred in the USA nor would it be the last. The fallacy is glaring this year owing to the idiosyncrasies of the candidate (wrongly) elected. And thus the protests and hue and cry on the streets.
Where the vote is to elect a single individual, there is no rationale for dividing the election into seats. The vote should be orchestrated in a simple manner, where everybody votes for the candidate they wish to be President and the one with more votes, simply wins.
Why complicate such a simple notion? Why not amend the constitution to reflect this system so that the majority get their say?
Perhaps the answer lies in the changing demographic landscape of USA. With an ever increasing number of African Americans, Muslims, Latinos in the population mix, the only way for the white supremacist to retain control of who becomes President is for the states where they reside to have greater number of seats, thereby allowing them greater weightage in the election of the President to the detriment of the larger population base.
Whether deliberate or not, the fallacy is obvious on the face of it and in case it is not corrected, the American system will continue to churn out Presidents who are not really the peoples’ choice. A continued trend of such Presidents would inevitably result in the gradual but certain downfall of an erstwhile great nation with collateral damage on the global scene.
© Anshuman Khanna – November 2016
Published on www.anshumankhanna.in/blog