Democracy in America? — Who are “the People?”
If democracy is “government by the people,” then perhaps the first and most important question to ask is “who are the people?” When the United States was founded, that question was quite easily answered: “white men of property.” White, male property owners were a tiny minority of those under American governance and this was hardly a unique situation in the history of “democratic” governance. Women were excluded from voting rights in “republics” going as far back as Athens in 500 BCE, whereas in the early United States–slavery and “democracy” coexisted.
Of course, the United States is very different now. The Constitution has been altered so that slavery has been abolished and women and people of color are allowed to vote and hold office. Our electoral system, however, still legally blocks many people from having a say in the government they live under.
According to The Sentencing Project, over 6 million Americans have been legally disenfranchised due to their conviction of felony-level crimes. It is important to keep in mind here that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The result is that almost 2.5% of voting-age Americans are disenfranchised for this reason alone, the majority of whom have already finished their sentence.
There are also millions of people ruled over by the American government that legally have no control over that government, based entirely on where they live. In the US territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands over 3.5 million people live, the vast majority in Puerto Rico. They have no representation in Congress and cannot vote in presidential elections. The over half a million people living in Washington DC also have no congressional representation, hence the slogan on the District license plate: “Taxation without representation.”
Even in the most general definition of democracy–one where people who are defined as citizens govern themselves by electing their leaders–America is at best a partial democracy. Millions of Americans are second-class citizens with no influence over the federal government. Hundreds of thousands more have no representation in Congress, one of the two branches of government that the people elect.
Even for those officially granted the right to vote, their actual ability to vote can be stopped in a number of ways. In many parts of the United States, after slavery was abolished and the right of non-white Americans to vote was added to the Constitution in the form of the 15th Amendment, various methods of voter suppression developed to keep these new potential voters away from political power. In response to political struggles for Civil Rights, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law, which, among other things, required 9 states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval when altering election laws. In 2013, after the Supreme Court invalidated this key part of the Voting Rights Act, the number of voters purged from the voting rolls increased by roughly 33%, millions more voters per election cycle. Even if we assume that the purges of voters before 2013 were completely legitimate and not politically motivated, the drastic increase in voters who have obstacles thrown in between them and the polls is deeply concerning, and can have an impact on elections. Voter suppression can occur in a number of illegal and extralegal ways, but there are millions who are legally disenfranchised.
None of these restrictions are incidental, either. It’s not hard to see the remnants of white supremacy in our political system. Felony disenfranchisement means over 7.4 percent of the adult African American population is disenfranchised compared to 1.8 percent of the non-African American population. In four states, including the large swing states Florida and Virginia, over 1 in 5 black adults are disenfranchised, and people of all races in prison had much lower incomes before prison than the general population. The percentage of Washington DC’s black population is higher than any other state or territory in the nation, by a significant margin.
Puerto Rico and the other US territories also follow old patterns, and the more one looks at the relationship between the 50 states and these territories, the more they look like overseas colonies. On the surface, it’s clear that the disenfranchisement of people in the territories results in unequal treatment from the US government. The average incomes of all five territories are less than the poorest state. The Jones Act of 1920 requires that any goods shipped from one American port to another(which primarily affects territories disconnected from the mainland) be transported on a ship that is owned by Americans, built in America, and crewed by American citizens or residents. It benefits a small number of Americans on the mainland but strangles islands like Puerto Rico by making it more expensive to buy US-made goods. This rule is an example of explicit colonial exploitation. The unethical sterilization of and experimentation on Puerto Rican women, environmentally destructive and dangerous weapons training, and violent repression of Puerto Rican nationalists are just some of the most egregious examples of the US government’s attitude towards its territories. People from Guam fight and die in American wars at much higher rates than other Americans, but rank last in per capita medical spending on veterans. American Samoans are not even granted full citizenship, but nevertheless, legally owe “allegiance to the United States.” The alienation of these people from systems of political control allows the state to exploit and abuse them without democratic accountability, and cements these territories’ status as modern colonies.
Though the right of all citizens to vote is a necessary precondition for democracy, the entire framework of citizenship shouldn’t necessarily be accepted. Around the world, there are more people currently living outside of their country of origin than at any other point in history, the majority by necessity. In America alone, there are 22 million non-citizen, voting-age immigrants. They live under the American government, participate in the American economy, pay American taxes, and form a large part of our culture and general society. No one who seriously believes in the idea of self-determination could argue that these people ought to have no control over the political system they live under.
Granting voting rights to non-citizens is not a radical or unworkable move. Throughout US history, up until the 1920s, non-citizens had voting rights in 40 states, locally, federally, and statewide. Even today, there are some cities that allow non-citizens to vote in local elections throughout the country. There are also countries that allow noncitizens to vote at all levels of election.
Where does all this leave the American political system? Of the approximately 250 million voting-age Americans, 6 million are disenfranchised because of felony convictions, over 2.6 million live in US territories, and 22 million are unable to vote because of their citizenship. That’s over 12 percent of the population, with no influence at all on the federal government, the vast majority with no influence over any other level of government either. Over half a million more in DC have no congressional representation, and there are potentially millions more who lose their right to vote because of poorly organized or discriminatory management of voter rolls. When we want to understand why so many Americans do not feel represented by the political system, we should begin by recognizing that many of them simply are not represented in any way. Elections can often be decided by a small number of votes, and when this disenfranchisement disproportionately affects low-income and minority Americans, the outcomes of elections change. American democracy does not exist for tens of millions of people, and that affects not just those tens of millions, but all Americans, weakening the political power of those whose interests lie with ethnic minorities and the working class. Though our elections allow far greater participation than back in 1788, the political system still privileges the voting rights of Americans who are white and wealthy, at the expense of those who aren’t. Voting rights are far from the only element in a functioning democracy, but they are a necessary component of creating a government that is representative of its people. Even when we limit our analysis to suffrage, the American political system comes up short.
