Democracy

The fair, impartial and untainted process of voting is critical for continued faith in our democracy.  That is why the Russia probe is so important.  Right now it doesn't look like Russia actually monkeyed with vote tallies, but if they did....?

Instead, we have the influence of money and fake news on political decision making.  Republicans would have you believe that voting fraud is widespread, but there is literally zero evidence that it has happened.  Hillary Clinton's new book is going to set off a wave of relitigating the 2016 campaign.  (yay) She makes a claim that various voter suppression schemes cost her the election.  She points to Wisconsin, using a disputed study, to suggest that voter suppression denied her 200,000 votes in the Badger State.  More likely most of those "lost votes" came from African American voters who stayed home because she wasn't Obama.  But if only 15% of those were suppressed, that would have been enough to toss Wisconsin her way.  Michigan was even closer.

Secondly, we have gerrymandering.  Some of it is a natural process of the "Big Sort" between cities and countryside.  But some of it is done for racial and partisan reasons, which increasingly overlap.  A partisan gerrymander is increasingly a de facto racial gerrymander.  Yet the Supreme Court seems like it might be OK with that.  That's why stealing that Supreme Court seat from Merrick Garland was so egregious.

We HAVE to fix it so that we are truly equal when it comes to voting.  I will never have the economic power that the 1% have.  But I have to think that my vote counts the same as David Koch's or any other American.  In fact, the way we elect our President and Congress...that isn't remotely true.  We raise barriers to some voters while privileging the votes in swing districts and swing states.

So since 2006, Democrats have won a plurality of votes in all three presidential elections and won the Electoral College twice.  In the Senate, the few tens of thousands who elect Senator John Barasso of Wyoming have the same say as the millions who elected Kamala Harris.  In the House in 2012, Democrats won 48.75% of the vote and Republicans won 47.59%, yet Democrats won 46.21% of the seats and Republicans 53.79%.  In the last election, Democrats won 48.03% of the vote and 44.6% of the seats (Republicans won 49.11% and 55.4% respectively.)

This troubles me.  I'm very troubled.