"We must undertake constitutional and electoral reforms in America" -Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

 

1.      Uphold the right to vote: pass a constitutional amendment establishing a right to vote for all citizens, which would provide a solid basis to litigate voting restrictions.

2.      Establish automatic registration in which all citizens are registered to vote when they turn eighteen.

3.      Expand early voting and easy mail-in voting options for citizens of all states.

4.      Make Election Day on a Sunday or a national holiday so that work responsibilities do not discourage Americans from voting.

5.      Restore voting rights without additional fines or fees to all ex-felons who have served their time.

6.      Restore national-level voting rights and protections. In the spirit of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, parts of which the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

7.      Replace the current system of partisan electoral administration with one in which the state and local electoral administration is in the hands of professional, nonpartisan officials.

8.      Abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote. No other presidential democracy permits the loser of the popular vote to win the presidency.

9.      Reform the Senate so that the number of senators elected per state is more proportional to the population of each state.

10.  Replace “first-past-the-post” electoral rules and single-member districts for the House of Representatives and state legislatures with a form of proportional representation in which voters elect multiple representatives from larger electoral districts and parties win seats in proportion to the share of the vote they win.

11.  Eliminate partisan gerrymandering.

12.  Update the Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the House of Representatives at 435, and return to the original design of a House that expands in line with population growth.

13.  Abolish the Senate filibuster, a reform that requires neither statutory nor constitutional change, thereby eliminating the ability of partisan minorities to repeatedly and permanently thwart legislative majorities. In no other established democracy is such a minority veto routinely employed.

14.  Establish term limits for Supreme Court justices to regularize the Supreme Court appointment process so that every president  has the same number of appointments per term.

15.  Make it easier to amend the Constitution by eliminating the requirement that three-quarters of state legislatures ratify any proposed amendment.

These reforms would have a simple yet powerful effect: they would allow majorities  to win power and govern. Not only would these proposed reforms help stave off minority rule, but they would also eliminate constitutional protectionism, unleashing the competitive dynamics of democracy.

 

Levitsky, Steven and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die: The Tyranny of the Minority. New York: Crown Publishing Group. 2023: 230-37.