Apr 30, 2016 5 min read

In the United States, we like to think of ourselves as the world’s oldest-functioning democracy. Given recent history, at both the federal and state levels, many people might justifiably disagree with the “functioning” part. But I think a bigger question is, do we really believe in democracy?

Winston Churchill once observed, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried…”

The Founding Fathers certainly had great reservations about democracy when they created the American form of self-government. Only members of the House of Representatives were directly elected by the people; senators were chosen by their state governments, the Electoral College picked the president, and the judiciary was appointed.

The Founding Fathers feared government selected by the common man for a number of reasons. First, they believed that those without a stake in society – which typically meant those who did not own property – would have less of a desire to preserve it. Those without property might be tempted to use government power to take property from those who had it. And in a time before the secret ballot, they thought the common man might also be beholden to their economic superiors, such as their employers, which might allow a demagogue to wield unwarranted electoral power.

And finally, of course, the Founding Fathers simply didn’t trust the uneducated, propertyless rabble to make good choices. Given these concerns, the nation’s early electorate was limited primarily to white, property-holding men.

Philosophically, this issue can be framed as a question of qualifications. Who is qualified to vote? To the Founding Fathers, it almost went without question that women and most blacks were unqualified to vote, and the property requirements were a way to eliminate less-qualified white men. Over time, the electorate has been expanded through the efforts of the disenfranchised and their supporters: Jacksonian Democrats eliminated property requirements; the Republican-sponsored amendments passed after the Civil War enfranchised the newly freed (male) slaves, though their ability to vote was suppressed after Reconstruction ended, until the Civil Rights movement restored it a century later; and women earned the right to vote in 1920, after decades of work. So historically, at least until recent voter ID laws and other restrictions, the trend has been to put more political power in the hands of the people.

But this year’s election is testing our faith in democracy. On the Republican side, there is the Donald Trump phenomenon. The leadership of the Republican Party is clearly not comfortable with Trump as the party’s nominee, even though he has garnered more primary votes than any other Republican candidate. Should the Republican ‘betters’ step in to the convention and thwart the will of the Republican primary voters? If Trump has more delegates than any other candidate, but still not a majority, how does one actually determine the will of the voters?

On the Democratic side, the party’s disastrous 1968 convention in Chicago picked Hubert Humphrey as the Democratic presidential candidate even though he never won a primary. Supporters of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy and Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who did run in the primaries, felt disenfranchised, and protesters outside the convention were violently dispersed by Mayor Richard Daley’s police force. All of this unfolded on television and certainly helped Republican candidate Richard Nixon claim the law-and-order mantle, and narrowly win the popular vote in that year’s election.

Democrats attempted to rectify this four years later by giving primary voters a greater voice in the process by expanding the importance of primaries.

But this led to the choice of antiwar Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, who lost 49 states to Nixon in the 1972 election. McGovern’s certainly contributed to the party’s leadership having a reluctance to trust the voter’s ability to pick a winner.

In 2016, there are 718 unpledged delegates, mostly elected officials and party leaders, known as “superdelegates,” whose vote is not determined by the primary voters. This gives the Democratic Party leadership potentially a significant voice in choosing the party’s candidate, an undemocratic power that the Republican leadership can only dream about. In this election, most of these delegates are pledged to Hillary Clinton, the establishment candidate. Supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders cite this as a problem, because many news organizations included these pledged candidates in Clinton’s column, even though they are allowed to change their mind, which has made Clinton’s lead seem insurmountable, thus fulfilling the media’s assessment of the impossibility of Sanders being elected.

The Founding Fathers’ fears of democracy have generally not come to pass. I would argue that one of the reasons our nation has thrived is that we provide more opportunities for all of our citizens than most other nations, so we are able to harness the abilities of a larger share of our population. The United States is an experiment in self-government, relying on people making their own decisions, rather than leaving those decisions to their “betters.”

While sometimes it is better to leave things to the experts than to do it yourself, self-government is not one of those things. Democracy does two important things better than any other system: first, it relies on the collective wisdom of a larger number of people. And second, if done fairly, it also allows everyone to participate, meaning everyone has a stake in the system. This provides stability, since it is difficult to rebel against a system of which you are an integral part. Both parties should think carefully before ignoring the will of the voters.

Kent James is a resident of East Washington.