The evidence is everywhere that we citizens – and our public officials – have lost any real sense of what “representative democracy” means. Taken literally, it means that public officials are surrogates for citizens’ interests, concerns, hopes and values. It’s supposed to mean that everyone is represented, with no citizens left behind.
Normally, the mechanism to achieve these ends is elections. Every eligible citizen’s vote is supposed to count, and every citizen has the right to run for public office.
Those who hold public office have no higher duty than to preserve, protect and defend our form of government – and to improve it when they can. Yet in practice, our state’s public officials pervert, jeopardize and undermine representative democracy. They intentionally:
- draw legislative districts so that Republicans perpetually dominate some districts and Democrats perpetually dominate others;
- seek ways, such as negative ads and obstacles to registration, to reduce voter turnout;
- amass huge campaign war chests to scare off potential challengers;
- undermine confidence in the electoral system with voting machines that don’t meet even minimal standards of accountability;
- tilt the playing field against challengers, illegally spending tens of millions of tax dollars to promote incumbents; and
- make it nearly impossible for third-party or independent candidates to get on the ballot.
Little wonder that this fall, more than half of those seeking election to the House, and three-fourths of those seeking election to the Senate, have no opponents. In other words, both as individuals and as an entire branch of government, if they do nothing, they win.
I don’t know what you call a system in which a majority of the elections are uncontested, but you can’t call it a representative democracy.
So this is the most important job of Pennsylvania’s coming constitutional convention: to restore a government that truly represents its citizens. Yet unless we change our thinking about the simple matter of how to select delegates to that convention, we make success unlikely.
Today, every proposal for a constitutional convention uses the same method to choose delegates as for our last convention in 1967: Elections.
What’s wrong with that? A lot.
In recent years, as many as one in five voters chose not to belong to either of the major political parties. But following the method used in 1967 virtually guarantees that none of the delegates will be independent. Even well-meaning proposals that make delegate election non-partisan won’t prevent this from happening. The major parties will use their financial and organizational power to elect delegates who represent the parties, not the citizens.
Missing will be citizens who believe the major parties do not have a monopoly on good ideas and good people. Missing will be citizens who pay taxes but who are so disgusted with our broken system that they won’t lend their good names to our bad politics.
Looking at the profile of delegates to the 1967 convention proves the point. Out of 163 delegates, 152 were men, and 157 were white. Today – especially looking at the Presidential election – it would be utterly unacceptable to have a convention that so grossly under-represented women and minorities. Yet even though there are more independent voters than African-American voters in Pennsylvania, independents almost certainly will not be represented if we elect delegates.
A convention that truly represents our citizens requires a delegation that fairly represents where we live, how much we earn and who we are.
To achieve that goal requires an independent random selection of the willing, which is the way we choose jurors. If it’s good enough for making life-and-death decisions, it might just be good enough for a constitutional convention.
Using today’s demographic science, we could choose citizens at random to serve as delegates, recruiting a delegation that fairly reflects all of us geographically, economically and ethnically. Of course, they could decline the honor, or they could agree to serve and participate in an intense period of preparation about the issues.
To some, this idea conjures a “quota” system that could create an unfair advantage for some. But it does exactly the opposite; it creates fair representation for all. Not to mention that our entire electoral system is based on a quota: one person, one vote. Because of that quota, House and Senate districts also have quotas: 63,000 citizens per House district and 252,000 citizens per Senate district.
Some object that participation at such an important occasion as a constitutional convention should not be left to chance. Yet we use chance – a lottery or a coin toss – to decide the order in which candidates appear on the ballot. That’s because no one has come up with a fairer way to make the decision.
No matter how we choose delegates, it has to meet the same test. Will it ensure fair representation for both men and women? Minorities? Citizens who do not identify with either of the two major parties? Citizen taxpayers regardless of whether they vote? Young adults and seniors? Blue-collar workers as well as white-collar workers?
Ultimately, it’s not up to the delegates at a convention to change our Constitution. They can only recommend changes. Citizens make the final decision of whether to accept or reject those recommendations, and their decision could have a lot to do with whether they believe the convention truly and fairly represented them.
Tim Potts is president of Democracy Rising PA, www.democracyrisingpa.com
