Over the past three decades, this system has overwhelmingly favored Republicans, who have held the White House for 14 years despite winning the popular vote only once. But even these numbers understate the Democrats' structural disadvantage. Biden's 7 million-vote victory in 2020 won him no more electoral votes than Trump's popular vote defeat of 3 million in 2016.
J ust over 40,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia determined the 2020 election. With margins this narrow, voter suppression in even a few states can have a massive impact.
Some Republicans want to toss out election results altogether
Republican authoritarianism goes well beyond voter suppression. When the GOP lost gubernatorial races in North Carolina in 2016, and Wisconsin and Michigan in 2018, state officials used gerrymandered majorities to strip newly elected Democrats of their powers.
In other cases, Republicans used these rigged majorities to undermine or overturn voter-decided election reforms, such as enfranchising former convicts in Florida and redrawing legislative districts in Michigan. Now, after losing the White House in 2020, the GOP is growing increasingly brazen.
In states like Wisconsin, GOP lawmakers want to split state's electoral votes by congressional districts, which have been drawn in their favor. That means that, even if Biden were to win Wisconsin again in 2024, he might lose several electoral votes to the Republican candidate. At the same time, GOP lawmakers are pushing to abandon this system in Nebraska because Biden won a single electoral vote there in 2020.
Perhaps most outrageously, one Arizona bill would let Republican state lawmakers throw out the popular vote altogether and cast the state's presidential votes themselves. In Pennsylvania, where judges rejected a Republican effort to toss Biden's 2020 state victory, lawmakers in a gerrymandered GOP legislature are pushing for more control over judge appointments -- a clear sign they hope to try again with a friendlier court.
Similar types of bills are likely to surface in more states. Should these bills pass, Republicans could lose the same states they lost in 2020 and win in 2024.
Republicans are already absurdly overrepresented in Washington
How could Biden or another Democrat overcome these handicaps? They would need to run up even bigger popular vote margins and win even more states. To do that, they would have to rebuild the base of their party by increasing union membership and creating a pathway to citizenship for immigrants.
Ending the pandemic, raising wages and improving healthcare would improve the standing of the Democratic Party. But even good governance may not be enough to reverse the country's anti-democratic trendlines.
Consider the Senate, where 50 Democrats represent 40 million more people than the 50 Republicans. Thanks to the arcane filibuster, it takes just 41 of those Republicans -- representing just over 20% of the U.S. population -- to block Democrats from passing most legislation.
Republican Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) spent weeks using the filibuster to block newly elected Democrats from their committee seats, and there's every indication he will use the same tactic to quash new laws regulating everything from labor conditions to carbon emissions.
On the House side, a fresh round of gerrymandering this year could put that chamber out of reach for Democrats even if they earn millions more votes nationally than the GOP. Democrats currently hold a nine-seat advantage, but Republicans will get to redraw at least 188 districts this year. Many are in vote-rich states like Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, all of which have long histories of voter suppression.
It's not difficult to envision McConnell and company easily blocking Biden's agenda and Republicans retaking the House, Senate and White House in the next two election cycles. And thanks to gerrymandered state legislatures and Trump's packing of the federal courts, the GOP could be well on its way to near-permanent minority rule.
Eliminate the filibuster. Expand voting. Curb gerrymandering. Add new states
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
