Un-Democracy

Last week, Harvard students headed to the polls here in Cambridge or mailed in their absentee ballots. It marked the conclusion of months of University-wide efforts, including the student-founded Harvard Votes Challenge, to increase voter turnout. As part of this, Harvard students received an email from University President Lawrence S. Bacow with the subject line “Democracy” on Nov. 6.

In the email, Bacow reminded students to exercise their civic duty and vote. He said, “Americans will head to the polls for the midterm elections and fulfill the first responsibility of citizenship in a democracy.” But is this really a democracy?

Rather than a fair and democratic system, our election process is ruefully undemocratic, and the process of voting here on campus sheds a different light on the great American ritual of casting ballots every other November.

The first question you were often asked upon walking up to one of the Harvard Votes Challenge registration tables around campus was “What state are you from?” This question, though seemingly simple, seemed to conceal a deeper question. Essentially, you were asked “How much will your vote count?”

If your home state is Wyoming, the answer is a lot. This year, the race for Wyoming Senate seat was decided for incumbent John A. Barrasso, who won 136,329 votes as of publication. If you voted in Texas, your vote counted significantly less. Texans cast a majority of their votes for another incumbent, Ted Cruz. However, Cruz was elected by a far greater number of votes. It took 4,244,204 votes, as of publication, for the senator from Texas to keep his seat — more than 30 times the number of votes it took the senator from Wyoming. Nonetheless, both senators will get equal voting rights.

The just-over-half-a-million residents of the state of Wyoming will share the same representation in the country’s highest deliberative body as the more-than 28 million residents of the state of Texas.

This discussion of the gross inequality in democratic power does not even include those U.S. citizens who aren’t afforded any electoral power at all.

The 3.3 million U.S. citizens who live in Puerto Rico will have an even smaller voice in deciding the composition of the Senate. Puerto Rico receives no voting representation in the Senate or the House. It is hard to overstate just how staggering this is. Despite having a larger population than Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming combined, Puerto Rico will have no representation in Congress, while those states together have eight senators and four representatives. Essentially, a voter’s opinion in Puerto Rico is worth nothing at all.

It’s not a democratic system if everyone’s vote and everyone’s voice is not equally weighted.

It’s time to change our system in favor of a system where each vote matters. Perhaps turning toward a more European system which allots seats in legislative bodies in proportion to the votes they receive can begin to make the system more equitable and truly representative. Only then will our system begin to resemble a democracy.

As much as we might treasure our Electoral College and our two chambers of Congress, they do not constitute a proper democracy. When this country was founded and the legislature conceived, the 13 states of the original union each had a unique role to play. Today, when moving between states is as easy and accessible as a bus ticket or an Uber ride, why should certain states get outsized roles in our democratic process?

It’s unacceptable that someone living in New York, with a population of almost 20 million, can move just a few feet, into Vermont, with a population of about 600,000, and have their representation increased by a factor of around 30.

Everyone should vote. It’s our civic duty, and it’s a privilege that too many across the world and even across the U.S. are not always afforded. But the system we have is not just, not fair, and not democratic.

For those of us who voted, regardless of which state received our ballots, we should be proud that we did our part. We should be outraged, however, that some of our fellow students’ votes mattered any more than our own. This must be changed.

Patrick C. Barham ’21, a Crimson Editorial comper, is a Government concentrator in Pforzheimer House.