It’s Election Day in the United States, and as the day unfolds, all eyes will be on the men and women streaming into the polls to cast their ballots. News broadcasts will be devoted to counting up all the votes cast, and trying to divine who came out to vote and why.But American elections aren’t actually about the people who vote. They’re about the people who don’t. Politicians are almost always chosen by less than a majority of the population. Laws and practices that exclude large numbers of potential voters determine who wins and who loses.That’s by design. Voter exclusion is hard-wired into what is, on close inspection, a very undemocratic system of governance. The U.S. Constitution placed the selection of presidents in the hands of “electors,” not the people, and it offered no clear protections for a citizen’s right to vote. In the original Constitution, states retained enormous latitude to determine who went to the polls and who did not.And although amendments eventually extended voter protection to black Americans, women and people 18 and over, even these guarantees were only partially enforced. Communities nationwide used poll taxes, literacy tests, inconvenient voting locations and onerous registration requirements to discourage voting by particular groups, especially African Americans and other minorities.The real fraud in American voting is not illegally cast votes but legally blocked ones. Our history has taught us all too well how to keep people away from the polls, despite their constitutional rights. Even a half-century after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, tens of thousands of citizens are denied the franchise because of insufficient proof of identity, felony convictions or other state stipulations — all of which are designed today, as they were in the past, to keep certain people from casting their ballots.“Certain people” means, most obviously, people of color, who are told they are not welcome as voters at every stage in the process, from demeaning rhetoric about their “fake” votes to convoluted registration processes to intimidation at the polls. For many Mexican Americans, it feels safer just to stay home. That’s why states such as Texas have electorates that remain dominated by white votes even as their populations become rapidly more diverse.But “certain people” also means those without access to wealth. The mobilization of money for elected office makes dominant groups even more powerful. The sheer scale of wealth in the hands of several billionaires has allowed them, and their political action committees (PACs), to smother competitors. As the rich have become so much richer, they have made their votes count more, and the votes of others count less. Donald Trump began his presidential campaign as a critic of big political donors, but he and his supporters in the Republican Party benefited from their money in the election.By the time poor citizens vote, the candidates have already been vetted by the wealthy donors who are necessary for any person running to have a chance. That means Election Day is really about choosing among candidates handpicked by the super wealthy (say, Trump or Hillary Clinton), rather than candidates who reflect the needs and experiences of citizens.And this dominance by wealth becomes more true with each successive electoral cycle. As candidates require more and more money for advertising and social media, the influence of money grows. Parties have always chosen elites, but now fundraising crowds out other qualities of leadership. You cannot run if you cannot bring in big bucks, immediately.Gerrymandering likewise nullifies votes, erecting exclusionary boundaries between voters and their representatives. During the decennial district-drawing process for national, state and local representatives, the politicians in power choose their voters, rather than the other way around. Incumbent legislators make certain that their districts are dominated by like-minded citizens, and they limit the power of opposition groups by splitting their presence among as many districts as possible.Although gerrymandering goes back to the earliest days of the republic, it has never distorted electoral outcomes as much as it does today. Wisconsin and Texas are two of many states where elected representatives are far more Republican than the voters. That is because Republican majorities in both legislatures set it up that way, exaggerating and entrenching their power with the lines they drew across the landscape. New computer technologies have turned this process into a precise science, limiting voter choice wherever possible.These structural roadblocks make clear how little say citizens have in who represents them. The system is indeed “rigged,” but the rigging benefits the powerful, the wealthy and the extremes — not the vast majority of Americans.Trump’s presidency is a result of this system.
