The Oct. 11 letter to the editor, titled "'Saving democracy' can mean many things" by Mark Broadhurst, discussed saving democracy. The writer started well but quickly went off track.
How is the will of the people preserved in a democracy? We believe that whoever gets the most votes of properly registered citizens in a secure process wins. But that sometimes does not happen in national elections. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton got the majority of the votes in their elections, but did not win because they did not get enough votes in the right places to win the requisite votes in the Electoral College.
This compromise is in the Constitution. It was written that way so voters in smaller states were not overwhelmed by larger states.
This went along with allocating two Senate seats per state, rather than a population-based representation. Wyoming (about a million people) gets the same number of senators as California (41 million). Is that fair? Probably not, but it is the system we have.
Both parties engage in the art of gerrymandering to enhance and preserve their power. They design Congressional districts to protect their favored candidates creating conditions where some districts are reliably secure against opposition, like Southern Maryland, where Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md., 5th) runs virtually unopposed. But rural state Republicans have far more of those kinds of safe districts.
There are several other points raised by the writer as if they are facts. But they are not, and I cannot address them all.
One that stands out is the treatment of the American territories of Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The writer thinks that allowing them statehood is “stacking the Senate.” I must remind him that almost all the states that entered the Union after the Revolution were allowed in through compromises. I was around when Alaska (now reliably Republican) and Hawaii (reliably Democratic) became states at the same time.
The citizens of D.C. and Puerto Rico are taxpayers without representation. People in those territories serve in our armed forces, defending our nation. Puerto Rico has a population of over three million, while Montana has about one million. The District has a larger population than Wyoming.
Our electoral system, despite these flaws, has worked well for us for a long time. It is now under relentless attack by the Republicans on shaky grounds. It was a Republican president who lost the election, refused to peacefully transfer power, called for a mob to storm the Capitol and even now seems to continue to conduct a coup against the Constitution.
The election was conducted properly. His own Department of Homeland Security said it was conducted properly. He commissioned several studies, all of which documented the essential fairness of the election. He was unable to provide sufficient evidence of fraud in over 60 court cases, many of which were conducted by Republican judges, even some he had appointed. Faithful minions in some states (Florida and Texas) set up separate fraud investigative units but have come up empty. His propaganda machine (like Fox News) was found guilty of false claims about the election and fined almost a billion dollars. Current false claims include the unproven allegations of mass voting by non-citizens.
The only fraud being conducted is by Republicans like Trump who want to replace the Constitution with a kind of dictatorship where he can do whatever he wants, unconstrained by any limits. As Richard Nixon said “if the president does it, it is not a crime.” But it is. It is just that some people think they are above the law.
