United States | Democratic exhaustion in five words

The health of American democracy is weakened. The battle for the future of democratic institutions is being played out in Washington, but also in several states. Here, in five words, is a summary of the problems and challenges of the American political system, less than a month before a decisive presidential election.

Trump

The health of American democracy was faltering before the appearance of Donald Trump in the American political universe, it is true. The fact remains that the former president also played an important role in the weakening of various democratic institutions over the last decade. Starting with the presidential election. For example, since 2020, he has denied losing the vote to Joe Biden, challenged his integrity, and maneuvered to overturn the outcome of the vote. He notably galvanized his supporters in January 2021, a mobilization which ended with the assault on the Capitol in Washington. What will happen if he is re-elected in November? Among other things, he promised to take revenge. He also suggested that he would behave like a “dictator” on the first day of his mandate. What if he loses? By democratic standards, he should accept his defeat in stride, but if the trend continues, that will be anything but.

Vote

Massive fraud in the American elections? It’s happening in the heads of Donald Trump and his most loyal Republican allies, but not in reality. On the other hand, it has been obvious for a long time that several means are implemented, upstream, to make access to the vote more difficult for too large a number of voters. Since the management of federal elections is largely the responsibility of the states, facilitating electoral participation depends on the goodwill of elected officials across the country. Obstacles that are common knowledge include requirements to provide certain proof of identity that vary by state, laws that restrict the right to vote of Americans who have committed a felony, and various measures that make registration on the ballot more complex. an electoral list.

Facts

“Everyone has the right to their own opinion, but not their own facts,” American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan once wrote. A major problem, according to political scientist John Geer (who directs the Project on American Unity and Democracy at Vanderbilt University), is that many Americans are now unable to agree on facts. . In interview with The Presshe said he was convinced that “the real threat to the country” is not polarization, but rather the fact that “there are a significant number of people, more likely to be on the side of the Republican Party, who move away from the facts, who are no longer constrained by what the empirical data indicates.” The culmination of this worrying trend, he said, was the 2020 presidential election.

Minority

American researcher Jacob Grumbach, from the University of California at Berkeley, has focused in recent years on the shaky democratic health of American states. Interviewed by email, he asserts that the United States is experiencing two “democratic crises” in parallel. “The first is the threat of a coup d’état or the subversion of a presidential election, as almost happened in early 2021. The second is the longer-term growth of the rule of minority, in which a small minority of Americans govern despite the wishes of the majority of Americans. The Supreme Court and state governments have largely contributed to this development through tactics such as gerrymandering and voter suppression. »

Redistricting

In several American states, redistricting is done in a partisan manner (it is called gerrymandering). So much so that the party in power in this state is literally able to choose the voters who will vote for its candidates. “Tennessee is a conservative state, so Republicans control the state Legislature. But by means of gerrymanderingthey considerably increased their political power. We basically have a 60% type state. [républicains] against 40% [démocrates]. But in the House of Representatives and the Senate, we are at 80% [républicains] and 20% [démocrates]. This is not accidental,” says political scientist John Geer of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Redistricting also has an undeniable impact on the elections of members of the American Congress. And therefore on American democracy as a whole.

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