An illiberal minority with majority power

Lee Drutman contributed to a CNN series reflecting on political developments of 2021.

2021 was a rough year for US democracy. Across the country, Republican state legislatures passed sweeping changes to voting rules, empowering partisan legislatures over independent election administrators and limiting voting methods (like mailed ballots) more likely to help Democrats vote.

Now, with the latest wave of aggressive gerrymanders, and Democrats’ failure to pass comprehensive democracy reform, we are hurtling toward a likely future of minority rule. More specifically, in 2024, Democrats could well win the national popular vote for the presidency, Senate and House—and yet Republicans could still win unified control of government.

This form of minority rule is even worse than it looks. Not only would Republicans rule by representing a narrow minority of voters—mainly White conservatives—but the party would be ruled by an extreme illiberal faction with definitive minority support.

How is such minority rule possible in a modern democracy?

It’s because of our antiquated voting system that relies on single-winner, majoritarian elections. This may seem normal to many Americans who have voted under these rules their whole lives. But the consequence of these single-winner elections is that they entrench a two-party system by rendering third parties as spoilers and wasted votes. Layered on top of today’s deep urban-rural partisan split and deep identity divides, these voting rules drive our toxic hyper-partisan polarization. This system also over-represents the most rural and conservative parts of the country. And in a two-party system, a minority can rule if it is well-placed to be a majority within one of the two major parties—as the illiberal faction in the GOP now is.

As long as we maintain our two-party system, and continue the winner-take-all electoral institutions that pose steep barriers to new parties, there is no way out of this doom loop. The only path forward is transformative electoral reform: proportional representation that will open the door to new parties, and guarantee that an illiberal minority can’t gain majority power.