If Democracy Is Really At Stake, More of Us Should Experience It

The significance of “Super Tuesday” has changed since the late 1980s, when it was conceived by a faction of Democrats to consolidate multiple primaries in the South, with the goal of preventing a liberal candidate from winning the party’s presidential nomination. Today, for both major parties, it’s become something quite different, and less Southern: It is—in some years—the day on which more people have a meaningful voice in the selection of the president than any other, even including Election Day in November. Most of our Election Day votes don’t make even an incremental difference because the Electoral College means that only a few states matter, and for most of us, our partisan loyalties are so fixed that we’ll vote for our party’s nominee, whoever it is.

It is in the primaries and caucuses that voters, in theory, have the widest choice and most meaningful voice among multiple candidates and viewpoints. In years of highly contested nominated races, such as 2016, with several candidates of different viewpoints, the public tends to show significant interest and engagement, reflected in higher voter turnout. In 2016, more than 14 million people voted on Super Tuesday. Eight years earlier, when more states set their primaries on Super Tuesday, more than 26 million participated on that day—about half of the overall turnout in primaries that year.

This year is not one of those years. Overall participation in the selection of this year’s nominees is likely to be as low as it’s been since 2000 or 2012, when both parties’ nominations were settled early. So far, through the Michigan primaries, only about 3.5 million people have cast votes. While it’s no surprise that the incumbent president faced no serious challenge , that the party out of power moved so quickly to renominate the candidate who was defeated in the last election—and who lost the popular vote twice—should be quite a surprise. Donald Trump pushed for caucuses and winner-take-all primaries, and all but one of his challengers dropped out either before the first vote was cast or after the first two small-state competitions—thus letting polls and money, rather than voters, shape the contest. As a result, voters themselves will play almost no role in the process by which these two candidates were selected.

Even the independent candidates who boast that they will give voters more choice—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; Cornel West; and the candidate-to-be-recruited-later by DC-elite organization No Labels—have not put themselves before voters. All simply intend to use money from wealthy donors to obtain ballot access in as many states as they can. The Green Party, whose nomination Jill Stein is seeking for a third time, is sort of an exception since that party has a formal selection process that involves the party’s members and a national convention.

“Rather than just focusing on ‘saving’ democracy from the threat of a one-day dictator, as if democracy were a static thing … we should do more to expand its reach.”

In 2024, the limited role of voters matters for more than just “good government” reasons. As we are often reminded, accurately, democracy itself is at stake in November: One candidate has already sought to overturn the results of an election by violence and deceit, insisted that he should have absolute immunity from prosecution under all laws, and publicly said that he intends to act as a dictator, albeit just “for one day.” The other major party candidate has a long career of respect for the institutions and practices of democratic self-government. We have never faced such a choice about the fundamental nature of our political system and values.

But “democracy is at stake” might not be a meaningful appeal to citizens who have had so little lived experience of it. Without having participated in the selection of presidential candidates, or in congressional elections that are competitive (almost none of them are), or even in local elections, where turnout is often dismal, “democracy” becomes a distant abstraction. It’s something carried out by elites in a distant capital, or a set of formal legal structures. It doesn’t feel like a thing that all of us do.

Rather than just focusing on “saving” democracy from the threat of a one-day dictator, as if democracy were a static thing that means the same thing to everyone, we should do more to expand its reach so that it becomes a meaningful part of everyone’s lives. Voting is only one aspect of the democracy experience, but it is a minimum.

Voting can and should be the most inclusive form of participation. New election methods, such as proportional representation in Congress or ranked-choice voting in presidential primaries, would give many more people a meaningful voice at the ballot box. Fusion voting, in which new parties could cross-endorse major-party candidates or run their own, would give voters a way to express different views without boosting their least-favored candidate. Above all, for presidential elections, the elimination of the Electoral College, whether through an unlikely constitutional amendment or via the proposed National Popular Vote compact, would ensure that everyone’s vote on election day would matter just as much as anyone else’s.

Voting isn’t everything, and there are ways to broaden the reach of democracy beyond the voting booth. Citizens’ assemblies, where a representative group of residents deliberates over a complex problem, have proven a successful method to achieve consensus in several European cases, and the idea is just beginning to catch on in the United States. There are other ways to expand the reach of democracy, too, such as through participation in advocacy campaigns, protests, labor unions, or even neighborhood associations.

What all these approaches have in common is that they treat democracy as a thing we actively do—a way to create our world together, rather than a set of fixed rules and institutions. To effectively make the case for democracy in a year when its values are at stake, we should at least call attention to the kinds of changes that would enable more of us to be a part of it.

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