Discerning the democratic deficit.

• Author: Hickman, John
• Position: Election 2004: Green Analyses

Plagued by the suspicion that there was something less than democratic about the 2004 presidential election? You are probably not alone. Millions of other Americans can name specific aspects of the process that they think call into question the legitimacy of the outcome.

Determining whether the 2004 presidential election was genuinely democratic, an exercise in mass participation mimicking a democratic self-government, or something falling between those two characterizations requires comparison against basic criteria for democratic elections.

Specifying the administrative criteria for reasonably democratic elections is easy. First, voter registration should be universal and politically neutral (both non-partisan and non-ideological) except to the extent that it facilitates voting. Second, voting should be the universal right of all citizens that is widely exercised and free from intimidation or the suspicion of intimidation. Third, all votes should be counted accurately.

Specifying the philosophic criteria is also easy. First, voters should be presented with choices among plausible, recognizable parties and candidates sufficient to represent the range of ideologies and interests in society. Second, their electoral choices should be translated into electoral outcomes efficiently and faithfully by the electoral system. Third, the parties and candidates who win office must take office and actually govern.

Problems meeting the three administrative criteria are obvious. Voter registration is far from universal in the United States. Almost alone among the wealthy democracies, the United States does not have a system of universal registration. Those least likely to be registered are also typically members of the least powerful segments of American society: members of ethnic and racial minorities, youth, the residentially mobile, and the less educated.

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The sophisticated vote suppression operations employed in recent elections mean that voter registration and voting are not free from intimidation. From the tens of thousands of missing absentee ballots and "caging lists" in Florida, to a new state law in South Dakota requiring presentation of photo identification to vote (a requirement aimed at elderly Native American voters), to the "aggressive poll watching" in Ohio, Michigan, and Nevada, it is clear that state Republican parties and their affiliates are willing to deploy a combination of high handed bureaucratic legalism and...