[EL] What Makes A State A Democracy?

[Steven John Mulroy (smulroy)]

> Sean certainly makes a good point that we need to think about people in total and not just voters. That's why, for example, when we do apportionment, we should look to total population, and not voters.

But that's not really what the electoral college is about, nor the sharp deviation from one person one vote principles inherent in the equal suffrage of states in the US Senate. The latter is elevating some rather arbitrary boundaries of states over the will  of the majority.  While  the original 13 colonies were arguably sovereign entities prior to the founding, many of the remaining states really had their boundaries drawn arbitrarily, and from the get-go did not represent natural, distinct political communities of interest. In the 21st-century, even the original 13 states have lost their political saliency. Most people care more about the overall national divisions between Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, pro-life and pro choice, high tax and low tax, etc. more than they do some vestigial fealty to their state (or even county or city). 

So I think one can acknowledge, when one is discussing Evenwel and similar cases, That representation is about all people, not just voters, while  still respecting the idea that we shouldn't countenance counter-majoritarian Electoral outcomes. And the electoral college system and the composition of the US Senate, certainly do encourage counter majoritarian outcomes that thwart the will of the people as a whole. (So Too  with the natural gerrymanders that result, given demographic clustering, from insisting on a single-member districts, winner take all construct in the US house, state legislatures, etc.)  It's not naïve to say that that is a bad thing. 

But getting back to Stephanie's original question. It's a poser. Democracy means ruled by the people, plain and simple. I think even our flawed system, with all of the skews mentioned above, still counts as a democracy, as imperfect as it is. I'd contrast it with all of the true autocracies around the world. But there are no shortage of middleground cases making the line of demarcation fuzzy.