Donald trump, in his announcement of his presidential candidacy, promised that if elected he would curb democracy: allowing only paper ballots, only one day to vote, etc. However in reality he can’t actually do these things because the constitution mandates that our election system must be regulated and controlled at the state level (Article I, Section 4, Clause 1). In this way a dose of anarchy is baked into our system, since states are free to design their own unique and esoteric election systems which are beyond the reach of the president/congress (and therefore the national electorate), who are all prevented (or at least strongly discouraged) from creating a single national election system.
(Note: the congress does have the authority to make general rules governing national elections, even if those rules occasionally over-ride state law. For example, congress has established a single election day on which the whole country votes for national candidates, and congress has also limited the amount that individuals can donate to candidates. However, traditionally the power to design and implement an election system within each state has been vested in the states themselves, and congress rarely intervenes. So long as a state’s election system is in line with its own state constitution and the national constitution – especially the 14th Amendment, which dictates that no state law shall deprive a citizen of his right to vote without due process of law – the congress and the Supreme Court generally do not get involved. In this way states are, for the most part, free to do as they please).
This constitutional rule that states may design their own election systems can only be amended via the laborious amendment process, not by the decree of the president, nor by a vote in congress. Though a law passed by congress could establish certain national voting rules, congress would be loath to overturn via legislation the various voting systems of all the states at once, unless they had very strong reason for doing so, since a multitude of lawsuits (not to mention massive political fall-out) would likely follow if congress attempted to mettle with so many varied and wide-spread systems in one fell swoop. This would be especially true if the congress was clearly doing so for political reasons, such as to make it more difficult for a given political party’s constituents to cast votes. Such behavior would draw the wrath of the states, the press, and likely the Supreme Court, who has ruled in the past that neither the states nor the congress may dictate election outcomes via legislation. Therefore Trump will very likely be unable to establish new national voting rules, even if a national majority of voters support his initiative. It seems this dose of anarchy in our election systems – the power of states to make their own election rules – is itself a limit on democracy since it deprives the national electorate the power to establish a single system.
What is ironic about this is that this check on democracy also preserves our democracy! For if the people lawfully elect a wannabe tyrant who promises to overturn the election, and a majority of the people support that effort, only this check on the people’s power will preserve the very democracy that elected the tyrant. The constitution blocks the grass roots and democratic movement to limit democracy itself. Therefore the constitution, by blocking one kind of democracy, preserves the franchise as a whole.
Any who call for unbridled national democracy should remember this example (and the example of the ancient Athenian democracy, whose people voted for the war that brought on their own destruction): too much democracy opens the way for a charismatic leader – who has fully captivated the minds and captured the love of his people – to sweep away limits on his own power, convince the people to vote for war, or otherwise destroy or suppress pieces of the government and culture that he and his constituency despise. If it wasn’t for this limit on the majority’s power, Trump-supporters (or any faction for that matter), assuming they constituted a slim majority of the electorate, could simply vote to disable democracy itself by creating a national voting system that forever entrenches their own power.
So I guess sometimes we need to limit democracy to save it? Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that democracy in this instance is “scattered” rather than limited, since at the state level democratically-elected representatives can change that state’s election system as the people dictate. Though while the democracy may be scattered, the rules which govern it are centralized in the constitution, and are damn-near impossible to change, regardless of how a majority of the national electorate might feel about those rules. So we scatter the democracy in order to protect it from itself, and set the rules which govern that democracy beyond the reach of voters (which does in the end mean that democracy is limited). I have to ponder this more.
For now I’ll end with this thought: it’s so interesting how the constitution can at the same moment be a check on the national government’s power (thereby guarding the people from tyrants who hate democracy) and a check on the national electorate as a voting body (thereby guarding the people from the “tyranny of the majority,” which may seek to entrench its own power by suspending democracy or severely limiting access to it). What a clever document.