A crisis of democratic legitimacy for the U.S.?

At National Review, Lyman Stone challenges the currently popular idea that American electoral processes are in the grip of a crisis of democratic legitimacy. While there is real room for process improvement, as with the issue of gerrymandering, it is less clear that imperfections in our electoral system 1) have worsened a lot or 2) are especially different from than those found in other mature democratic systems. It is also far from clear that over the long run the imperfections systematically benefit one “side”: at the moment Republicans hold more seats than their share of votes would predict, but one needn’t go far back in time to find periods when Democrats held the same sort of edge.

Two areas where the U.S. is unusual: we have low voter turnout, well below that of most advanced countries, and each member of our House of Representatives represents a very large number of people.


A crisis of democratic legitimacy for the U.S.? curated from Overlawyered

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