Balkinization: Advice to the next President

Advice to the next President

Heather K. Gerken

The Brennan Center recently asked a group of people (including Hendrik Hertzberg, E.L. Doctorow, Senator Bill Bradley, and Dahlia Lithwick) the following question: "It is the morning after the election. The president-elect calls you up and says, 'You know, after this grueling, absurd campaign, I now see that the state of our democracy is something we have to grapple with right away. What should I do?'" The question prompted a number of interesting responses that are well worth reading. Below is mine, cross-posted at the Brennan Center’s website.

I would tell the president that he is asking the wrong question. We already spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what's wrong with our election system and how to fix it. The problem is that we are fighting reform battles on hostile terrain, and almost no one is thinking about how to change the terrain itself. Our focus should not be on end goals but on how to get from "here to there" -- how to create an environment in which reform can actually take root.

Reform is an uphill slog in this country. Even a crisis as profound as the one that occurred during the 2000 presidential race prompted only modest reform. Just think about that for a moment. In the wake of the Florida fiasco, there was a strong national consensus that we had a problem, lots of potential solutions, a reform community ready to act, and a cause that was at least superficially appealing to voters. Yet relatively little got done. If that is not a sign of a tenaciously difficult reform environment, I don't know what is. Even a newly minted president is likely to find it hard to get change passed.

Rather than urge the president to fight the same fight in the vague hope that his proposal, unlike so many others, will take root, I would urge him to step back and think about how to create an environment that is more receptive to change generally. It is time to think less about end results and more about the institutional correctives and intermediary strategies that will help us get from :here to there." We have already spent a lot of time identifying the journey's end. Now is the time to figure out how to smooth the road that leads there.

My "here to there" proposal might seem modest when compared to the goals typically articulated by reformers -- rewriting campaign finance laws, a nonpartisan system for administering elections, redistricting reform. But proposals like these have been met with a deafening silence from voters and politicians. We know the basic outlines of the reform we need; we don't need a president to help us with that. What we need is an environment in which change can happen. That is where presidential vision and leadership can make a difference.

What would a package of "here to there" strategies look like? Space constraints prevent a full discussion here, but let me offer one set of suggestions about the kinds of strategies that should help us get from here to there. If you ask any expert to identify the root causes of the problems in our election system, partisanship and localism are usually the two main targets for blame. Both make it more difficult to create a professional, unbiased, properly funded system for running our elections.

Unfortunately, phrases like "the perils of partisanship" or the "problem of localism" are usually the punch line to the story, not a starting point for the analysis. The stated goal of many reform proposals is the elimination of partisanship in election administration or the replacement of our localist system, as if one could just wish them away. But partisanship and localism aren't just the problem; they are also the reason that the problem is hard to fix. Partisan and local officials, needless to say, are reluctant to give up the power they wield over the election system.

It would be a mistake to tell the president to focus on proposals that require partisan foxes to stop guarding the henhouse or to imagine that our centuries' old tradition of localism will vanish overnight. Even a president cannot get rid of such entrenched interests so easily. The president should instead focus on how to domesticate the foxes and harness the power of local competition. We may not have an ideal system in place. But we might as well take advantage of the best features of the current system -- the powerful engine of partisanship and the intriguing possibilities associated with local competition.

I have spent the last few months writing a book about one promising "here to there" strategy: a Democracy Index, which would rank states and localities based on their performance in administering elections. The Democracy Index would function as the rough equivalent of the U.S. News and World Report rankings for colleges. It would focus on the basic issues that matter to voters: how long were the lines? how many ballots were discarded? how often did the machines break down? It should work for a simple reason: no one wants to be at the bottom of the list.

The Democracy Index should harness localism and partisanship, the usual obstacles to change, in the service of reform. At present, problems with how we run elections are all but invisible to voters. Voters see the symptoms of the problems here and there, but they lack the data that would tell them how well their state is doing compared to other states. Little wonder, then, that states would prefer to fund projects voters can see -- new schools, more cops on the beat -- rather than put resources into improving our voting system. A ranking not only makes election problems visible to voters, but plays up rivalries between the states.

The Democracy Index should also realign the interests of partisans with those of voters. Right now, it is quite hard for voters to hold election officials accountable for their missteps because we lack the most basic information about how well state election systems are run. If voters cannot assess how well the election system functions, politics -- not professionalism -- is what matters most for the many secretaries of states or lower-level election officials who want to run for reelection or seek higher office. That means that the fate of an election official depends heavily on her standing within the party, which will provide the resources and support for her next campaign. The current state of affairs creates the wrong kinds of incentives for election officials. It is not just that some are tempted to administer the process in a partisan fashion. They also have less incentive to rock the boat by lobbying other members of their party hard for needed resources. Legislators, after all, would rather fund cops and teachers than machines and poll workers.

The Democracy Index realigns the interests of election officials with the interests of voters. When voters have information about an election official’s professional performance, not just her political skills, she should care deeply about how her state ranks. Imagine, for example, you were running against a former Secretary of State like Ohio's Kenneth Blackwell or Florida’s Katherine Harris. What better campaign weapon could you imagine than a ranking system showing that your state is one of the worst-run systems in the country? In this fashion, the Democracy Index should help domesticate the foxes. Instead of asking a secretary of state to stop thinking about her political interests in administering the election process, the Democracy Index links her political fate to her professional performance.

I have identified a variety of other "here to there" strategies in a series of posts on Balkinization, here, here, here, here, and here. Many of these proposals similarly harness partisan and local competition in the service of reform. In my view, these modest proposals represent the best shot we have for creating an environment in which bigger, better reform can take place. Thus, if I were advising the president, I'd tell him to start there . . . or, rather, to start with the "here to there."

Posted 11:52 AM by Heather K. Gerken [link]