Civility: 'We the People'

What does it mean to be a citizen in a democracy? What are our rights and responsibilities and how do ‘the people’ keep governments accountable? Peaceful protest is one means and a sign of healthy democracies. Where is the line between peaceful protest and civil disobedience? Did the storming of the Capitol in the USA cross that line?

Executive producers and project concept: Nicole Anderson, Julian Knowles
Series writers and researchers: Nicole Anderson, Julian Knowles
Production, sound design, and original music: Julian Knowles
Project funders/supporters: The Institute for Humanities Research, Arizona State University.  PBS: Public Broadcasting Service

Visit us online at https://futuresofdemocracy.com/

Transcript

The Futures of Democracy Podcast – Series 1, EP 4 'Civility: We the People'
Presenters: Julian Knowles and Nicole Anderson
Publisher: PBS - Public Broadcasting Service

Nicole Anderson (VO)
Welcome to the Futures of Democracy. We’re your hosts – I’m Nicole Anderson, and I’m Julian Knowles.  In this podcast we will be discussing the connection between civics, citizenship, democracy and elections. Any dictionary will define "civics" as that which encompasses the rights and duties of the citizens of a society. And this definition goes back to the Ancient Greek notion of “civic virtue”, or “good citizen”. Being a good citizen means fulfilling certain responsibilities or duties in return for protection of the individual but also the protection of collective “vital interests” by the State. 

Interestingly, in Ancient Greece the notion of democracy extended only to those who were citizens, which did not include slaves, women, foreigners, or peasants. Since then, this Ancient Greek idea of democratic citizenship and who exactly was deemed to be a citizen, has changed significantly. For instance, in regards to the USA, the signing of its Constitution by the Founding Parents on September 17, 1787, over time provided citizenship to all people. The Constitution begins with these words: “We the people”. This concept of popular sovereignty—power to the people—is the foundation upon which the entire Constitution depends. And it now extends to ALL people in a nation state regardless of gender, race or class.

We spoke to Richard Amesbury, an expert in religion and contemporary political thought and Director of the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University.

Richard, given that democracy in Ancient Greece was originally developed by and entailed a small group of people, namely aristocratic men, how do we develop a shared or common idea of democracy and citizenship in a large and diverse society like the US today, and is it in fact possible? 

Richard Amesbury
I think this is an incredibly important and confounding question, right? Because some democratic theorists have argued that the kind of democracy that we should aspire to have is one in which differences are not eliminated in the interests of some sort of spurious unity; where different groups and social classes and so forth have different kinds of interests, but in which it is possible to see your fellow participants in the democratic system as friends rather than enemies. There's a kind of recognition of one's fellow citizens in some broad sense as part of the same collective and worthy of a certain kind of respect. And I think one of the striking features of our time is that that line between friend and enemy no longer circumscribes the political community, it cuts right through it. It sort of bisects what used to be the political community anyway. So, what that means is that it's very difficult to achieve any kind of democratic legitimacy because part of what's in question is: Who are the people? Who has the right to speak on behalf of the people? Who are the relevant people here? You might even think of it as like large scale gerrymandering - a kind of gerrymandering of the people itself to include only “the right kind of people” - the people who agree with you. And then, instead of viewing the people who disagree with you as participants to see them as some kind of problem to be eliminated, some sort of impurity in the system to be to be dealt with. And that I think is a very dangerous situation for any kind of polity to find itself in because it amounts to a sort of civil war. It's a kind of unwillingness to, or inability to, find any kind of. overarching framework to work within.
 
 
MONTAGE BEGINS

News reporter: Street battles have broken out between thousands of Donald Trump supporters and counter protesters in the heart of Washington. Donald Trump has slammed those who clashed with his fans as 'Antifa scum' on Twitter, and blamed the chaos on DC's Democratic mayor.

Counter protester: Well we're just simply standing here. And they're yelling at us. They're yelling out insults. And they're acting in a way that's not safe. By the comments and the threats that we've received have not been peaceful. Nothing about it. So, if they say they've don't come in violence. then why are they saying that they're locked and loaded and waiting for me?

Protester:  Fascists! They call me a fascist. I ain't  no racist.  I ain't no racist.  I ain't no fascist. I think everyone here should have a speech.

Reporter 2: That man later walked away bloody.

Protester:  Yeah, a rock hit me in the face. It's cool. This is what we came here for!

Reporter 3: We begin with those clashes in Times Square. Caravan rallies in support of President Trump took a violent turn when they met up with counter protestors, leading to fist fights and objects being hurled at cars. Fists were flying as the group calling themselves 'Jews for Trump' were rallying support for the President at the Crossroads of the World. Counter groups and pro-Trump demonstrators clashed, first with words, then with violence. One Trump supporter wearing a red hoodie jumped out of his vehicle after a counter protester allegedly taunted his daughter who was with him.
 
Reporter 4: Protestors began pushing, shoving and hitting people on the opposite side

MONTAGE ENDS


Richard Amesbury
So, I think figuring out either how to rebuild a sense of shared citizenship or alternatively, the argument might be made, well that simply isn't possible any longer. What we have instead, we only in theory have a shared system. What we in fact have is two or more (more or less) competing sovereign bodies. And that does happen from time to time historically, and groups break off and sometimes ally with other groups that had previously been outside, and there are other ways of affiliating besides national identity. So, I think taking a kind of state-centered view, if your interests are in preserving the nation state, that's a terrifying place to be. On the other hand, there are forms of democracy outside the nation state and ways of organizing people in other forms of affiliation, other notions of who ‘we the people’ are, and so if you're more committed to those kind of understandings of ‘we the people’ perhaps this is just a change, not the collapse of democracy altogether.

Nicole Anderson VO
There’s an interesting tension between, on the one hand, our ideal notion of democracy, and on the other hand where differing positions and beliefs are disrespected to the point of polarization. And when I say an ‘ideal notion of democracy’, I mean a way of governing that depends on the will of the people, as in “we the people” with all its implied sense of unity and citizenship, which is based on responsibility, duty and the notion of moral capital.  Joan McGregor is an expert in moral and legal philosophy.

Joan, moral capital arguably is the foundation of civics and civility, are we currently seeing the failure of moral capital? And how do you define moral capital and how does it function in regards to citizenship and democracy?

Joan McGregor
I’m trying to work out in a little more detail and see where it goes, but I think I'll just use the definition that David Brooks from the New York Times came up with. He put it as this set of shared habits, norms, institutions, and values that make common life possible.

So, I mean, the idea is that there's this invisible set of norms that we, as a society have, that make common cooperative life work, and some of them are what you might think of as norms of etiquette, but others are more deep than that, and are norms of ethical behavior, but also they’re practices like practices of trust, and those go at different levels, right? So, we can think of just when you drive down the road, you trust people will stay on the right side of the road, right? You know, and they'll stop at stop signs. People are basically selfish and so we need to have these kinds of norms of behavior that keep people restrained; kind of keep people in check. But they grease the wheels of common, collective, shared societal behavior, and I got interested in this because I started to see this discussion that moral capital was eroding in our society. And you see this in social media and on cable news, and then in our politicians - of people no longer abiding by these shared norms of behavior. And you might think, well what's bad about that? Well, what's bad about it is that then it becomes more and more difficult to know how to expect people are going to behave around you. You know, at some point that can even become kind of a scary thing because what we saw with the pandemic, and this is where I think it really came out, is that people didn't trust in these institutions that we pay for. You know, the CDC, the NIH, and many people weren't trusting what they said and thought that there was something else going on there.

MONTAGE BEGINS

Fox News presenter: What was your reaction when you heard Dr. Fauci saying essentially the CDC is above the law?  What does it mean to have an all-powerful health bureaucracy you can't challenge? I mean, one critic said, "what are you gonna do...mandate chemotherapy or radiation?'

Getting back to Dr. Fauci, right? I mean, he touted and praised China's total lockdowns. Now China is seizing and confiscating passports until after the pandemic, right? He dissembled and misled on the NIH funding that dangerous gain-of-function research at Chinese labs. And then he admitted in testimony his agency doesn't even track the money.

Rogue doctor: More people are dying from the COVID vaccine than from COVID

TV interviewer: You believe the pandemic was planned?

Rogue doctor: Fauci is a criminal

TV interviewer:  You think Dr Fauci is involved in some kind of plot to kill millions of people? I just wanna make sure I understand that.

Rogue doctor: I can tell you that Dr. Fauci is not an innocent bystander.

Fox News presenter: He dissembled and misled... what are you gonna do... mandate chemotherapy or radiation?'

Reporter: COVID was a planned operation which was politically motivated.

Reporter:  He posted 'most who took COVID vaccines will be dead by 2025'.

Rogue doctor: Let me ask you something. Are you saying it's not reasonable to question the same agencies that have resulted in numerous deaths.....

Reporter: It's reasonable to ask questions

MONTAGE ENDS


Nicole Anderson
How has this deterioration of the USA's moral capital affected democracy? In other words, how has this failure in trust contributed to a decline of common and shared social practices, or is it the other way around, that the decline in the common shared social practices and values is leading to a failure in trust?

Joan McGregor
Well, I mean we see it, we just had an election and there are a lot of practices in place to ensure that there isn't fraud in the election; that people who go to the polling places or mail-in ballots are actually legitimate voters. So, there's these institutions in place. And people had been checking it as the election was going on that in fact, there wasn't a whole bunch of fraud. But then you get outside forces that come in, and for their own self-interest, (and) say, “oh, no, in fact, there is all this fraud going on”, and then you get people out in the public thinking “Oh, there was all this fraud going on”, and then you get people in the you know, actually in the system, saying, “well, we've got to check this fraud going on”. 

So, then you just break down the whole sense that the election process is fair. I mean, I thought that was really an incredible event unfolding right in front of us, and you even had election officials, it's their job to check this out, saying 'no, in fact, there was no fraud. We did internal audits, and we didn't find any fraud'. So, that seems to me a very disturbing and disconcerting event where not trusting institutions can then just undermine the entire democratic process.

Nicole Anderson
So then, what role of do civility and trust in shared norms play in society's willingness to comply with authoritative directives?

Joan McGregor
Well, I mean we're seeing it here where people don't want to get vaccinated. They don't trust the government. They don't trust the institutions that, again, we pay to do research on something like the vaccine, and even proper medications. When you are sick, people are listening to, you know, non-experts about how to treat something like Covid. So, there's a case where this is really kind of undermining people's trust in the institutions.

I think civility plays a role in so far as that people are willing to listen to others. They're willing to be open minded about the kinds of reasons that people give, that we accept certain kinds of things as evidence for positions, we think that there are reliable facts out in the world, that there is something to expertise, that when you want to know something you don't just Google it and find anything, that you actually go to reputable sources. And I think that civility really plays this role of being open minded, listening to other people's views, being open to being persuaded that you could be wrong about something. When we give up those kinds of shared values, and don't see any reason in listening to anybody from the other side, then democracy is really in trouble, because that's what democracy is: is being open to listening to others views, And recognizing that there can be reasonable differences too. And you may not win all the time. But you don't see your opponent as evil or as a villain, but that there can be reasonable differences. But that relies on people accepting facts and accepting that there are ways of understanding what is evidence for a position, and those sorts of good epistemic virtues, as I call them.

Julian Knowles
I think that's really interesting. This idea that civility is connected to an openness to things like evidence, and the acceptance of “facts” -   and that seems to be a theme that's emerging across a number of global issues like the environment, climate, and the pandemic. We’re seeing a trend where experts are devalued, that evidence is devalued in favor of belief systems and political ideologies, for example.

Let’s bring in John Carlson (Director) and Tracy Fessenden (Director of Strategic Initiatives), for the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University.  John and Tracy - given the work you do around ‘recovering truth’ am I right in saying that you would agree with Joan McGregor that the basis for a civil society is about being open to others and listening to them? How do we reconcile that with the intense degree of polarization that we are observing in society right now?


Tracy Fessenden
There’s nothing wrong with a very polarized electorate, people believing strongly in their different views, but I don't know that we've had quite this polarized a congress ever before. Despite the senate being perfectly divided, some things are just not going to pass because the republicans won't budge. They'll vote on bloc, they'll filibuster, etc. We see this with the vote on the new supreme court justice. You know it's pretty deadlocked. And that seems to be something that is reflected in our national tendency I think to divide ourselves into hermetically sealed bubbles or cultures where we don't talk to people who don't think the way we do. I think social media is partly a contributor to this. We go into our echo chambers where, you know, everyone likes what we say because we only talk to people that we like. So, one of the things when people wonder, “What can I do, just as an individual?”

One of the most important things, I think, is to exercise a skill that many of us have forgotten, and that is just to have conversations with people with whom you disagree, who disagree with you and make those conversations as civil and as positive and as committed to finding common ground as it's possible to make them. You know, when Trump was still in office it seemed that half the nation was committed to truth and half the nation was committed to something else that wasn't the truth. Well, for the most part, people who believe that Donald Trump did win the election in 2020 believe that's the truth, some of them are simply cynical and will uphold a lie and call it truth. But most of them do believe that that's the truth. So, what we have in common is that we want to be on the side of truth and that can be a good place to start. You know pursuing truth together. We're not about possessing the truth. We don't have the truth to impose on anyone. But we are very interested in how best to pursue truth together and that can be a common project for those of us even who disagree strenuously on the issues.

John Carlson
One of the first conversations that we had with the Recovering Truth project was these different scholars and journalists who are part of our group. One of our first conversations was with the former senator Jeff Flake here of Arizona and it was fascinating because many of the people in our group disagreed quite strongly with a range of different positions and votes that he had taken throughout his career as a senator. And we talked about some of those issues. But there was a surprising consensus on certain basic norms, basic truths, basic values that Americans hold; that those who support democracy hold; and that was not partisan. Jeff Flake is on a very conservative end of the spectrum, far more so than others, and yet he was written off because he would not support Donald Trump. So, he was considered not a real republican, not a real conservative. Well, now we're just inventing meanings of what we mean by ‘conservative’. 

There used to be that there was a whole set of positions; that the more you held these positions the more conservative you were. That doesn't seem to be this stance anymore. I mention this because it's really important to be able sometimes to step back from the current moment and say, “wait a minute we do have other ways of knowing and of seeing the world that are not simply reducible to political partisanship and I think that's very, very important”. And that's always been a strength of the American political system. That's why we have certain beliefs in our kind of underwriting values of our self-evident truths of the ideal that America should be a positive and constructive player in the world, that we should stand up for democracy, that we should support peoples and countries that are struggling under the weight of anti-democratic forces of repression or of invasion, in Ukraine's case by Russia. 

Julian Knowles VO
Joan McGregor gave the example earlier of people obeying the traffic rules as an example of a set of norms that have come about through rules and laws, and that these rules and laws foster civility towards and trust in others, including institutions. Bellamy and Palumbo (2010) in their book on citizenship, say that: “Political regulation, say by installing traffic lights, coordinates our interactions in ways that allow us to know where we stand with regard to others… [and that] a degree of trust and solidarity among citizens also proves important if all are to collaborate in producing the collective benefits of citizenship”. 

They go on to say one of the collective benefits of citizenship is that it shapes and sustains “the collective life of the community primarily by voting, but also by speaking out, campaigning in various ways, and standing for office in order to hold political rulers to account when it comes to pursuing the public’s good rather than their own.

In other words, ensuring the continuance of the principles of democracy, that is, the principles of equality, liberty and freedom, requires that a country is a working electoral democracy. And that can only happen if citizens participate in voting (Bellamy and Palumbo, 2010). 

Nicole Anderson
So, the electoral process takes place in different ways in different democracies but what I think is interesting is voting participation rates in the US.  What we want to explore is how the connection between our civic duty as a citizen of a democracy (which entails participating in politics and/or voting), strengthens democracy itself. 

Without participation (through speaking out, campaigning, standing for office, peaceful protest, etc.) as well as voter engagement, there is no democracy. 

 And the flip side is that democracy is supposed to enable, encourage and strengthen voter turnout. That is, being a citizen in a democracy means fulfilling certain obligations to one’s state (such as voting) and in return citizens will receive protection of their vital interests (education, health, freedom of speech, etc.). 

We spoke with Patrick Kenny, an expert in American politics and election campaigns who is Executive Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Vice Provost for Academic Enterprise Strategy at ASU. Pat, can you describe how the elections work, and what voter trends look like in the US?

Pat Kenney
So, in the United States all voting is controlled by the states themselves. So, the US constitution gives all the power to conduct the voting at the states. So, there's 50 different systems in play at all times. And they hand that oftentimes to implement down to the counties. There are tens of thousands of counties in the United States, but state law usually governs most of the elections. Let’s just talk about presidential elections, because they're the ones the most visible and people know the most about. So, in the United States presidential election every four years… Usually the way we measure this is to say. “what percentage of the voting age population – so in the United States that’s 18 and above - actually came out and voted?”  

Alright, the all-time high in the modern era was 1960 - 63% voted and that's the election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon and John Kennedy won. It then declined in the United States pretty steadily until 1980 and then it was pretty flat at around 50% all the way into the new century. And the lowest turnout United States under 50 percent, right? Under 50%... was a 1996 election between Bill Clinton won over Bob Dole. Now starting in 08 – with the Obama first victory over John Mccain, turnout the United States started to increase again at the presidential level, and the next all-time high was 2016, that was the  Trump Clinton election, but the 2020 set all the new records where Biden beat Trump and turn out with 66%. So, that's a full 3 to 4% higher than it was at the all-time high in 1960 in the modern era now - which I'm counting kind of Franklin Roosevelt forward so 1930s forward - and it was 6% higher than it was in 2016. So, turnout has recovered quite dramatically over the last fifteen, sixteen years.

Nicole Anderson
So why is that? What led to the increase?

Pat Kenney
Yes, that's a really interesting question that we've spent a lot of time thinking about. Most likely what led to the increase was a number of states moved in directions to make it much easier for people to vote. Okay, two  in particular came out. 1) There's been an increase in early voting. So instead of the constitution says all presidential elections are the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. 

Nicole Anderson VO

The date was set in 1845, and November was chosen because back then the US was largely an agrarian society, and it was deemed that by November the harvest would be completed, but it was still mild enough weather for people to venture out and vote.

Pat Kenney
Starting in the late 1980s.. It was Texas ironically - Okay, people don't think of them as a bastian to - make it easier to turn out, but they went to more days you could vote early. In other words, you could go to the voting booth and vote early. And you could even drop off your ballot without getting into line. A number of states start to adopt that gradually. Then the second thing that really happened was Oregon introduced mail in voting in the late 1990s and now, well over fifty percent of the states use both of those, or some combination of them. But, in 2020 because of the coronavirus, and I remember the election here in the United States in 2020 was being held before vaccines, the United States was struggling with trying to figure out, like the rest of the world, what to do with this, and there were a lot of people nervous about going out and voting. So many, many states increased both early voting and voting by mail and those two, what we call in the United States convenience voting, probably increased turnout to this high.

The second  (thing) that happened was the intensity of partisan feelings around these two candidates, right? So, the republicans in particular (just call them ‘Trump supporters’) they desperately wanted him to win re-election and they desperately didn't want Biden to win, and it was reversed on the democratic side. So, there was an intensity by the American electorate to say “we just cannot tolerate the other side winning”. So, that drove more people out there. And then you combine that with (it being) a lot easier to vote and it becomes something that they got done. The third thing is that political parties about twenty years ago, and candidates, became very sophisticated in this big data era, knowing who their voters are; knowing where they live; contacting them - what we call political targeting of voters; being sure they remember to register; be sure this is election day; don't forget to vote by mail. We call ‘mobilization’. I think those three things led to it.


Julian Knowles
Tracy and John – Pat Kenney referred to a relationship between the level of participation and the level of polarisation that exists. In the US, as party politics have become more polarized, and there's less agreement about what should be done with the country, then more people seem to be turning up to vote.

So the urgency to vote seems to be driven by differences of opinion about where the country should head, and a desire to be heard. Looking at the last US election and the events that followed it , which took place amongst an atmosphere of intense polarisation, what can be we learn about the effects of polarisation on elections and democracy more broadly?

Tracy Fessenden
One interesting thing we saw on January Six was that the voters whose candidate was not elected (although they many of them participated in a fiction that he actually was elected - former president Trump), described what they were doing  - in the violent insurrection on the capitol - as democratic participation. And the republican lawmakers who defended them said they have a right to be heard. Well, I think if our voting system were healthier, we might have agreed that those people were heard and we were all heard, all of us, who went to the ballot booth and one side received more votes than the other side. So, it seems that our language of democracy was used to cloak what was actually a very undemocratic, anti-democratic, response to a free and fair election.
 
John Carlson
I would add that their voices were also heard at the rallies, that preceded the insurrection itself, where they staged fair and free and lawfully exercised their rights to express themselves including their disbelief in the rightful outcome of the election. You know the United States has always been a politically polarized country. If you can go back to some of the earliest elections in the country, say between Adams and Jefferson, to see that kind of polarization and acrimony so in some sense that can be healthy. Ah, in terms of participation and engagement.  I've even heard of many democratic lawmakers and officials who have said in some ways that Trump was actually good for democracy if one measures that in terms of civic participation. I think there are a lot of reasons why one can say also that Trump was not good for democracy, including inciting an insurrection. That's the clearest kind of example, but including not obeying certain unwritten rules that heretofore had always been followed: which was to recognize dignity of the elections and to recognize the dignity of losing; to turn to the American people and say you have spoken and I'd like to congratulate my opponent for winning this election and look forward to a peaceful transfer of power. 

Nicole Anderson VO
It was Louis Brandeis who said that: “Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy” (from Center of Civic Education)


MONTAGE BEGINS

Former President Trump: Now it is up to Congress to confront this aggregious assault on our democracy. We're gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we're gonna cheer on our brave senators and congress men and women. And we're probably not gonna be cheering so much for.... some of them. Because  you'll never take back our country with weakness... you have to show strength and you have to be strong.

Rudy Giuliani: Who hides evidence? Criminals hide evidence! Not honest people! So, over the next 10 days we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent and if we're wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we're right, a lot of them will go to jail! So, let's have trial by combat!

Former President Trump: All of us here today do not wanna see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left, democrats, which is what they're doing, and stolen by the fake news media. That's what they done and what they're doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involed....We will Stop the Steal! I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building....

Crowd chants: USA, USA, USA, USA (glass smashing, shouting).

Insurgent: We're in, we're in, we're in!

Reporter:  Meanwhile, up on the steps of the back side of the Capitol, we're seeing protestors overcome the police. The police are now running back into the Capitol building. There are cheers from the protestors who are watching from behind the scenes.

Protestor: January 6, 2021 was the greatest day of my life. I felt like a patriot that was standing beside our founding fathers, speaking up against King George.

MONTAGE ENDS


John Carlson
I mean, that's how we measure the strength of democracy in budding democracies - that they can successfully turn over the reins of power between one official and another and I should add I don't think that that's necessarily in any way inconsistent with political partisanship or polarization either. It is possible and for many, many, many, many years we've agreed upon the basic rules of how we elect officials despite strong differences between them that come out on the campaign trail.

Julian Knowles
So, there are a range of unwritten rules. First and foremost is that we respect the dignity of the election process and the dignity of losing. And the peaceful transfer of power rests upon a shared commitment to these rules. Let’s go back to Pat Kenny now.  Pat, what exactly is the effect and impact of the US system of voting on the participation of particular racial and ethnic groups?

Pat Kenney
Yeah, so there's really strong evidence in the United States that. on average, race and ethnicity are related to turnout and Black Americans, Latinx Americans, are less likely to vote than white Americans. Now when you control for, or make even, certain conditions that drive turnout. So, let's do education and let's do age those are two big ones. Well educated tend to vote more and as you get older until especially the 40s and then forms a plateau you tend to vote more. Young people are very mobile tend not to vote; tend not to worry about it. So, if you take an African American medical doctor 45 years old, and you take a ehite medical doctor forty five years old, they have the same probability of voting. 

But what we know is on average United States Black Americans have less education, and Hispanics have less education. And then those hurdles become more complicated then, right? Because they're probably not in jobs that free them up to get registered, or if you don't have early voting or mail-in voting and then you got to get out there on that Tuesday, right? So those things start to drag down turnout. Gender no longer in the United States is related to turnout. As a matter of fact women voted a higher rate than men, but once you control for education and age those things disappear. It's just that we have unevenness in our system, in our democracy we have unevenness in education rates; income rates, those kind of things that make a difference. 

Julian Knowles
You mention younger people not necessarily caring enough about politics to vote. What would you say to a younger generation about the importance of voting, or if you can’t vote because you’re too young, what is the importance of taking an interest and being politically engaged in other ways?

Pat Kenney
Democracies are about learning the choices of the people so they can guide who is leading their lives, in their politics right? And so, we have, the United States have, most democracies throughout the world have what we call representative democracies. They're very large democracies. We can't all be in charge of government affairs. So, we need representatives who are going to do that. Okay, there are some elements of direct democracy in the United States, not at the federal level but in at the state level, where we vote for propositions - California is more famous for it. All the voters go and vote on - shall we raise taxes? What we should do on climate change? Those taxes - that's a big one for California. But turnout and direct elections, United States sometimes is less than 25% of the population. Okay, they're very low.

So, we have a representative democracy nationwide at the federal levels. The larger the percentage of turnout, the more influence the voices, the people will have on the representatives that represent them. The more competitive our elections are the more likely those representatives are to talk to all sides of the electorate. When the elections are a little lopsided like we do have in many states and counties and districts, then they can not worry about the broad concern to the electorate and focus on who they know their voters are, right? And so, it becomes critical for people to go vote in a democracy to legitimize the system, to provide support for representatives, and to guide them on choices. And if we have competitive elections and representatives, if they go against the will the people which they do. they need to explain why that is, and if they're not convincing then the voters can turn them out 2, 4, 6 years later.

The United States has this odd system of:  the House Members are 2, the Presidency is 4, and the Senate is 6. So, when I talk to my colleagues from Europe in particular who do everything at once they go ‘gosh you guys ought to put your elections together!’, which probably makes sense, but it's in the Constitution. It would be hard to change, but on the on the flip side voters have opportunities to change out the election, the members of the representatives more frequently here. So its continuity of power versus you know, accountability to the citizens those kind of things are trade-offs. 

Nicole Anderson
That might be a good point to quote a very famous British prime minister and an American president on the importance pf voting. In 1944 during the second world war, at the House of Commons Prime Minister Winston Churchill said this:

“At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point” —House of Commons, 31 October 1944.

 While Franklin D. Roosevelt said: 

“Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country”

Thank you to all our guests for speaking with us today.

Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast service, so you can be alerted to new episodes when they arrive, or visit us on the web at https://futuresofdemocracy.com/ 

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Transcript copyright Julian Knowles and Nicole Anderson (2022). All rights reserved. Free for educational use with attribution.