Election Reform: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

This Chapter considers what election “reform” is and why many Americans want it; who has successfully reformed election rules in the United States and how; the current Supreme Court’s role as a barrier to many progressive election reforms; and the future of election reform in a hyper-decentralized, polarized electoral system. Throughout American history, dissatisfaction with substantive policies and with political and economic inequality, including across race and gender, has fueled interest in changing political arrangements. Proposals for political change also prompt reactions by those opposing them. Some election reforms have already been enacted and implemented, while others have failed. Constitutional change is difficult given a cumbersome amendment process requiring supermajority support. Other reasons for failure include lack of sufficient popular support, self-interested legislative resistance to popular ideas and the absence of a direct democracy workaround, and language in the United States Constitution, at least as interpreted by the Supreme Court. In the current hyper-polarized political system, bipartisan cooperation on large-scale election reforms including constitutional amendments will be rare, and one-party supported statutory reforms or those passed through direct democracy will be more common. The biggest impediment to current progressive-oriented reform is the jurisprudence of the conservative Justices who make up a majority on the Supreme Court. It is harder to predict the success of election reforms in the longer term.

Keywords: election reform, constitutional amendments, voting rights, campaign finance, redistricting, direct democracy, political polarization, Voting Rights Act, Fifteenth Amendment, Seventeenth Amendment, Nineteenth Amendment, Twenty-Third Amendment, Twenty-Fourth Amendment, Twenty-Sixth Amendment