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There is some movement afoot in the Connecticut legislature to make voting easier permanently, not just during the pandemic. The matter is complicated by our state constitution, but one pattern holds depressingly clear. Here, as elsewhere, Republicans mainly oppose easier ballot access.

The idea that one of our two viable political parties has evolved into an anti-democratic institution- one that does not want free and fair elections with high voter turnout whose results are respected is almost too upsetting to contemplate. But as Republican machinations graduate from voter purges and computer-assisted gerrymandering to their congressional attempt to overthrow a national election, it is incumbent on those of us who would think clearly about America to cope with this reality. Global warming is no fun to think about either, but not thinking about it wont help.

A good first step in understanding our situation is to acknowledge that throughout human history, representative democracy with a wide voter base has hardly been the norm. We in this country have had the exquisite good fortune to be able to take it for granted until lately, but in the big picture its the exception not the rule.

After the USSR dissolved and the Berlin Wall came down, there was a triumphalist moment in political science when some academics argued that liberal democracy had clearly won the battle of ideas and would vanquish all competitors forthwith, but the end of history didnt quite happen. Ours is certainly not the only polity in which liberal democracy is endangered or has never arrived. There is nothing inevitable about a system like ours, and nothing indestructible about it once established.

The average human being has not, while evolving from other primates, developed an instinctual and deep-seated love of democracy. Realistically, we want what we want and need what we need, and tend to like a political dispensation that we think will satisfy our needs and wants. If we dont think fair elections with lots of people voting are going to deliver the results we want, we are not genetically programmed to say Oh well, I guess its for the best. Whether from the perspective of world history or of human behavior, there has never been any reason to be complacent about the continued existence of a system like ours.

In the case of the contemporary GOP, the turn against democracy is not especially mysterious. This is a minority party. A Pew Research Center study from October 2020 found that 29% of registered voters identified as Republican. Its an unsurprising result in terms of banner Republican policies: most Americans favor a womans right to choose, and the GOP isnt having it; most Americans understand about climate change, and the GOP basically denies it; most Americans are having a more or less hard time making ends meet, and the GOP likes the federal minimum wage where it is, at $7.25/hr. How does a party like that win?

Certainly there are many independent voters who vote Republican, but its worth remembering that of three GOP presidential victories this century, two were popular-vote losses. Gore got more votes than Bush in 2000, and Clinton got way more than Trump in 2016. She beat him by about as many votes as Bush beat Kerry by in 2004, and we did not consider that to be a close election. The GOP happens to benefit, in a huge and anti-democratic way, from the electoral college.

It benefits similarly from the structure and behavior of the Senate. A vote for a senator in bright-red Wyoming is 67.6 times as powerful as a vote for a senator in deep-blue California, because thats the population differential, and they each get two senators. Once theyre in, these minority-party senators thrive in a body in which plain-old majority rule is now a rare exception; it generally takes 60 votes to do anything.

The Republican party also benefits from some apparently natural voting (or non-voting) patterns. Young people tend not to vote Republican, but then again they tend not to vote at all. The same is true of poor people. White people are more likely to vote, and to vote Republican, than non-whites, but here the result is not especially natural. Selective voter suppression has been the norm throughout U.S. history, with a relatively brief pause while the Voting Rights Act had teeth.

With all of these advantages natural, unnatural, and happenstance they lost in 2020; Trump was just too repellent. So now the Republican party is against our elections. It wanted the right to put them aside. When the courts wouldnt do it, they tried it in Congress.

I dont think it makes sense to think of this as an aberration. The Republican party in America is not well-situated to win free and fair elections in which lots of people vote. They know it, and will probably continue to act accordingly. They dont seem to care what gets broken along the way.

This is what we face.

Eric W. Kuhn lives in Middletown.

CTViewpoints welcomes rebuttal or opposing views to this and all its commentaries. Read our guidelines andsubmit your commentary here.

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Opinion Why the GOP is now anti-democratic - The CT Mirror

Its been just over a month since a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, the culmination of unprecedented tactics to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The weeks between the election and the Jan. 6 riot tested the solidity of American democracy. Did it hold up? Will it continue to?

Penn Todayasked experts from disciplines across the University to share their thoughts on the state of our democracy. What follows is the second in a series launched on the Inauguration Day of Joseph R. Biden Jr., seeking insights on where democracy in the United States stands.

Diana Mutz, Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication, School of Arts & Sciences and Annenberg School for Communication

Immediately after any election, partisans who supported the losing candidate are full of reasons why it wasnt a legitimate outcome. Ive been studying this since the 90s, and even back then, people had strong beliefs post-election that their candidate lost unfairly. They werent the same kinds of accusations of impropriety we have now, but they still were accusations of impropriety: The opponent ran misleading advertisements, or bought the election using tainted corporate money, or voters were discouraged from voting by the long lines at the polls. With the 2020 election, whats different is that even political elites have endorsed the idea that the outcome was illegitimate in some way, and that traditionally does not happen.

It will be interesting to see whether the publics endorsement of illegitimacy changes over time. Right after an election, people are emotionally invested and theres a fair amount of sour grapes going on on the losing side. But six months later, how do they feel? We typically expect that sense of illegitimacy to dwindle, but is this year going to be different? I dont yet know.

In the past weve found that if the same party loses twice in a row, as when Obama was elected for sequential terms, the effect of losing on electoral legitimacy becomes stronger. The first time one party loses, theres a dip in that partys faith in the legitimacy of the electoral process. Its significant, but not enormous. Partisans can attribute the outcome to not having had the best candidate or perhaps not running the ideal campaign. But the second consecutive time they lose, theres a huge dip in the outcomes perceived legitimacy. Its almost as if partisans see a second loss as evidence of a conspiracy against them.

Whats odd about Trumps victory in 2016 was that it did not follow the traditional pattern in one important way: Despite the fact that Trump won that election, because he lost the popular vote he continued to promote conspiracy theories about an illegitimate electoral process. Thats the first time weve seen the winner promoting the idea that the electoral process is illegitimate.

One more thing I will say: This election demonstrates that turnout is not a good indicator of whether democracy is working well. We had record-setting turnout, but much of that occurred because people were angry and dissatisfied with how government was working, not because democracy was working smoothly.

Jalil Mustaffa Bishop, Vice-Provost Postdoctoral Scholar, Higher Education Division, Penn Graduate School of Education

We often think of education as being an engine toward that ideal of an inclusive democracy. My research shows that one limitation to building that greater democracy is student loan debt.

Student loan debt sits at the intersection of historic racism: a higher education system that is stratified along racial lines and a labor market that is underpaying and underemploying Black people. Yes, Black people have been able to finance access to higher education, but theyre often not able to leverage it, to get returns similar to their white counterparts. Instead, student loans function more as a type of debt trap that evolves into a kind of unpayable lifetime debt sentence.

Student loan debt is a racial injustice issue. When we look at its impact, we see that across income levels, across degree levels, Black people are experiencing the worst outcomes, not because theyre making bad choices or not understanding that the debt theyve borrowed is a loan, but because they are trying to use those loans to dig themselves out of a racial wealth gap created across generations of racism.

Communities that have been traditionally marginalized are those that rely the most on student loan debt and have to use their student loans to access our most low-performing and under-resourced higher ed institutions. They also go into a labor market thats paying less for their credentials than their white counterparts.

One key way for us to move forward toward a more inclusive democracy is to remove the idea of a debt-financed education, which means canceling all student loan debt. A full student loan debt cancellationwith assistance and relief for all borrowersis a way to start to imagine how higher education can move us closer to our ideals, how higher ed can become a public good that is central to a democracy that is equitable, inclusive, and accountable to its racial past.

Akira Drake Rodriguez, assistant professor,Department of City and Regional Planning,Stuart Weitzman School of Design

What happened on Jan. 6 was the culmination of things that weve been seeing both over the last four years and over the last several decades: majority backlash over minority progress.

It was all very surrealthis very visible, spatial reclamation of this symbol of democracy unfolding across multiple media, but also very business as usual in that we saw people hanging out in their hotels afterwards, along with the total avoidance by the public of what the real issues were even as it was happening.

What have we learned from that day? After George Floyd, we didnt have the conversations we were going to have, and we havent had the conversations about Trump and what the impact isa national moment of reckoning that hasnt yet happened. Theres this idea that we can get back to normal and things will be just like they were before, but no one will acknowledge that the way things were before are just as bad as they are now.

To move forward, we need a government thats not afraid to invest in and affirm the public sector, and we also need people who are willing to be uncomfortable. Those are things that are difficult, because we are a business as usual country, but they are not impossible. Things have regressed over the past four years, and now, with Biden, were making progress, but its not yet progressive.

In the next year, I also want to see people get healthy: Providing universal basic income, free health care, and meeting peoples basic needs will alleviate some of the pressures that inhibit us from functioning like a democracy.

Kermit Roosevelt, professor of law,University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Whats been increasingly evident to me recently is the ways in which our Constitution allows a minority to take and hold power. Weve all heard about how the Electoral College means that the loser of the popular vote can still win the presidency. What people dont talk about as much is that this is also true of Congress.

Because each state gets two senators, Wyoming is equal to California. So, senators representing a minority of the population could easily control the Senate. In the House of Representatives, partisan gerrymanders can allow a party that receives a minority of votes cast in the state to win a majority of congressional districts. And when you get to the judiciary, a popular votelosing president can nominate judges who are then confirmed by senators representing a minority of the population.

None of this would matter as much if the elements of our system that empower a minority didnt line up with a politically cohesive group. But they do: The Electoral College and the Senate favor low-population states, which tend to have significant rural populations, which tend to be white, which tend to be Republican. Add in partisan gerrymanders, and were very close to a situation in which a political party captures all three branches of the federal government despite consistently receiving fewer votes. Thats alarming for democracy.

Jennifer Pinto-Martin, Viola MacInnes Professor, School of Nursing and Perelman School of Medicine and Executive Director, Center for Public Health Initiatives

Democracy can affect the health of citizens in several ways, including reducing social disparities and income inequalities. Political institutions affect health through enacting universal health care coverage, and health policy can shape high-quality health care.

But does democracy lead to better health?

While existing data support this link, research continues to explore the mechanism underlying the association. A recent observational study in The Lancet assessing data from 170 countries from 1970 to 2015 demonstrated reduced mortality among those with democratic compared to autocratic governments. This was especially true for mortality causes affected by health care delivery infrastructure.

Additional evidence supporting this link comes from something called the Liberal Democracy Index, a cross-country correlation of life expectancy and an aggregate measure of democracy based on qualitative and quantitative assessment. In this index, more democratic regimes receive higher scores. A recent analysis showed a 12-year difference in life expectancyfrom 72 on the high end down to 60 on the otherbetween countries with higher and lower scores.

The idea that democracy is tied to better health is perhaps not surprising. Citizens demand better health care and governments respond. The authors of The Lancet piece point out that in a democracy, a government that fails to support health care can get voted out in favor of one that does. Autocratic governments do not face such consequence. So, there appears a robust correlation between population health outcomes and the strength of democratic institutions. Several studies have found that it also holds after controlling for other factors such as national income or human capital.

We need additional research to more thoroughly explore the causal pathway here. Clearly higher expenditure on public services and better public service delivery are important components. However, when we compare the 76-year life expectancy in the United States, a democratic society, to the 84-year life expectancy in Scandinavian countries, which are best described as social democracies, we can see that the influence extends beyond political structure to income inequality and other factors. Understanding all of the competing and complementary forces will enable us to develop effective policies that most effectively support the health of the public.

Jalil Mustaffa Bishopis Vice-Provost Postdoctoral Scholar and lecturer in the Higher Education Division of thePenn Graduate School of Education.With Penn alum Charles Davis, he coauthoredan NAACP reportreleased in October 2020,Legislation, Policy and the Black Student Debt Crisis: A Status Report on College Access, Equity, and Funding a Higher Education for the Black Public Good.

Diana Mutz is the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication in the School of Arts & Sciences and Annenberg School for Communication. Her latest book, Winners and Losers: The Psychology of Foreign Trade is forthcoming in 2021 from Princeton University Press.

Jennifer Pinto-Martin is the Viola MacInnes/Independence Professor in the School of Nursing, a professor of epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine, executive director of the Center for Public Health Initiatives, and University Ombuds. She is also director of the Pennsylvania Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Research and Epidemiology.

Akira Drake Rodriguezis an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Her upcoming book Diverging Space for Deviants:The Politics of Atlantas Public Housing (University of Georgia Press 2021) explores how the politics of public housing planning and race in Atlanta created a politics of resistance within its public housing developments. She was recently awarded a grant from the Spencer Foundation to study critical participatory planning strategies in school facilities planning in Philadelphia.

Kermit Roosevelt is a professor of law in theUniversity of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. His books include Conflict of Laws (Foundation Press 2010) and Myth of Judicial Activism: Making Sense of Supreme Court Decisions (Yale 2006), as well as two novels.

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More thoughts on the state of American democracy | Penn Today - Penn Today

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday told CNN that America's ability to champion democracy and human rights worldwide was damaged via the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6.

Citing the "major challenge" President Joe Biden faces in responding to the recent coup in Myanmar, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Blinken how the US can "speak with authority on democracy when people around the world saw our Capitol attacked and our democratic institutions pushed to the brink?"

The top US diplomat said, "There's no doubt that our ability to speak with that strong voice for democracy and human rights took a hit with what happened on January 6th and happened at the Capitol."

But Blinken went on to express optimism about the US, stating that he sees the "glass as half full on that" because "we had a peaceful transition of power pursuant to our Constitution."

He underscored that in spite of the attack on the Capitol, which resulted in five deaths, congressional lawmakers still returned and certified Biden's Electoral College victory as part of a constitutionally-mandated process.

"Throughout our history, we've had incredibly challenging moments, and sometimes we've taken our own steps backward. But what's made us different is our willingness, our ability, to confront these challenges with full transparency. We in front of the entire world. And that's very unlike other countries," Blinken added. "When they face challenges, they try to sweep everything under the rug, ignore it, repress it, push it back. We're doing this all out in the open."

Blinken conceded that the nature of American democracy can be "ugly" and "difficult," but emphasized that he still believes the US has a "strong story to tell about the resilience of democracy, the resilience of our institutions, and the determination of this country to always try to form a more perfect union."

The Biden administration has made restoring America's global standing a top priority after the Trump era, during which the US often took a unilateral approach to foreign affairs while routinely insulting key allies. Biden has already taken steps to join multinational efforts, including moving to rejoin the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization.

"Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy," Biden said in a speech at the State Department on February 4. "We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday's challenges, but today's and tomorrow's ... We've moved quickly to begin restoring American engagement internationally and earn back our leadership position, to catalyze global action on shared challenges."

But after the major blows US democratic institutions took under former President Donald Trump, the new commander-in-chief faces significant challenges and limitations in defending democracy worldwide. This has already become evident with the Myanmar coup as well as the recent arrest and conviction of Kremlin-critic Alexei Navalny. There are growing doubts, which Blinken alluded to in his CNN interview, about America's ability to influence such situations.

There are signs the Biden administration is considering imposing sanctions in response to Myanmar's coup and the Navalny incarceration, but history has frequently shown they don't inflict enough of a cost to move the needle.

"We have fallen into this trap that sanctions are the easy answer to every problem," Ivo H. Daalder, the former US Ambassador to NATO and current president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, recently told the New York Times. "They demonstrate that you care, and they impose some price, though usually not sufficient to change behavior.''

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Blinken says America's promotion of democracy and human rights 'took a hit' with the Capitol attack - Business Insider

Honoring the Capitol Police officer killed in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently invoked the buildings symbolic role in American democracy.

Each day, when members enter the Capitol, this temple of democracy, we will remember his sacrifice, she said of the slain officer, Brian Sicknick.

Former President Donald Trump was impeached for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol and is now on trial in the Senate. The insurrection has reaffirmed the buildings almost sacred status.

As the place where American deliberative democracy has been practiced for the past 230 years, the Capitol is in at least one respect a sanctified place. But as a historian of ancient Roman architecture and its legacy, I would argue that the architecture of Americas temple of democracy is in fact fundamentally anti-democratic.

The original design for the Capitol, proposed by the amateur architect Dr. William Thornton, was based on the ancient Roman Pantheon.

President Thomas Jefferson thought the Pantheon was one of the most beautiful buildings ever made: simple, elegant and geometrically perfect but also an engineering masterpiece, with the largest dome ever built in antiquity.

Jefferson believed an American Pantheon would bring beauty to the nation, aiding the moral and civic development of the American people. Since the United States had no domed buildings at that point, its construction would also show the young nation could be the equal of older, grander European nations.

Jefferson, a devoted classicist, knew the Pantheon had been built by emperors. Its original manifestation was devised in the year 25 B.C. by Marcus Agrippa the right-hand man of Romes first emperor, Augustus as a temple for emperor worship. It was redesigned by Hadrian around A.D. 126 to serve a function that remains enigmatic.

But the stupendous grandeur of its dome and its adornment in marble quarried and shipped from across the Roman empire leads most architectural historians to agree that the Pantheon celebrated Romes global dominion.

Indeed, Jefferson very likely chose to model the Capitol after the Pantheon because of, not in spite of, its imperial associations. He envisioned America as an empire for liberty a force bringing civilization westward.

Jeffersons American Pantheon was never realized.

Subsequent architects substantially altered the design, and what little progress had been made was halted in 1814 when the Capitol was burned by British invaders joined by some of the very slaves who built it in the War of 1812.

The new Capitol that emerged from the ashes, completed by Charles Bulfinch in 1826, was already too small for the fast-growing Congress of the fast-growing United States.

From 1856 to 1866 the architect Thomas U. Walter substantially expanded and reconcieved the building. His vision of the Capitol was inspired by the most celebrated domed buildings of the time: St. Peters Basilica in Rome, St. Pauls Cathedral in London and the Church of Sainte-Genevive in Paris, among others.

In these baroque cathedrals, towering domes signified the ruling power of monarchs and popes. They were meant to awe people with their splendor and magnificence, and in so doing to command subservience.

The U.S. Capitols architecture is certainly awe inspiring.

But its design history does not exactly embody the values of a democratic government by and for the people.

Today, the Capitols authoritarian architecture is enhanced by its imperial setting. The Capitol sits atop a terraced hill overlooking a broad promenade of open lawns, tree-lined boulevards, reflection pools and hundreds of monuments and memorials: the National Mall.

This landscape was created as part of a 1901 plan to beautify Washington, D.C., whose monumental core was then filled with slum housing and railyards. A team of leading architects revived Pierre LEnfants original 1791 master plan for the city.

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In LEnfants original vision of Washington, D.C., the Mall was to be a large formal public garden inspired by the manicured gardens of Versailles, a private escape for Frances ruling class. Versailles was designed in the mid-17th century to distance the lites of the royal court from the dreary, dirty city and rough, rude commoners.

Unlike Versailles, the National Mall was intentionally made public. But when people gather there to protest, theres still a tension between that orderly space and a disruptive but essential democratic activity.

The Capitol, long known as the peoples house, has never really embodied democracy in its appearance.

After the insurrection of Jan. 6, the Capitol became a military encampment, and a security fence went up around the building. The sacred symbol of American democracy has become a fortress the latest addition in a history of anti-democratic design.

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Is the US Capitol a 'temple of democracy'? Its authoritarian architecture suggests otherwise - The Conversation US

Policyeven good, popular policyplays a limited role in moving the electorate. Critics of the Democratic Party, particularly those on the left, will often point out that ballot initiatives for progressive policies outperform Democratic candidates. In Florida, more than 60 percent of voters backed a minimum-wage hike, while Biden and down-ballot Democrats got rinsed.

Left-wing critics argue that if Democrats would throw themselves behind popular, populist economic messagingthings like the minimum wagetheyd have more success with some of the voters drawn to Trump. Theres a lot to that! But Biden actually supported a minimum-wage increase, and he spent some time discussing it in the second presidential debate.

What if those kinds of policy fights offer only limited returns? What if we are conflating two different issues? What if the overwhelming number of Trump supporters simply wont vote to give control to the Democratic Party, even if the party is pushing agenda items they like? What if the driving imperative for the large majority of votersbut particularly for those on the aggrieved rightis that they want their people in control?

The contemporary GOP is on a strange trajectory. Republicans are growing more radical, extreme, and dangerous on core questions of democracy, the rule of law, and corruption, while simultaneously moderating on policy in some crucial ways.

The Republican Party is a fusion of two distinct elements with very different desires. The first is the donor class, a combination of self-serving plutocrats and genuine ideologues who are also very rich and who possess extensive and granular policy aims. Their main goals are tax cuts, deregulation, and resistance to redistribution of any kind. These goals account for the two main domestic-policy pushes during the Trump administrations first two years, when Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House: repeal of the ACA and massive corporate tax cuts. But after failing to accomplish the first and succeeding at the second, the GOP made little further effort to legislate. The donor class is more focused on the courts, where it can achieve a huge part of its objectives; the Senate spent much of its energy over the next two years confirming conservative judges.

As for the partys base, what policy issues are MAGA rally-goers wound up about? Not the deficit or taxes, and not the ACA. In the past, those issues gave expression to their underlying grievances, but no longer. After the election, one GOP polling firm asked Republicans about their biggest concerns for a post-Trump Republican Party. Forty-four percent wanted a party that would fight like Donald Trump, while only 19 percent worried that a post-Trump GOP would abandon Donald Trumps policies.

And what were Trumps policies, exactly? In a few places, he deviated from GOP orthodoxy, particularly on trade and, to some extent, immigration. Polling showed that his views on these issues were quite popular among his target audience even before he took office, so in that crucial respect, Trump did move the GOP toward its voters. But I think the lesson is larger here: As long as a Trumpist GOP is sticking it to the libs, standing up for its heritage and identity, and, crucially, using every possible tacticincluding flatly antidemocratic onesto battle for power, the modern base of the GOP is willing to accommodate, or even heartily support, all kinds of wild deviations from conservative orthodoxy. If Trump had come out strongly for a $15 minimum wage, the partys base would have backed him.

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The Republican Party Is Radicalizing Against Democracy - The Atlantic