Apr 11, 2022 6 min read

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is only the most recent battle in the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. We should be on the side of democracy. While many Americans have different views about what the government should do and how it should do it, I would hope we could agree, as a basic principle of democratic government, that the government should act as directed by majority of the population, constrained by constitutionally defined restrictions on government power.

The Founders were brilliant men, well ahead of their time, but they knew they could not foresee all of the changes that might occur, so they expected the government they created to evolve. One of the things that has changed since the founding of the nation has been the world’s experience with democratic rule. When the country was founded, the idea that “the people” should govern was radical, and the Founders were unsure if it would work. One of their great concerns was “mob rule,” that less virtuous people than they would either make decisions purely on their own self-interest (the poor taking the property of the rich) or would be unable to resist a demagogue, who would be put in power and do untold damage.

Of course, the Founders themselves didn’t always agree; John Adams observed that it would be difficult to create a democratic government that worked for all; the laws “will either be made by numbers, to plunder the few who are rich, or by influence, to fleece the many who are poor.” Jefferson was more optimistic; he argued that the point of the American experiment was “to shew [sic] by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the Natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man.”

This debate continues today; conservatives like to argue that we have a republic, not a democracy, so more people voting is not necessarily a good thing. They often argue against removing barriers to vote because people should be willing to sacrifice to vote; people who aren’t willing to make sacrifices to vote probably won’t vote the “right” way anyway. Of course, most people making that argument don’t spend hours in line to cast their own ballots, or half a day to get the documents required to vote.

James Madison, in Federalist #10, does argue “that a pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person” could fall victim to factions, which would be cured by a “A Republic, by which I mean a Government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.” In other words, the people authorize representatives to act on their behalf, and those representatives will be more intelligent and virtuous than the average citizen (because their fellow citizens have chosen them), and less susceptible to being influenced by nefarious people.

One can make the argument that not everyone should vote; if only the more intelligent and civic-minded people voted, we could theoretically elect better people, and everyone would benefit from a better government run by those talented politicians. This was not just an argument made by conservatives. In the early part of the 20th century, progressives in the cities moved to “at-large” elections (instead of by wards) to dilute the immigrant votes that had empowered urban political machines. Progressives, like many native-born Americans, saw the immigrants as uneducated, culturally inferior and prone to corruption, and did not want them to have political power. Progressives believed in expertise, and wanted government to be run by knowledgeable, dispassionate bureaucrats (the city manager form of government is an example of this).

William F. Buckley, the conservative intellectual, was not one who believed that better government was achieved by using experts. He once asserted, “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.” Opposition to experts (on vaccines, climate, etc.) is one of the things that energizes the populism of Donald Trump.

While it is rational to want to limit the electorate, and the Founders certainly did so, that was because they had not yet seen the full flowering of the idea they had put forth. The value of democracy is not that it chooses better leaders, but rather that if it runs effectively, it is more stable because the governed feel that the government represents them, rather than being governed by an arbitrary power. Our democracy has been weakened in recent decades because parts of the system fail to accurately represent the will of the people.

People have to participate for popular government to reflect the will of the people, so we should do our best to make it easy for people to vote. Some places (Australia, e.g.) make voting mandatory, with a small fine ($20) for people who fail to vote (voters don’t have to vote for a candidate, they can cast a protest vote for no one), which greatly increases participation. Voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections is usually from 50 to 60%; turnout in Australia in 2019 was 92%. An alternative to a penalty for not voting would be to incentivize people to vote. For example, the government could provide a voucher for people who vote to use to subscribe to a local newspaper, which would support the production of local news and allow voters to better understand the issues in addition to increasing turnout.

For a democracy to remain strong, the government must effectively reflect the will of the governed. We need to reform our government to better do that, starting with making it easier for people to vote.

Kent James has a doctorate in History and Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and is an adjunct in the History Department at Washington & Jefferson College.