DPI-685 Assignment 2: American democracy in 2020
[N.B. This is a draft of an assignment submitted for DPI-685: 2020 Vision and Information Policy: Considering the Public Interest. Like my last assignment, the purpose of the assignment was to have us develop a utopian or distopian scenario about some aspect of the future at the conclusion of the next decade. This time I had to write a utopian scenario. I chose to write about American democracy, and while it ultimately is a utopian story, it's again the result of change precipitated by crisis. Note that this is necessarily fiction. Any resemblance to situations or people living or dead is purely coincidental. IANAL. I'm also not fully up on my American politics or history—caveat lector.]
31 December 2020
Remember, remember the 6th of November. November 6, 2012, that is. A date that was regarded with both disdain and, later, some grudging appreciation this past decade. For while there was no conspiracy, this near miss shook up the government and finally precipitated changes that had been a long time coming in American democracy.
If you haven’t already figured it out, November 6, 2012 was the first presidential election of the decade, and the first real test of the public’s reaction to Barack Obama’s tumultuous first term. “Hope”, “change”, and “Yes we can!” were distant memories, and while some important and necessary changes occurred in that first term, four years certainly wasn’t enough time to right the woes of the nation. Health care, climate change, and financial industry reform were all successfully pushed through the Congress in one form or another, with various claims of efficacy and appropriate process from both sides as the partisan divide deepened. Arguably victories for Democrats, the metrics by which the public assess the government—”the economy”, jobs, taxes, commodity prices, and entitlement programs—left the average voter in want of more.
Unfortunately for voters, it wasn’t clear what options they had if they wanted “more” or wanted change. Obama/Biden was of course the Democratic ticket, with Petraeus/Jindal offered up after the Republican primary season. While this certainly was a departure from the 2008 Republican ticket and a more credible offering by the GOP, it was still “politics as usual” to most. Both parties’ campaign machines were running flat out. Further complicating things was the advent of direct corporate speech in the wake of 2010′s Citizens’ United decision. While major corporations were still unsure about directly wading into political discourse, other groups including unions and non-profits joined the fray. Things would get more interesting still.
For the first time since Ross Perot, a third party with some reasonable support and national presence emerged, and that was none other than the Tea Party movement. Taking a populist strategy and appealing to frustrations of the working class with regard to job creation, taxation, and government intervention, the party organized itself from a protest movement into a registered political party. While fielding candidates for the House in several states, their major effort was the presidential campaign. Specifically, the strategy was to, ideally, install a “true patriot” in the Office of the President, but more realistically to influence the debate and promises of presidential candidates while criticizing “business as usual” politics that some Americans felt increasingly disconnected from. Such an effort would require a different brand of politician and a well-funded set of backers, given the billion dollar enterprise that the presidential election campaign had become.
The Tea Party was swinging for the fences with their ticket. In February, Sarah Palin announced her intention to run for presidential candidate of the Tea Party, and was acclaimed at their convention in June. Shortly after, it was announced that Glenn Beck would be the Vice Presidential candidate and her running mate, and that the party would be receiving significant support from Fox News. As outlandish as this all seemed, it had some traction, especially amongst those frustrated with the state of the American economy and political landscape. Others viewed this as the icing on the farcial cake of American politics, and withdrew out of frustration.
As the campaigns marched on towards November 6, the Tea Party gambit was paying some dividends. Democrats and Republicans were roughly tied and focusing most of their efforts on the Dem-GOP battle, offering mainly disparaging remarks to the Tea Party’s efforts. Sympathetic media coverage and the treatment from the two major parties turned the Tea Party into a sort of populist underdog, capturing the attention of many Americans who felt betrayed by “the system”. In contrast to the comparatively similar Democrat and Republican platforms, the Tea Party proposed relatively radical changes that would bring America back to what they claimed were its true core values.
As the ballot returns trickled in on the evening of November 6, it started to become clear that this election was shaping up to be anything but normal. In retrospect, the collective frustration and apathy of a nation led to the lowest presidential voter turnouts ever: 42%. Even more strange for those covering the election was that the Tea Party was taking Electoral College votes: 34 in total (from Alaska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, part of Nebraska, Idaho, Arkansas, and New Mexico). This left 504 electors to be divided amongst the major parties, with the split going 259 for Obama and 245 for Petraeus. With neither party holding a majority of votes, the 12th amendment was invoked for the first time in modern political history and the House was called upon to elect the president.
When the House reconvened in January, the Democrats, having a slight majority going into the election, were preparing to elect president Obama into office for his second term. However, the election of some Tea Party representatives further complicated this process, with neither major party holding a majority in the house. In other words, a coalition between the Tea Partiers and one of the major parties was necessary to secure the Presidency. Both parties knew this and had been negotiating, but ultimately the Republicans made the better “corrupt bargain” to secure the Presidency in exchange for some policy compromises. The public was confused and unhappy about this unexpected turn of events, and the Democrats were outraged, playing up the “undemocratic” nature of the appointment of the commander-in-chief.
Recognizing the “unpleasant” populist volatility that the Tea Party had brought to the House and the election, and the public outcry about the Republican ascendance into office, the first act of President Petraeus was one of both short-term and long-term self-preservation: he insisted the house “offer an olive branch across the aisle” and through a true allied effort, develop a bipartisan bill to address the problems that led up to the dysfunctional 2012 election. Through the horse trading necessary to achieve passage, a number of proposed changes and reforms that had been waiting in the wings for a politically opportune time were finally enacted. In October the President signed the Improving and Championing Effective Democracy by Transforming and Educating America Act, or the ICEDTEA Act.
ICEDTEA took on a number of issues that were either believed to be part of the cause of the dismal 2012 election, or had been introduced as part of the nearly-complete reconsideration of the federal democratic process. Broadly, the issues included voter engagement, education, media reform, and electoral reform.
Some of the changes were implemented right away when the legislation passed. Specifically in terms of voter engagement, the act made Election Day a statutory holiday to enable and encourage all Americans to vote. Further, to incentivize participation and parties taking action to get out the vote, election financing laws were changed to reimburse party electoral expenses according to the number of votes they receive, by approximately $5 per vote, to be spent on goods and services made in the United States.
Following on this voter incentive approach, more sweeping campaign finance reform measures were also implemented. Recognizing the need for fairer elections in light of Citizens United and the Tea Party’s affiliation with Fox News, a public campaign financing system was advanced that would afford legitimate parties generous election financing with the agreement not to accept private donations. In the aftermath of the 2012 election, both parties agreed to the public option for the 2016 election.
While ICEDTEA didn’t involve constitutional amendments, it used other means to take action against the Citizens United decision ICEDTEA required much more explicit disclosure of the funding sources for non-PAC campaign materials, and that disclosure needed approval by the owners of the funding organization, including shareholders. Print and television advertising materials were required to be preceded by a warning not unlike the Surgeon General’s note on cigarettes, informing the reader or viewer of the organizations that “approved this message”, leaving less doubt about where the speech really came from.
The drafters of ICEDTEA had vision beyond these “quick fixes” too. They realized that the root of problems that had been gnawing at American democracy needed structural and longer-term solutions, and those efforts of the ICEDTEA were focused on education and media reform. As with many initiatives of the federal government, money was needed to provide the incentives necessary to enact changes voluntarily that they were otherwise prohibited of enacting by law.
Education reforms were relatively modest, consisting of a subsidy to offer federal civics education for junior high and high school students. This was to include funding for a national newspaper subscription for each high school student, and time set aside each day for discussion of current events. In election years, students were also to be given a minor credit for voting in their first election.
Structural media reform under ICEDTEA was more extensive, given the collapse and consolidation of print media during the 2011 recession that was blamed in part for the lack of diverse voices and poor civic engagement that prevailed in the 2012 election. First, a new class of organization was created solely to allow print news organizations to act as private, tax-exempt non-profits if they limited their advertising to well under half of their publication. This new option enabled smaller, subscriber-driven publications to emerge from the ashes of the print media recession. The Corporation for Public Civic Media was also established, in the style of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to provide grants and other sources of funding for smaller and local news organizations. To spur innovation in the news market, in hopes that better news experiences or new business models might be developed, the CPCM also established several prize competitions, much like the Knight Foundation’s work, to foster innovation in areas such as web print news, mobile news, citizen journalism, and investigative reporting. Finally, moderate ‘net neutrality’ provisions were codified in a new title of the Telecommunications Act that specifically addressed consumer broadband Internet as a means for citizen education and participation in democratic government. This allayed the fears of small news organizations that large, vertically integrated content-provider companies might discriminate against other news sources in favor of their own.
Given the structural nature of a number of the changes implemented as part of the ICEDTEA Act, not all of the improvements were visible immediately. In addition to the changes to voting laws and campaign finance notices that voters first experienced during the 2014 midterm elections, there was a resurgence of small media organizations covering local and national politics. Financed though a micropayment system developed by a startup supported by the CPCM, these sites were financially independent and free to cover the news as they chose, for delivery on a multitude of electronic devices.
The real changes became visible from 2016 and onward. The 2016 election was the first presidential election since ICEDTEA had been enacted, and it saw increased public interest and participation that broke the downward slide in voter turnout. The campaign finance changes limited corporate speech as was hoped, while the public financing offer was accepted by both major parties. The public financing option even allowed the Green Party to run a serious campaign as public attention turned to the growing problems of climate change with the increasingly unusual weather that the US was experiencing. Despite partisan differences and the political game, citizens were reaffirming some of their faith in the political system.
Last month we had our second full election since ICEDTEA, and the shift away from our previously dysfunctional system is really starting to show. First-time voters are up to 29% of the total registered voters, including 80% of the 18-25 age group. All major parties again participated in the public campaign finance scheme, with fierce oversight of the financing records and campaign activities by citizen journalists and the robust civic media outlets. Voter turnout came in at 71% of eligible voters, of which a majority soundly elected a female Republican candidate—not Sarah Palin.
While America’s politics still leave something to be desired, November 6, 2012 was the turning point of a long run of political decay. The change precipitated by the crisis significantly improved democracy in the United States and brought with it a whole host of other positive changes for American civic engagement, necessitated by the near-breakdown of the two-party system. Remember, remember, the 6th of November.