Fifty Years After Watergate, Our Democracy Is Still Waiting for Reform
The threats have evolved, but the solution remains the same: courage, accountability, and a public unwilling to surrender its voice.
Back in 1974, fifty years ago, I wrote a paper arguing that America desperately needed to overhaul its elections. Nixon had just resigned. The country was wrung out by corruption and war, but there was this strange sense of hope in the air—a feeling that we could finally look at how power really worked and build something better. I was convinced that big changes were just around the corner.
They weren’t. And half a century later, the problems I worried about back then haven’t just deepened; they’ve curdled into something far more dangerous.
Today, the very idea of a fair election is constantly under attack. Districts are drawn to be political safe zones, and billions of unaccountable dollars wash through our campaigns. For people of color, young people, and working-class Americans, just casting a ballot has become an obstacle course. And still, year after year, most of us say we want a fairer, more functional democracy. The will is there, but real change never seems to arrive.
This isn’t about civic housekeeping anymore. It’s a full-blown crisis of representation. After fifty years of watching this unfold, I’ve come to see that fixing our elections isn’t just a technical puzzle to be solved—it’s a moral test we have to pass.
The question isn’t if our system is broken; we all know it is. The real question is how we start to fix it. And let’s be clear: there’s no silver bullet. No single law will save us. What we need is a whole framework of changes, with each one supporting the others, to build a democracy that’s actually worthy of the name.
A good place to start is with the ballot itself.
A System That Rewards Extremes
Our winner-take-all system traps us in a cycle of voting against the candidate we dislike most, not for the one we believe in. It rewards politicians who can fire up a narrow base, even if most people disagree with them. Ranked Choice Voting offers a way out. By letting you rank candidates by preference, it encourages people to build broader coalitions and takes away the fear that voting for a new voice is just “spoiling” the election. It’s already working in places like Maine, Alaska, and dozens of cities.
But even with better ballots, a much bigger problem is baked into how we choose our president.
A Relic That Warps Representation
Twice in the last twenty-five years, the person who lost the popular vote became president. The Electoral College doesn’t just distort the final count; it distorts the entire campaign. Candidates parachute into a handful of swing states, while millions of us in so-called “safe” states are basically ignored.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a clever, constitutional end-run around the problem. States in the compact agree to give their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote. Once enough states join to hit that magic 270 number, it becomes the law of the land. It’s already at 209, with more on the way. If it succeeds, every vote, in every state, will finally matter equally.
But even if every vote is counted fairly, we still have to ask: who gets to be heard in the first place?
Democracy for Sale
Since the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision, our elections have been flooded by a tidal wave of cash from Super PACs and dark-money groups. Candidates spend more time chasing donations than talking to actual voters. But we know another way is possible. Public financing programs—like Seattle’s “democracy vouchers” or New York City’s matching funds—can amplify the power of small donors and open the door for candidates who are rooted in their communities, not in their fundraising networks.
Yet even with a level playing field on money, the map itself can be rigged.
Lines That Silence Voters
Gerrymandering is how politicians rig the game by drawing district lines that guarantee their party wins. It kills competition, protects incumbents, and rewards the most extreme voices. The solution is simple: take the power to draw maps away from politicians and give it to independent commissions. Add in modern auditing tools to ensure fairness, and you’ve got a system that serves voters, not parties. That’s what voters in Michigan did, and it completely transformed their state’s politics.
Of course, none of this matters if people can’t even get in the door to vote.
The Quiet Machinery of Suppression
Voter suppression today isn’t as obvious as the literacy tests of the past. It’s more insidious: strict ID laws that target students and the elderly, voter rolls being quietly purged, polling places in minority neighborhoods being shut down. It’s a thousand bureaucratic cuts designed to make voting harder for Black, Brown, Indigenous, young, and low-income Americans. The answers aren’t radical. They’re common sense: automatic voter registration, more early voting, universal vote-by-mail, and restoring voting rights to people who have served their time. These aren’t wild ideas; they’re the absolute minimum for a working democracy.
And yet, for decades, these common-sense fixes have gone nowhere—not because they wouldn’t work, but because they would.
The Real Barrier Isn’t Policy — It’s Power
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in these fifty years, it’s this: our democracy isn’t failing because we lack good ideas. It’s failing because the people who benefit from the broken system fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. Power rarely gives up anything without a fight.
But I’ve learned something else, too. Real breakthroughs don’t come from Washington. They happen when ordinary people simply refuse to wait any longer.
Voters in red and blue states have passed ballot initiatives to end gerrymandering. Cities have adopted Ranked Choice Voting over the screams of the political establishment. Grassroots organizers have beaten back voter suppression laws in places where the fight seemed hopeless. These victories didn’t trickle down from the top; they rose up from the ground.
Democracy, If We Make It
Back in 1974, I thought electoral reform was inevitable. I figured a country that talks so much about its democratic ideals would eventually get around to living up to them. I no longer believe change is inevitable. But I know, with everything in me, that it is possible.
Democracy doesn’t defend itself. It’s not a monument we inherit; it’s a muscle we have to build together, through local organizing, relentless pressure, and the courage to imagine a country that truly works for all of us.
If this democracy is worth saving—and I believe it is—then we are the ones who have to save it. Not someday. Not after the next election. Now.