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Alexander Keyssar on Elections and Democracy

The recent presidential election in Mexico, although hotly contested, was highly praised as fair and transparent by international observers. Elections officials in the United States may heed some important lessons from their southern neighbors. Alexander Keyssar is professor of history and social policy whose research focuses on election reform, districting, and campaign finance.

Q: Please discuss your thoughts relative to the recent presidential elections in Mexico. What were the most promising and most distressing elements?

Keyssar: There were two distressing things about the recent election in Mexico. First was the fact that a very sizable portion of the Mexican population did not seem ready to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote count. The other thing that I found distressing was the reluctance on the part of officials and courts in Mexico to order a complete recount. It was never clear to me as an outsider what the downside of having a complete recount was. Whether this turns out to be a positive or negative watershed in Mexican political history we don't know yet. It remains to be seen whether the results of this election will be accepted as legitimate.

Q: What can the United States and other democracies learn from the elections in Mexico?

Keyssar: I'm not sure what we have learned but there is definitely food for thought for Americans about this election and indeed it has to do precisely with the question of legitimacy. If you compare this election to the [U.S. presidential] Bush-Gore election of 2000, one of the striking differences is that, as disgruntled as people were and as unhappy as many people were who supported Al Gore, there was an acceptance at the end of the process in 2000 of the legitimacy of the institutional path to the outcome, although there was certainly very severe criticism of the Supreme Court. But the populace as a whole did not riot in the streets.

In Mexico, which has a different political tradition and where there's not a longstanding tradition of competitive and fair elections, that legitimacy has been questioned and remains in question. I think that what it points to for everyone interested in shoring up democracies is the fragility of institutions of governance themselves, of democratic institutions and the fragility of popular assent to institutional outcomes. This cannot simply be taken for granted.

Q: Please discuss election reform efforts in the United States. What are the most pressing problems that need addressing?

Keyssar: There are a variety of very compelling and pressing problems that need to be addressed in the election systems of the United States. At the heart of it I would say one thing that we absolutely need is a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote for Americans in fair elections. There is no right to vote in the U.S. Constitution and we need to have one because it would safeguard that right in a variety of circumstances in states around the country. We also need to do numerous things to make elections more competitive, more fair. Non-partisan districting for Congressional races would I think go a long way towards helping achieve that. Right now most Congressional races really are not competitive, and that has something to do with the ways in which it is really politicians themselves who every ten years design the districts in which they will run. Nonpartisan districting would produce a more fair, more competitive system.

We have another pressing problem which is the consequence of attempts to solve some of the issues that cropped up in 2000. We now have a self-inflicted problem about voting technology. There was a rush after election 2000 to move to touch screen voting machines. Some states have already purchased large numbers of these; others are planning on doing so. It has become increasingly clear that there are serious dangers both of reliability and of voting machines potentially being hacked. At the same time, there are significant economic interests that produce touch screen machines and that are promoting them very heavily. A variety of states as well as counties and other jurisdictions are under pressure to do something about this. So we have a problem of trying to deal with technology.

I would say the the last major cluster of issues that we face-in addition to campaign finance, which I'll address separately-has to do with trying to increase voter turnout in the United States. We live in an electoral world now where most people do not vote and turn out rates are particularly low among the poor and less well-educated. That to my mind is a very serious problem that has to be addressed. I don't think there's a single magic bullet that will cure this. I think that a variety of things have to be tried, including having elections on holidays or perhaps on Sundays. But we have to do everything we can to increase turnout around the United States among all classes and all social groups if we are going to have elections that will yield governments that are perceived as legitimate.

Q: Campaign finance reform seems to be one of those problems that will not go away. What potential solutions are on the horizon that could reduce the influence of money on the outcome of national elections?

Keyssar: The issues of campaign finance reform are absolutely critical and I think that the ways in which fundraising is deforming the American political system and deforming the behavior and professional lives of politicians is immense. I'm very pessimistic about anything positive happening in the short run.

We have learned yet again in recent years that if you restrict contributions to political campaigns, but do not restrict expenditures in any way, then such a law will have very little impact. If the demand is there for money and you can restrict contributions to candidates, then people will contribute to parties. If you restrict contributions to parties, then people will contribute to other entities that are formed in order to funnel money to candidates and parties. The only genuine solution to this is to impose restrictions on expenditures for candidates and for parties and the Supreme Court has made that extremely difficult to do. In a recent case, decided early this summer, the Court reaffirmed its conviction that political spending was free speech and ought not be restricted in any way. It struck down a Vermont law - a very good Vermont law - that had imposed a limit on expenditures in state races. Until you reduce expenditures, I don't think you're going to make any serious inroads in getting money out of politics.

Q: Any final thoughts you'd like to add?

Keyssar: The last thing I'd like to say is a plea for the urgency of this cluster of issues. I think the U.S. stands at something of a cross roads and it is arguably in the midst of one of its most severe crises since the civil war, in terms of its global position, its economy, and particularly our role in the world. In that circumstance, making sure that our democracy is vital and participatory and inclusive is all the more important because there are extremely important issues at stake.

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