What kind of democracy?: How the filibuster is eroding majority rule in America

LINDSEY GRADOWSKI: The filibuster undermines the most central tenet of our democracy: majority rule. America prides itself on being one of the world’s oldest and strongest democracies, but the filibuster is an archaic political procedure that forces us to govern by the will of the minority. However, the filibuster presents us with a paradox: it has the potential to endanger our democracy through its use and its removal.

The filibuster was introduced into the Senate in 1865, and the 60-vote threshold was not implemented until the 1970s. It is unlikely that the founders intended to have such a rule in place, and the language of the Constitution suggests an inclination towards simple majority rule. One  needs only look at how the filibuster has been used over the past 100 years to comprehend its harms. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the filibuster was used most often by Southern senators to block civil rights legislation, most famously with Senator Strom Thurmond filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours. When the number of filibusters began rising in the 1970s, the Senate passed a procedural rule that allowed multiple bills to be “pending” on the floor at once, essentially allowing senators to filibuster any bill without actually undertaking the arduous task of holding the floor. This has led to the expectation that almost every bill without 60 votes will not pass. 

We know that the filibuster allows a minority 41 senators to halt the legislative process— not just on one bill but on virtually all of them— and that the process has historically been used to block the rights of marginalized Americans.tWhy is it still around? The cynical answer is, of course, that neither party wants to get rid of it while they are in the minority. And with deepening polarization in modern America, the prospect of having 60 senators of one party any time soon is highly unlikely. However, there is a more nuanced question to consider: if the filibuster is removed, then what is there to stop 50 senators who represent far less than 50% of the country from enacting legislation that the majority of Americans do not support?

Undoubtedly, the problem raised in this question would cause less harm to American democracy than the status quo. However, it is still interesting to consider. The question is tricky, but there does seem to be an answer. If, as the name democracy suggests, the will of the people should be our paramount criterion, then is there a way to maximize the amount of legislation passed that 50% of American support? Law professors Jonathan Gould, Kenneth Shepsle and Matthew Stephenson (among others) have one proposal: democratize the filibuster. Instead of requiring 60 votes to invoke cloture, or even 50, allocate to each Senator a percentage of the American population: ½ of the voters they represent. That way, legislation is never held hostage by the  tyranny of the minority. However, I am sure some people would protest that this solution would make the Senate too similar to the House of Representatives. To those people, I ask, why is that inherently a bad thing if it brings us closer to the will of the people? 

The current system is broken. Americans send their senators to Washington to make the world a better place, not to sit around wallowing in procedure and find that at the end of their tenure nothing has been done. The Senate’s structure will always favor smaller states; in 2018 the 49 Democratic senators represented 40 million more Americans than their 51 Republican counterparts. Wyoming voters have 68 times the say in the Senate as each California voter. What’s more, racial and ethnic minorities have less representation in the Senate now than at any point since 1870, a trend that is projected to get worse over the next 40 years. The only way to account for this disparity is to remove, or at least seriously reform the filibuster.

The core of democracy lies in trusting that each person gets an equal voice in the government. Who is the Senate to decide that some voices matter more than others? What kind of democracy allows legislation to be shaped by minority opinion? If we truly want a government by the people and for the people, then it is time for us to put fears of the other side gaining power aside and work together for the sake of our democracy.

Lindsey Gradowski is a freshman in the College from Arlington, Virginia studying history and government.