Since at least 2016, Democrats have cast themselves as the protectors of “our democracy.” Democrats claimed that, first imaginary Russian agents, then well-coifed presidents and perfidious Republicans wanted to “disenfranchise voters” and assault “Our Democracy.”
Since the U.S. form of government is a republic, not a democracy, it’s clear Democrats do not intend to protect the U.S. Constitution, which Barack Obama once said “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.” (Emphasis added.)
What exactly do Democrats envision when they talk about designing, redefining, and protecting “Our Democracy”? The short answer is, they emphasize the modifier rather than the noun: Democratic officials seek to radically reorient fundamental U.S. institutions and traditions to create a system that will increase their party’s chances of holding onto power. From changing the electoral map to reclassifying who can vote, Democrats plan to thwart any attempt by voters to regain power from their clutches.
Here are a few Democratic proposals to fundamentally change the United States for their partisan advantage:
1. Allowing non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections
When New York City’s Democrat-controlled city council passed a law allowing 800,000 non-citizens to vote in city elections, The New York Times quoted community organizer Murad Awawdeh, who called it “the largest expansion to our democracy in the past century.”
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said, “I fully support” letting non-Americans vote in NYC elections, justifying his view based on America’s “system of federalism.” Even New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has been touted as a more sensible brand of Democrat, said he would “support this important legislation,” vowed to fight for the bill in court, and seemed ready to radically expand the ranks of non-Americans voting in the city well beyond 800,000 people. “I look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process,” Adams told The New York Times.
Clear-eyed analysts saw that the move disenfranchised New York voters. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), said the new law “dilutes” the votes of U.S. citizens. On the other hand, The Washington Post warned darkly that the grassroots movement to restrict U.S. elections to American citizens “reflects resurgent nativist sentiment” and “allows politicians to spread fear.” As a result, “noncitizen voting bans should leave us equally concerned for… the voting rights of all Americans.”
In reality, New York Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy sued to stop the measure on the radical grounds that “we shouldn’t be allowing citizens of other nations to vote in our elections, full stop. … This lawsuit is the only thing that will stop [Democrats] from their ultimate goal of eradicating all the lines between citizens and non-citizens.”
Forget the fact that it’s blatantly illegal. The New York state constitution says, “Every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people and upon all questions submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over and shall have been a resident of this state, and of the county, city, or village for 30 days next preceding an election,” in Article II, Section 1. (Emphasis added.) The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 makes it “unlawful for any alien to vote in any election held solely or in part for” any federal office, but states and localities can decide who votes in local elections.
The point is that the measure helps pad Democratic voter rolls and, hence, serves “our democracy” in their eyes. “Opinion surveys and information from recent elections suggest that immigrant voters often support Democratic Party candidates,” according to the Voice of America. The estimated 14.5 million permanent legal or temporary residents in the United States could certainly change the orientation of “our democracy.”
2. Allowing criminals, including terrorists, to vote from jail
During a 2019 CNN town hall meeting, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said he would favor letting incarcerated prisoners, including the terrorist who bombed the Boston Marathon, cast a ballot from their jail cells. “I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away … you’re running down a slippery slope,” Sanders said. (Emphasis added.)
The New York Times had already identified prisoners as a vital source of America’s democratic strength, running an op-ed by Janai Nelson, an NAACP official, titled “Felon Disenfranchisement Is Anti-Democratic.” Nelson wrote, “[L]aws that prevent prisoners from voting also imprison our democracy. The disfranchisement of people with felony convictions is one of the most pressing civil rights issues of our time.”
Disenfranchising felons who have committed serious crimes goes back to the first democracy, ancient Greece, through the Roman Republic to America’s founders. It was once a bipartisan issue, but then Democrats realized they were leaving votes on the table. As this author has noted:
As it turns out, leftists have studied the issue of letting ex-convicts vote for years, finding it would benefit Democrats and hurt Republicans. A 2002 study, “supported by grants” from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, found that 70% of convicted felons would vote for Democrats in presidential and Senate races, if they could vote. In fact, they would have strongly supported even fringe Democratic candidates who lost 49-state landslides … “We conclude that in close Florida presidential races, ex-felon re-enfranchisement can change election outcomes in favor of the Democratic candidate, especially when ex-felons are properly informed of their voting rights,” wrote two researchers at California State University-Chico last September.
If you think Democrats are “soft on crime,” now imagine what happens after they turn criminals into a coveted voting bloc.
3. Abolishing the Electoral College
For years, Democrats have advocated abolishing the Electoral College, which allows each state to cast a proportional number of votes for the president. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who has devoted himself to taking the power to draw voting districts away from elected leaders, said the Electoral College “is undemocratic.” Unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Michael Dukakis have said the Electoral College should be abolished — Dukakis said it be “should be at the top of the Democratic priority list.” The New York Times apparently agreed, running a headline that stated “The Electoral College Is the Greatest Threat to Our Democracy.”
Time to make Electoral College a vestige of the past. It’s undemocratic, forces candidates to ignore majority of the voters and campaign in a small number of states. The presidency is our one national office and should be decided – directly – by the voters https://t.co/OyRbXOiBpz
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) February 26, 2019
The Electoral College was an act of prophetic genius from our Founding Fathers. By forcing candidates to win support in every region of the country, they prevented a few large states from imposing their will on the whole country. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper No. 68, “Talents for low intrigue … may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require … a different kind of merit to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union.”
In practice, relying on a national popular vote means that politicians will cater to a few large population centers while ignoring the concerns of most of the geographic United States.
As an end-run around state sovereignty, Democrats and some Republicans have supported the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). States adopting the NPVIC agree that their state electors will cast their votes for the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote, even if that state’s voters preferred another candidate. Its supporters do not describe how instructing the state’s electors to vote for someone who lost the state election serves democracy. Yet the NPVIC has already been enacted by 15 states and the District of Columbia: “As of April 26, 2021, the bill has been enacted into law in 16 jurisdictions possessing 195 electoral votes, including 4 small states (Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont), 8 medium-sized states (Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington), 3 big states (California, Illinois, New York), and the District of Columbia,” according to NationalPopularVote.com. Together, those states control 195 electoral votes; the compact will go into effect once states totaling 270 votes (enough to swing the election) endorse it. This is a transparent power grab designed to erase the roles of states in the federalist system, and a dangerous one.
4. Abolishing the U.S. Senate
Even with narrow control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats have been unable to enact key pieces of their legislative agenda, such as the Build Back Better act. Rather than adopt a more mainstream agenda that better reflects the views of the electorate, some Democrats have come up with a unique proposal: abolish the Senate. The longest-serving congressman in U.S. history, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) formally proposed abolishing the Senate in his memoir shortly before his recent death. None other than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called the Senate “fundamentally undemocratic” and “not democratic at all.” Publications from Nation magazine to fashion mag GQ have called for the U.S. Senate to be abolished. Vox has insisted that the U.S. Senate “make[s] our democracy less democratic.” A writer for the far-Left Daily Kos even argued that Democrats should control the legislative branch, because they regularly win the “Senate popular vote,” a theoretical concept that does not exist in U.S. law.
2/ First: The Senate is deeply unrepresentative of the US majority.
With over half of Americans living in only 9 states, only 18 senators represent most of the US. That means less than 50% of America's population controls 82% of the Senate. It’s likely to get worse by 2040.
— Vox (@voxdotcom) January 30, 2020
As with the Electoral College, Democrats hate the role the Senate allows the states to play in our political system. Our Founding Fathers divided power between state and federal governments to prevent anyone from acquiring enough power to become an autocratic dictator. For that reason, they believed the Senate should “guard … against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple” umbrella government.
“[S]overeign States, bound together by a simple league … however unequal in size, ought to have an EQUAL share in the common councils,” wrote James Madison in Federalist No. 62. “[T]he equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that” sovereignty.
5. Granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico
If you cannot win enough Electoral College votes in the existing 50 states, one possible answer is to add more states. Former President Barack Obama suggested precisely as he politicized Rep. John Lewis’ funeral in 2020. Obama said the late congressman would have wanted to make “our democracy … even better … by guaranteeing that every American citizen has equal representation in our government, including the American citizens who live in Washington, D.C. and in Puerto Rico.” Last February, Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said Congress is “morally obligated” to act on his island’s statehood legislation.
Despite the high-sounding rhetoric, Democrats quietly let it be known their plan has nothing to do with morality; it’s crassly partisan. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said, “Today, we’re talking about [abolishing] the filibuster, but consider this: We wouldn’t even be in this situation if Washington, D.C., had two senators.”
Similarly, Democrats believe Puerto Rican voters favor their party. Florida media reported in 2020 that “Democrats are trying to mobilize Puerto Ricans to outmuscle Republican Cubans at the voting booth and help Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.” When one pundit made a pitch for Puerto Rican statehood in Washington Monthly, her case focused entirely on how it could bolster the Democratic Party’s electoral fortunes:
As the Democratic Party dreams about retaking Congress and the White House in 2020, and considers what it should do with that power, it would be remiss to overlook statehood for Puerto Rico as an urgent, and ideologically consistent, priority. Puerto Ricans on the mainland lean strongly Democratic, and more than twice as many votes were cast on the island in the 2016 Democratic primary as in the Republican one. (Residents of U.S. territories get to vote in the primaries, even though they have no electoral votes.) Statehood could very possibly mean two more Democrats in the Senate, five more in the House, and seven more blue votes in the Electoral College.
All told, granting statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., would mean six new members in the House of Representatives (five for Puerto Rico, one for D.C.) and four new senators, all or most of whom would be Democrats. Those 10 new votes in the Electoral College could wipe out Missouri altogether.
6. Letting 16 year olds vote
A core legal concept holds that no one should exercise an office he or she lacks the maturity to execute. President Richard Nixon oversaw the reduction of the U.S. voting age from 21 to 18, but now Democrats propose lowering the voting age to 16.
Simply put, this is a policy so radical even San Francisco rejected it. Polls show 84% of Americans oppose letting 16-year-old kids vote. Yet only two of the 26 hopefuls in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries said they opposed lowering the voting age to 16; 15 candidates supported the idea or said they were “open” to it.
Congressional Democrats have already crafted the legislation to make this a reality. In 2019, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced an amendment allowing 16-year-olds to vote in federal elections. “Our young people deserve to have the opportunity to have their right to vote,” she asserted. A year earlier, Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) proposed a constitutional amendment to let anyone 16 or older vote in all national elections—state, local, and federal.
Their newfound position on expanding “our democracy” may reflect the fact that 61% of Gen Z said they planned to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, backing Democrats by a nearly three-to-one margin. The youngest generation also happens to be the most ideologically left-wing. A 2020 survey found that 48% of Gen Z has a favorable view of socialism.
“The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so,” noted the University of Rochester Medical Center. Researchers say teenagers react emotionally, not rationally.
Once again, Democrats seemingly exposed their true intentions: “I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in 2019. “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school, when they’re interested in all of this, when they’re learning about government, to be able to vote.”
Pelosi just advocated for lowering the voting age to 16 years old to "capture kids when they're in high school." pic.twitter.com/GxPTBPFBLJ
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 14, 2019
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.