Credits: Images: Stuart Darsch (Campbell, Berinsky, White); Just Knight (Nobles); Jon Sachs (Stewart).
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Recent months have been tumultuous for U.S. democracy, in ways that are both novel and yet also connected to conflicts seen throughout the country’s past. MIT News spoke to several of the Institute’s political scientists and historians, and asked them: What must the U.S. do to sustain the health of its democracy?
Melissa Nobles, the
Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and professor of political science:
Americans must collectively affirm that democracy is “the only game in town,” and that we are now a multiracial democracy. To be sure, the path to full democracy has been fiercely contested. After Congress passed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 1870, it was another 95 years before Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, in response to the civil rights m
Trust deficit in US federal bodies cries for attention
Daron Acemoglu Filed on January 21, 2021
Two narratives have come to describe this nadir of an already-tumultuous presidential transition in the United States.
The storming of the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters on January 6 may be remembered as a turning point in American history. The insurrection, incited by the president himself, has raised profound questions about the kind of political institutions future generations will inherit.
Two narratives have come to describe this nadir of an already-tumultuous presidential transition in the United States. The first frames the Capitol insurrection as a singular failure of US institutions, which implies that the solution is to clamp down on right-wing extremists, social-media echo chambers, and their mainstream enablers.
(File photo)
The proponents of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact say that they are supporting democracy and fairness. In fact, the result of their proposal would be quite the opposite.
The Compact would make changes the U.S. Constitution forbids. It would weaken the Electoral College and undermine our federal system of independent states as well as our representative democracy.
The U.S. Constitution provides for change through an amendment process. According to the U.S. Constitution, states may not enter compacts without the consent of Congress. The National Popular Vote does not ask for the consent of Congress (Article 1, Section 10).
A compelling case for abolishing the Electoral College can be made in two words: Donald Trump. What more evidence does the nation need for direct popular election? It’s one of the cruelest ironies of history that someone so unfit and so contemptuous of the Constitution was chosen president by a method that was designed with George Washington in mind. The only president to attempt a coup after .