What Germans Don’t Get About American Elections (and what Europe can remind us about democracy)

With the US and Germany being different countries, with different governments and cultures, one can expect different perspectives on specific policies like climate change or healthcare. And even though Germany’s center-right party has often dominated politics over the last few decades from Kohl to Merkel, the Deutsche Welle reported in 2016 that 86% would have voted for Hillary Clinton and only 4% for Donald Trump.

Clearly, Germans think differently about politics than Americans. As one might expect.

But the concept of democracy should transcend specific policies, parties, or politicians. Democracy as a conceptural cornerstone of a civil, prosperous and fair society spans across nations, cultures and time. Or perhaps some countries, including America, have lost the plot on the principle of democracy?

Wouldn’t most people, in any country, from ages 10 to 100, agree that democracy basically means that each adult in society is given an equal voice in deciding the shape of that society’s government?

Simple and noncontroversial, right?

Maybe at the concept level. But not in terms of concrete details where the democracy rubber hits the political realty road.

Living in Germany a handful of times over the last 3 decades has allowed me to befriend a wide range of Germans from punks to academics to professionals. Over the years, I’ve explained a number of US elections to these Germans. Inevitably the conversation illuminates how democracy actually manifests itself quite differently in these two countries.

Yes, perhaps those differences are clearly starker now in 2020, a year of political chaos and voter suppression. President Trump is repeatedly questioning the fairness of the voting process and refuses to agree to a peaceful transfer of power. The county containing Houston Texas, with a population of 4.7 million people, is permitted by Republicans to have only one ballot drop-off box. And 127,000 people who used drive-in voting in Texas are now facing the Republican lawsuits to invalidate their votes. Republican Senator Mike Lee tweets to proudly proclaim that the US government is not intended to be a democracy.

But what is most striking is that my German friends’ tough questions about US democracy started well before Trump or even before the Tea Party.

And by “tough” I do not mean “complex” but rather “embarrassing” in how these questions and their underlying assumptions highlight pretty obvious gaps in America’s practical application of the concept of democracy. It’s also quite illuminating to understand the Teutonic assumptions about how democracy as a process should work.

Here are 5 of the tried-and-true questions about the US in contrast to the underlying German assumptions — all of which predated Trump and the most recent voter suppression activities of the GOP….

German Question 1: How can a politician who loses the popular vote still win the office?

Germans assume that to win an election, an elected officials need to get the more votes than their competitor.

Those silly Germans.

When talking to them you’ll have your hands full trying to explain the democracy-friendly logic behind the electoral college. And prepare to answer a string of follow-on questions from Ute and Ulrich:

Why not trust the voters directly?

Why have loopholes that allow electors to make decisions contrary to what voters wrote on their ballots?

Why do some states have a winner-take-all approach to allocating electors so that a party that wins 51% of the popular vote gets 100% of the electors votes….especially when it skews the national voting results?

You may need to get into the historical context, explaining that our Founding Fathers only wanted to give the vote to white males who owned real estate….and still didn’t even trust this subset of adults to vote directly in selecting the nation’s President.

Expect the Germans to respond with frowns that seem to be a mix of disbelief and disgust.

But let’s not focus just on the problem. What solutions can we consider? Unfortunately, this is an example where fixing American democracy requires a Constitutional amendment, a high hurdle even for something that’s an obvious improvement.

German Question 2: Why do voters in Wyoming (population 580,000) have as much voice in the Senate as those in California (population 39,510,000)?

Germans assume democracy means proportional representation — equal voices for each person.

As with Question 1, your first answer will lead to a string of damning revelations. But let’s simplify.

You can explain how slavery in the South was a key historical driver for why states with small populations (of white males who owned property) wanted to make sure they had disproportionate political power relative to their Northern big city bretheren.

But then the Germans will only say, “OK, that was history. But why do you continue to let a slavery-era historical anomaly fundamentally drive the national politician system of a 21st-century world power?”

(Hint: it helped me when I went through this series of questions and answers that I’m a person of color. If you have to face these question as a white person, the Germans may suspect they’re talking to white suprmacy apologist).

Sadly, fixing this anti-democractic abberation would also require an amendment to the Constitution. Which means it would requires ratification by 3/4ths of the states — i.e. requiring many of the smaller states to voluntarily dilute their power in the Senate. The only effective solution would be breaking larger states into many smaller states, for example where California becomes 68 Wisconsin-sized states.

German Question 3: Why are political parties allowed to do this “gerrymandering” thing?

Germans assume that the drawing of political districts should be based on unbiased logic and judicial oversight for the drawing of political districts. In fact, under Germany’s federal law, there is an independent standing Electoral Districts Commission which reports on population changes and proposes recommendations on how to redistrict to accommodate these changes. These recommendations are reviewed by the Electoral Districts Commission, which is comprised of statisticians, technocrats and at least one judge) which must make decisions that must meet adhere to pre-determined rules.

To quote the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network, a non-partisan international organization, “[r]edistricting in Germany is more or less enforced by law. Under certain conditions, mandatory changes are required and there is very little leeway for political maneuvering. Because the EDC is an independent organ and there are set rules that it must follow when making recommendations for redistricting, gerrymandering is virtually impossible.”

Those crazy Germans.

In the US, it’s much more partisan and fragmented. To state it simply, if not precisely, the US leaves redistricting to state governments, 44 of which leave it to local state politicians who have every incentive to gerrymander and don’t really need to worry about making sure their decisions align with statistical reality or apolitical fairness.

To quote the ACE again, “Except in the six States that use redistricting commissions, the new districts are drawn by the state legislature and enacted in the form of a bill. The enactment of the bill is subject to whatever public hearing requirements may apply in the State. In every state legislature but Iowa, enactment of the bill is an intensely partisan issue, with the majority party attempting to gain a political advantage through the way the lines are drawn. Partisan gerrymandering is thus a fact of life in most American congressional redistricting.”

It’s worth noting that this damning assessment of the US applies not only to Federal congressional redistricting but state legislature redistricting. Sadly, the political rot of gerrymandering goes up and down the entire range of American elections, thoroughly undermining the fairness of our democracy.

Luckily fixing our gerrymandering woes would not require a Constitutional amendment, just legislative foresight and a mix of political integrity and bravery.

German Question 4: Why are there such long lines to vote?

Germans assume that voting is a right and that elections are important, so people should be able to easily exercise their important right. With numerous voting stations in each locality, you don’t have to go far nor wait long. And this is true in cities, suburbs and rural areas. It doesn’t matter if you live in a poor or wealthy part of town, or if you live in an ethnically diverse neighborhood. I’ve joined Berlin friends in lower-middle class neighborhoods as they did their civic duty — it was typically a 5 minute detour before going to a cafe for breakfast, more akin to joining a friend while they dropped off mail at the post office.

Begin explaining all the local partisan politics that defines how voting happens and all the abuses that we’ve grown used to. The German’s will look at you aghast. “But America fought for democracy around the world, why don’t they practice it at home?”

If the German has read about Republican-led legislative and judicial undermining of the Voting Rights Act, you’ll get questions like, “Why is America moving backwards from the Civil Rights era?”

Lord forbid that Hans or Gretel have read about how Georgia’s voter rolls have grown by nearly 2 million people, yet polling locations have been cut statewide by nearly 10%. They’ll have learned how this isn’t just about budget cutting but explicit bias against urban voters where 9 counties in the Atlanta metro area have almost half of Georgia’s active voters but only 38% of the polling places.

To be frank, you’ll need to explain that one of the two major political parties wants to disenfranchise minorities and urban areas more likely to be dens of “liberal” voters. Gretel will understand that. What she won’t get is why the other political party and any fair-minded voter would put up with it.

Fixing this problem is a purely local political challenge, in that the Constitution delegates such matters of election mechanics to the states. Although, with a Supreme Court that ran by Republicans, even state-led action to protect voting equality might be deemed unconstitutional. For example, U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013 eliminated key federal oversight of election decisions in states with histories of discrimination.

German Question 5: Why do people have to choose between going to work and voting?

In Germany, voting is considered an important civic duty, which is why it is done on a Sunday or a legal holiday. Many stores are closed on Sunday, all day or by noon or early afternoon, so holding elections on Sunday means it is almost the same as a national holiday.

Of course, most Germans get 3 weeks of holiday a year. And there are more national holidays per year. Germans, despite their reputation, like to have a work/life balance and recognize that this will only be possible through government mandates, not corporate largess.

In the US, it’s not surprising that retirees represent a larger voting block. The AARP (Americcan Association of Retired People) actively touts their members’ political power, with 71% of Americans over 65 voting in the 2016 election, versus a paltry 46% among 18- to 29-year-olds. Being retired makes it easier to vote on a weekday, especially if you’re urban and have to wait for hours. (It also helps that retirees tend to move less frequently, mitigating the need for re-registering for elections after each move).

Again, if you’re a lower income voter, living in a lower income area, you’lll likely be hit with a double whammy of working long hours with an inflexible schedule and a polling station that is over-crowded with long waits.

And if you’re living in an ethnic neighborhood, you’ll likely be waiting longer too. In fact, one academic study showed that, relative to entirely-white neighborhoods, residents of entirely-black neighborhoods waited 29% longer to vote and were 74% more likely to spend more than 30 minutes at their polling place.

Big Picture from Historical and International Perspective

According to the World Economic Forum, the US is the oldest democracy. It was forged in an era of slavery (where blacks counted as three fifths of a person per Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution). When the Founding Fathers did not trust the masses of voters to elect the President, even when the only eligible voters were white men who owned property. It was essentially a “beta test” of modern democracy that, however brilliantly innovative in the eighteenth century, did not have an opportunity to be pressure-tested against all the abuses of democracy that the world has seen over the last 200 odd years.

Germany on the other hand has gone through the democratic ringer. Its most famous failure was the Weimar Republic, which was crushed under the weight of the First World War’s Versailles Treaty’s war reparations and of course the German’s willingness to elect Hitler despite his clearly-stated intent to become a dictator.

When a new democracy was formed in 1949, the German’s could learn from a long list of fellow-European democracies with 100+ years of democracy experience: Switzerland, United Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, etc.

My German friends are finally getting the fact that, despite America being a strong advocate for spreading democracy in other countries after World War II, democracy in America was founded on a Constitution that was drafted to support voting for only a small subset of the adult population, is currently managed in a highly partisan and questionable manner with one political party seemingly opposed to the principles of democracy, and whose future appears to be hanging by a thread.

Frankly, GOP Senator Mike Lee was right: our Constitution was not really built for democracy. It will take great integrity and bravery from politicians and voters alike. A good place to start is civic education on democracy, both in its faulty American manifestation and how it has been designed in Germany and other stable, developed countries. It’s time for America to look to Western Europe for guidance through these dark hours, and resist the dark influences of Putin and Facebook.

Otherwise, Senator Lee’s tweet about America not being a democracy will not only be historically accurate but a sadly prescient prophecy.