The founders of this country — those who drafted and ratified our constitution — screwed us.  For its time, the United States Constitution was brilliant and daring, and, once the Bill of Rights was added, worked fairly well.  But baked into the political system devised by our founders is an increasing bias toward geography and away from people.  We’ve reached the stage where the legitimacy of the system under which we live is in question.  We are no longer a representative democracy.  We are a country of minority power and rule.

The Democratic Party won more votes than the Republican Party in the last House of Representatives election, in the last three Senate elections, and in six of the last seven presidential elections — including, of course, the 2000 and 2016 elections which sent Republicans to the White House.  But in spite of these losses at the ballot box, the Republican Party controls the White House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and a majority of state governorships.

Large majorities of people in this country want better health care, cheaper prescription drugs, a higher minimum wage, meaningful gun control, infrastructure renewal and construction, campaign finance reform, higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, meaningful action to mitigate climate change, and witnesses and documents at the impeachment trial of President Trump.  Those large majorities will, under our system, never see any of those things.

The American political system counts states and districts rather than people.  The Republican Party has a rural geographic advantage which offsets the Democratic Party’s popular advantage.  Because of the Electoral College (which counts states not votes) the Republicans can control the White House.  Because the Constitution gives each state just two Senators regardless of population, the many low-population rural states controlled by Republicans outnumber the fewer but more populous Democratic states giving Republicans control of the Senate.  With control of the White House and the Senate, Republicans can stock the federal courts — including the Supreme Court — with their own.  Under this system, the Republican party does not need a majority to rule, and is not disciplined in the way both parties would be in a system of majority rule.

The Republicans press their advantage further by actively engaging in voter suppression and gerrymandering, and exploiting a campaign finance system which gives too much power to a few corporations and extremely wealthy individuals.  The Supreme Court has egged them on by turning a blind eye to racial discrimination, voter suppression, and partisan gerrymandering.

Short of amending — or scrapping — the Constitution, these are the things which can be done to return our political system to majority rule and representative democracy:

• Require automatic voter registration
• End voter ID and other voter suppression measures
• Require neutral congressional redistricting thereby ending gerrymandering
• Require proportional representation to make the House reflect the country
• Pass campaign finance reform
• Do away with the Electoral College
• Do away with the Senate filibuster
• Grant statehood to Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia
• Add six justices to the Supreme Court

These reforms would democratize the United States and end minority rule.  But the minority — the Republican Party and its voters — will never surrender on any of these reforms.

We are forever shackled by a system unlike anything our founders envisioned.  A system with no legitimacy — and no mechanism for restoring legitimacy.