I wholeheartedly agree with the premise of John V. Lesko’s June 28 Maine Voices. He’s right. “We won’t fix our problems if we can’t first fix democracy.” It, our democracy, is broken, and here’s why. Government by and for the people has important essential underlying assumptions.
• All eligible people must have access to the ballot, and the ease of that access must be equitable. Undermining this assumption is well documented by targeted suppression of the vote for certain communities at state and local levels, as is resistance to mail-in voting
• The principle of “one person, one vote” must prevail. Witness the difference between popular vote and Electoral College vote in recent presidential elections.
• Representation should be as equally distributed as possible. The policy of two senators per state ignores this, as does gerrymandering.
It’s good to know of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ cross-partisan work on these issues, but it is the job of the present leadership of the Democratic Party to use their public platforms to remind the electorate that our democracy is broken, so efforts to “fix it” won’t just fall on deaf ears. Many issues that people are concerned about will languish as long as our broken system keeps us governed by minority rule.
Nancy P. Greenleaf
Topsham
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