To protect immigrants’ rights, activists must work to remove the right-wing bias from our federal elections.
A powerful right wing bias taints our entire federal election system.
- The winner of the popular vote for president often doesn’t become president.
- The party whose candidates win the most votes for Senate or the House of Representatives often doesn’t control the chamber.
- Even when the vote-winning party wins more seats, the balance of seats is still usually incorrect.
- The undemocratic benefit almost always goes to the political right.
Most Americans support sensible and compassionate immigration reform, but our biased election system empowers anti-immigrant extremists to block the progress.
The vast majority of Americans—80% in a 2023 NBC News poll—said Congress should address immigration by providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements, including background checks.
Donald Trump, a president who lost the popular vote, prolonged the citizenship application process and tried to shut down the southern border.
Right wing judges appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, including Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees, continue to curtail immigrants’ rights.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans support legal status for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, as provided by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), but a federal appeals court panel composed of three right-wing judges, two of them appointed by Trump, held that DACA is unconstitutional.
Electoral bias can be removed
Although bias is entrenched in the American electoral system, there is a way to remove it. Democratism has proposed model legislation, called the Democracy Decree, that, if adopted, will:
- Eliminate the electoral college.
- Make the voting power of parties in Congress proportional to the votes that each party receives.
For the Democracy Decree to be adopted, it must be proposed by local governments around the country and then ratified by a vote of the American people.
Immigration activists, who have already proven to be effective drivers of social change, have the organizing and lobbying skills necessary to help pass the Democracy Decree.
Are you an immigration rights activist? Let’s work to bring about the adoption of the Democracy Decree in local legislatures—a prerequisite to enacting essential legislation protecting immigrants’ rights.