And then there is money.
In 2010, the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The Court held that corporations, unions, and other groups have a First Amendment right to make independent political expenditures. The formal distinction is important: the decision did not allow direct corporate contributions to candidates. But it did help open the door to far greater outside spending through super PACs, nonprofits, ideological networks, billionaires, unions, and corporations.⁷
Candidates still knock on doors. Volunteers still make calls. Voters still gather in school gyms and town halls. But much of the modern campaign is now fought in an air war funded by people and organizations voters may never see. The citizen still has a vote. The question is whether the citizen can be heard over the machinery built to influence that vote.
So American democracy is filtered several times before it reaches anything like majority rule.
Votes are filtered through states. States are weighted unequally in the Senate. Presidential votes are filtered through the Electoral College. House votes are filtered through district lines. District lines are often drawn by partisan officials. Campaigns are flooded with outside money. Courts decide which parts of the machinery can be challenged and which cannot.
This sounds crazy to many Canadians because Canada’s system, for all its own imperfections, is easier to explain. You vote for a member of Parliament. The party that can command the confidence of the House forms a government. The prime minister is not chosen through provincial winner-take-all electors. Prince Edward Island does not get the same number of senators as Ontario in a chamber that can routinely block the elected government. Canadian ridings can be controversial, but the basic structure is not as aggressively anti-majoritarian.
The American system is different because it was designed to be different.
James Madison wrote in Federalist No.10 that “liberty is to faction what air is to fire.” He did not believe factions could be eliminated without destroying liberty itself. The answer was to enlarge the republic, divide power, and make it difficult for any one faction to seize control.⁸
That was the genius of the American system. It was built to slow things down. Congress checks the president. Courts check Congress. States check Washington. The Bill of Rights checks everyone. Local government continues even when the federal government becomes paralyzed. Bad national ideas can be resisted locally. Good local experiments can spread.
That is what still works.
The United States is hard to capture all at once. Power is dispersed. Courts still matter. States still experiment. Governors and mayors still govern. Newspapers, lawyers, churches, unions, universities, civic groups, whistleblowers, and ordinary citizens still push back. The system is not just Washington. That is one reason it has survived civil war, depression, corruption, assassinations, riots, and terrible presidents.
But the same machinery that protects liberty can also frustrate accountability.
A system designed to prevent rash majorities can also prevent durable majorities from governing. A Senate designed to protect small states can give a minority of the population enormous power. An Electoral College designed for a union of states can make a few swing states more important than the national vote. Districting intended to organize representation can be used to predetermine it. Campaign finance law intended to protect political speech can magnify the voices of the already powerful.
That is the central tension. The American system is not simply broken, and it is not simply brilliant. It is both inheritance and obstacle. It protects democracy in some ways and distorts it in others. It disperses power, which can restrain authoritarianism. It also disperses responsibility, which can make democratic correction painfully slow.
For Canadian friends, the simplest explanation is this: the United States is not one election system. It is fifty state systems stitched together into a national result. It is not pure majority rule. It is majority rule filtered through states, districts, courts, money, constitutional compromises, and old fears about concentrated power.