The United States is known for freedom and democracy. It holds a presidential election every four years to prevent the most powerful leader in the free world from consolidating too much power. However, U.S. elections don’t always express the will of the people. The American election system can easily be exploited to manipulate results through gerrymandering, thereby failing to express the common will. The most serious problem undermining U.S. elections at all levels is the ease with which minority groups have been historically excluded from elections. Even today, many find it difficult to vote and support their party, with numerous ballots not included in the final tally.

In theory, any citizen over the age of eighteen cannot be denied the right to vote, but many states have found loopholes around this right to prevent groups—mostly non-white minorities—from voting. By doing this, political parties can better secure their power by enacting laws that favor their supporters or undermine the political influence of opposing voters.

Historically, American elections were open only to white men. When people of color acquired basic civil rights in the civil rights era, many states made it harder for minority groups to vote. One strategy used literacy tests to disenfranchise voters. In Mississippi, for example, voters were required to transcribe and interpret a section of the state constitution and write an essay on the responsibilities of citizenship. The purpose was to exclude Black people from voting; as a result, most of those excluded were freedmen who used to be slaves.

Additionally, white voters often benefited from less challenging questions and more lenient grading, while Black people faced more difficult and unfair assessments, making it nearly impossible for them to pass the test. These exclusion strategies prevailed until August 6, 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices.

Despite the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, states continued to find ways to make voting difficult for racial minorities. First, many states created voter ID laws, which require a person to provide some form of government-issued identification before they are permitted to register to vote. However, millions of Americans do not have government-issued photo identification. Of these, 25 percent are Black Americans; compared to whites, they lack proper identification by a ratio of three to one. Low-income Americans of all races, who are simply too poor to pay the fees to secure this select documentation, also cannot vote in elections. Furthermore, voter ID laws are strictly regulated in areas heavily populated with Black Americans, which is discriminatory. Despite this, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that most voter ID laws do not violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act in cases such as Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008).

As Black Americans work to acquire the documentation they need to vote, many states adapt their strategies to continue excluding them. One common method used to restrict minority groups from voting is to simply close polling places in neighborhoods inhabited by Black people. This action is legal as long as valid, non-race-based reasons exist for poll closures. In 2018, the Georgia elections board planned to close seven of nine polling places in a majority-Black county during the midterm elections. It appeared that local authorities were trying to suppress the Black vote in Georgia’s gubernatorial race. Luckily, the board rejected the plans to close the polling place due to widespread criticism.

This favorable outcome is the exception, not the rule; one report shows that around 1,688 U.S. polling places closed between 2012 and 2018, many in regions primarily populated with Latino and Black Americans. Due to the closures, many Americans were prohibited from voting in the presidential election, as they had to drive miles to an open polling place. Thousands of votes were lost — votes that could have changed the results of close elections.

Another method of voter suppression is falsely claiming that illegal voter fraud exists. The Republican Party has made such spurious claims, including accusations that multiple single-voter ballots have been cast or that officials have tampered with ballots. These claims are demonstrably not true. An expansive 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that the rate of voter fraud in the United States was somewhere between 0.00004% and 0.0009% of all votes. These minuscule percentages would not have come close to changing the outcome of an election and are most likely the result of voting mistakes, not attempts to cheat the system.

Despite the solid data refuting widespread voter fraud, the GOP consistently asserts that voter fraud is indeed widespread. This is designed to raise fear and justify measures aimed at suppressing voting. One of the most prominent figures to rely extensively on this approach is former President Donald Trump. After losing the 2020 election, Trump claimed that the election was stolen due to fraud through mail-in voting. This created fear among his Republican supporters, leading to movements such as Stop the Steal. The resulting alarm led to the introduction of 262 voter suppression bills in 41 states. Of these, 32 bills have become law in 17 states, further suppressing voter rights. U.S. elections fail to represent the true will of the people because of these ongoing efforts to suppress voters. 

Even if intentional discriminatory actions are illegal, the U.S. elections system itself is full of flaws, causing certain voters to be undermined. The most prominent example of systemic deficiency is the Electoral College, which is only used to elect the U.S. president. The Electoral College gives disproportionate voting power to certain states, favoring smaller states. For example, each vote in Wyoming, the state with the fewest residents, counts four times as much as each vote in Texas, one of the most populous states. This is because Wyoming has one "elector" representing every 177,556 people while Texas has one "elector" representing 715,499. Thus, each vote in Texas counts less towards securing an electoral vote for a presidential candidate of choice. This means that a candidate can win the presidency without winning the popular vote — an undemocratic outcome that does not reflect the people's true will. This has happened five times in U.S. history, with the most recent occurrence in the 2016 presidential election. Donald Trump beat his opponent Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College even though Clinton received 2.8 million more popular votes. The Electoral College fails to reflect the true will of the people by disproportionately representing voters in less populous states.

Additionally, the Electoral College utilizes a “winner-take-all” voting system, meaning that the candidate who receives the majority vote receives all of a state’s electoral votes. This is problematic, as winning the majority by one vote within a state grants the candidate the same number of electoral votes as winning by millions. As a result, when on the campaign trail, many presidential candidates choose to not visit states that are unlikely to win them any Electoral College votes. Instead, they focus on states with similar support levels for both parties, called “swing states.” This affords a disproportionate amount of power to these few states, as they receive an overwhelming amount of attention from presidential candidates, and they carry a disproportionate influence in electing the next president. The Electoral College causes many voters to be ignored, as their votes matter less than swing state votes. Presidential elections, therefore, do not accurately express many voter preferences.

The dilution of voter power also affects the midterm elections, which determine the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and approximately one-third of the seats in the Senate. Gary Nordlinger, a professor of politics at George Washington University, notes the importance of these elections: “Whoever controls the House or the Senate controls the agenda.” Because Congress writes federal law, and the president is only able to enforce those laws, the president's ability to make progress relies on the support from both houses of Congress. This makes midterm elections crucial since the results determine the direction of U.S. politics. Nonetheless, federal election outcomes are negatively impacted by state political parties due to their ability to gerrymander.

Gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral district boundaries in ways that negate the influence of the opposition party’s voters. Every ten years, states redraw their legislative and congressional district lines, and the party in power can redraw those districts to disproportionately favor their party. The gerrymander techniques used to accomplish this are called “cracking” and “packing.” Cracking splits voters of the same party across multiple districts to dilute votes for the opposition candidate. With their voting strength divided, these groups struggle to elect their preferred candidates. Their votes are wasted, allowing the other party to win more districts. Packing is the opposite of cracking. Voters of the same party are grouped into as few districts as possible. In these districts, the “packed” groups are likely to elect their preferred candidates, but since winning requires only 50 percent of the votes, every extra vote is wasted. This concentration of opposition voters results in a weakening of opposition voter power everywhere else.

Gerrymandering is extremely effective. The common adage, “The voters don't pick the party, the party picks its voters” showcases gerrymandering’s power. For example, North Carolina is a purple state, meaning that voters are about 50 percent Democrat and 50 percent Republican. In the 2008 presidential election, the majority of North Carolina voters supported Democrats, but in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, they supported Republican candidates. However, in the 2018 congressional election, gerrymandering skewed the distribution of congressional seats. Voters in North Carolina voted for Democrats and Republicans in near-equal margins, but the Republicans won ten House seats, with Democrats only securing three seats. This is attributed to the efforts of Thomas Hofeller, a Republican Party operative known as the master of the modern gerrymander. He examined different maps that reflect past voting results in the state to pack and crack them, thereby allocating seats heavily in favor of Republicans undermining the true representation of the people.

Although political gerrymandering harms the rights of voters, the U.S. Supreme Court allows it, as seen in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019). The decision states that federal courts can disallow racial gerrymandering, though it is beyond their power to decide if partisan gerrymandering has gone too far. The Court allows partisan gerrymandering, in other words, and in so doing, sanctions this effective means of voter disenfranchisement. The Supreme Court has allowed state courts to decide if gerrymandered maps are too partisan, but this does not guarantee that state courts will be able (or willing) to restore more equitably drawn maps. In the meantime, for gerrymandered districts, federal elections do not accurately express the will of the people.

A fair election is a key representation of democracy. It plays a vital role in democratic societies, as it provides a mechanism for citizens to choose their leaders and participate in the decision-making process. Despite being a symbol of democracy, American elections do not fully express the will of the people. States purposefully implement obstacles targeted at certain groups, gerrymandering unfairly represents the people, the Electoral College ensures that some votes are worth more than others. If elections continue to inadequately express the common will, the process will undermine the legitimacy of the government, which will foster instability and disillusionment with democracy. The U.S. election system must implement stricter regulations so that elections fully express the will of the American people.

Legend Yang is a student at Singapore American School. He writes in the Curieux Academic Journal.