The Global Impact of US Presidential Elections
Do We Owe the World a Say in the Vote?
The US presidential elections in November are now front and center in the minds of many Americans, as they should be. Whichever camp you belong to (including none at all), there is broad agreement that the outcome will shape the course of the future in ways and to degrees that previous ballots have not. Importantly, the sense of it being an inflection-point election, a dramatic hinge choice that will open up toward new horizons or turn back toward a troubled past, is shared well beyond our borders.
Why? Because the future to be shaped by American voters is not our future alone. During three decades serving as a career US diplomat, if I learned anything at all, I learned that. The impact of US decisions, including the one we make in November, will be felt by millions of people in scores of countries around the world, who (it must be said) have no say in the matter. It used to be quipped that when the US economy caught a cold, the global economy would sneeze. We’re talking here about a range of symptoms and consequences much broader and more varied than that. (More on those later.)
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This fact calls to my mind the countless conversations I (like all American diplomats) have had with foreign counterparts on the subject of US elections. The first challenge was always to (try to) explain how our presidential elections worked in a way that clarified rather than further confused the somewhat complicated, convoluted process. This is harder to do than it sounds. Diving right into its idiosyncrasies and counterintuitive complexities, without an organizing frame, can exacerbate the confusion. Believe me, I’ve seen it.
For example:
that the electoral college result always trumps the popular vote (even when the difference is several millions);
that a handful of so-called “swing states” (even swing localities now) determines the national outcome, often by razor-thin margins (hence the intense focus in recent elections on slivers and chunks of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and maybe now Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and others again, we’ll see);
and—something of a sore point for a native Californian like me—that the country’s most populous states have become all but irrelevant in modern American presidential campaigns (even Florida now belongs to the almost-no-need-to-bother-campaigning-there group).
To outsiders, all this is a bit disconcerting.
One way I tried to preempt predictable perplexity was via an opening volley that combined deliberate shock and awe with unexpected commiseration: “I too am perplexed by how the national election works in the United States, in part because in the United States there’s no such thing as a—strictly speaking—‘national election’.” What?!! Then, in a calm and perhaps overconfident voice, I would proceed with an attempt at elucidation. National elections in the United States consist of fifty separate state-wide elections—plus one. (After the twenty-third amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1961, DC residents gained the right to vote in presidential elections. No more taxation without representation in that way anyway. Hooray!)
Moreover, because these state elections are administered at the local—county, municipality or township, as the case may be—level, there are many scores of separate local elections within each one of those states. It’s confusing because it’s a profusion of elections, each with its own detailed provisions and rules, rather than one big one.1 Such is the beauty of our federal system. The only constitutional requirement applying across the board in our presidential elections is that voters be US citizens of at least 18 years of age (all other requirements or restrictions, including for convicted felons, depend on the state).
I confess, I myself have little clue about the details of elections carried out in faraway counties in faraway states. For that matter, I don’t know much more than that about elections run in counties (in the state) across the river or right next door. I know most of what I need to know about the elections in Montgomery county in the state of Maryland where I currently reside and am registered to vote. And I’d characterize myself as a relatively engaged and, if unevenly so, somewhat high-information voter.
As an aside, following January 6, 2021, I was deeply impressed that certain senior Representatives and Senators from, say, Texas, Ohio, and South Carolina, could speak with such authority about the inner workings of elections in, say, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Maricopa County, Arizona, and Fulton County, Georgia, in defiance of the detailed ground truth knowledge of local election officials there. I can only suppose those big-brained pols are a whole lot smarter than I am.
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Once the matter of electoral mechanics had been put to rest, I found our foreign friends often had one or two follow-up questions. The first and most frequent one was why voter participation in US elections was so low. The question was usually accompanied by a look of frank puzzlement. Wasn’t the franchise of fundamental importance to the health of democracy? As diplomats do, I fumbled for a dutifully credible answer, starting with the bare facts. While percentages have varied, more recently reflecting a positive trend, according to the US Elections Project (https://www.electproject.org/), registered US voter participation in presidential elections in the modern era has hovered between 50 and 70%. Those numbers drop when otherwise eligible voters who are unable—or don’t know or bother—to register are taken into account.
A good question deserves a good answer, even when one doesn’t exist. I had to acknowledge that much, before providing a place-holder. The exercise of electoral freedom in the United States includes the freedom not to vote. Unlike in several countries I’ve served like Peru, Argentina, and Brazil, participation in elections is not compulsory, and failure to vote entails no penalties: no payment of fines, revocation of identity cards, or subsequent inability to access government funds. In that sense, it is consequence-free. More broadly, during much of the modern era a reasonably stable political consensus existed in the United States. So our elections rarely saw the kinds of dramatic swings that those in democracies less fully “consolidated” than ours often did. (This included many of the places I served). Thus, while those among my fellow citizens who chose not to vote ended up supporting, de facto and by default, the eventual winner, their action—or inaction—was unlikely to spur a radical departure from the status quo ante, much less outright doom. For the record, I never found my attempts to explain this curious aspect of American civic culture even close to satisfactory.
A second line of follow-up inquiry came from among the more astute foreign observers of the United States and the world. In fact, I found their idea provocative and difficult to parry, perhaps in the way that intriguing proposals with no prospect of ever being put into practice can be.2 Invoking the pervasive global influence of the United States, its impact in every region and corner of the world, including within their own countries, some expressed the view that non-Americans, too, should have the right to vote in US presidential elections. Or more accurately, that their interests and concerns should somehow be reflected in the choice Americans made about our shared future. Speaking wistfully, often righteously, sometimes with a touch of disbelief and even anger about the manifest indifference of the millions of Americans who chose not to vote, they would ask: Shouldn’t we, too, have some say over how our own fate gets decided?
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It is ironic to consider this hypothetical question in the light of our current election campaign. Despite the deep-seated wishes of some Americans that the world should just leave us alone so that we might return the favor, it is far too late in the game for that. Believe it or not, given our own stubborn shortcomings and deepening concerns about the fate of democracy, we still serve as a beacon to many people in many places close by and far away, a model to embrace or reject, a challenge to refute, and a country where the world (and its problems and possibilities) comes home to roost. In spite of ourselves, notwithstanding the premature reports, whatever reasons currently exist or might soon arise to explain us away or dissect our demise on a long list of good reasons to choose from, we remain the most influential, the most consequential, the most politically meaningful (if any such thing might be said) country in the world. For good or ill, what we decide matters to far more than just us.
We should try to keep the power of our global example and worldwide impact and reach in mind as we make our decision—difficult as this is for a self-centered, inward-looking, continent-sized country to do. Fondly should we hope, and fervently should we pray that we eligible American citizen voters (as many of us as possible, please) make a wise decision come November. Primarily for the good of our fellow Americans and our own country’s future, of course—but also for our many allies, partners and friends around the world and, in a different way, for the nattering naysayers and those who wish us nothing but ill, too.
For example, most states have a winner take all electoral votes system. Nebraska and Maine distribute theirs in proportion to the popular vote within the state. One potentially promising avenue of electoral reform would expand the proportional distribution of electoral votes to all states.
I’d prefer to avoid getting caught up in the web of debate about foreign influence campaigns—which are typically designed to do us harm—or allegations about the illegal voting in our presidential elections of non-citizens who reside in the United States. These are important questions, but ones which I don’t mean to raise, even by implication, here.