Q&A with Ari Berman

 

 

 

Ari Berman is the author of the new book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People--and the Fight to Resist It. His other books include Give Us the Ballot. He is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, and he lives in New Paltz, New York.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Minority Rule?

 

A: I’ve been covering voting rights since 2011, and as I got deeper into my reporting I began asking myself why Republicans were making it so difficult to vote. Was it simply about gaining an electoral advantage, or was there a deeper strategy at play?

 

I realized their goal was to enshrine minority rule, so that a shrinking conservative white minority could hold on to power even as the country shifted demographically and politically in the opposite direction. I wanted to be able to tell the story behind the democratic crisis we face today and show how it goes all the way back to the founding of our country.

 

Q: In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, you said, “We venerate the Constitution as a civic religion. I think we would be much greater served to look at the Constitution as a whole document and say, there are some remarkable parts of this document, but there's also some really flawed parts of this document that we still haven't corrected.” Can you say more about that?

A: Yes. There are some fundamental flaws in the Constitution that have never been corrected. The president is still not directly elected by the people and can be chosen by a minority of Americans. Each state gets the same number of senators regardless of population, which gives far more power to smaller, more rural, more conservative states. The Supreme Court is a product of the undemocratic way we choose presidents and senators.

 

In all of these ways our fundamental governing institutions violate basic notions of every vote counting equally. These compromises were meant to hold the new nation together but in many ways they have had the effect of making the country much less democratic and our ostensibly democratic institutions much less reflective of the people.  

 

Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, “Berman pairs wide-ranging and historically grounded analysis of America’s minoritarian political system with a trenchant critique of its departures from democratic common sense. The result is an eye-opening dissection of partisan manipulation.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I like it!

 

Q: What do you see looking ahead when it comes to American democracy?

 

A: I think we’re at a pivotal inflection point where the question is whether America will embrace multiracial democracy or turn its back on it. We’re facing a potential authoritarian takeover of our democratic system. My biggest fear is that a second Trump term will make minority rule impossible to reverse any time soon.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m covering the election and the high stakes for democracy. I want people to understand that while Trump is certainly an accelerant to the democratic crisis we face, he’s also a product of a broken political system that enabled Trumpism in the first place.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: There’s so many important elections happening in 2024 beyond the presidency. I hope down-ballot races like state legislative elections, state supreme court elections, and ballot initiatives on issues including abortion and voting don’t get overlooked.

 

So often these days the quickest and most impactful change happens at the state and local level, where democracy can be protected and expanded far more easily than at the federal level.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ari Berman.