Opinion | Mending the broken branch

Tuesday, 3 November, is Election Day in the United States. Over 100 million Americans are expected to turn out to vote in elections across the country. Various local and state posts will be on voters’ ballots, but the races drawing the most attention are the so-called “midterm” races for the US Congress. If polls, pundits, and prediction markets are any judge, the era of one-party rule under the current President will soon be coming to an end. Most signs point to the Democrats winning a majority of seats in the House as well as the Senate.

_{An opinion piece by Mark L. Thompson, senior lecturer of American Studies}

If they gain a majority in either house, they are likely to initiate new legislation, to block the President’s initiatives, to launch investigations into the executive branch, and perhaps even to initiate impeachment (or removal) proceedings against high-ranking members of the administration. In short, Congress has the opportunity to reassert itself as an independent and assertive branch of government and to shed its reputation as the “broken branch.”

Little confidence

The new Congress that takes office in January 2027 will have a hard time convincing Americans that it is equipped for that task. According to a Gallup poll taken in early September, only 16 percent of Americans approve of the way that the Congress is handling its job. When asked how much trust and confidence they have in Congress, 42 percent of respondents said “not very much,” while 29 percent said “none at all.” There are many explanations for this low level of trust, ranging from increasing party polarization to the proliferation of partisan media sources to the huge influence of money on political campaigns. To be sure, there’s little chance that these particular genies will go back into their figurative bottles. But there are concrete measures that could be implemented that might give Americans greater confidence in the “people’s branch.”

More representative

One would be to make their representatives more representative. Poll after poll shows that Americans’ own political beliefs are far less divided than those of their representatives. So when partisan-dominated state legislatures draw up Congressional districts in which the opposing party’s candidates have no realistic chance of winning (a process called “gerrymandering”), the basic principle of political representation itself is fundamentally subverted. In part thanks to these maneuvers (including some which took place only months ago), only 81 of the 435 districts in the House are considered to be “competitive” during this upcoming round of midterm elections.

This sort of zero-sum, winner-takes-all gamesmanship offers a dangerous precedent. Federal legislation such as the Freedom to Vote Act (passed by the Democratic majority in the House in 2022 but blocked by the Republican minority in the Senate) could help address some of these issues at the national level, but state-level, citizen-driven measures could be just as effective. Eliminating closed party primaries (where only registered party members are allowed to vote) could also encourage Congressional candidates to appeal to a wider public instead of the small minority of the electorate who typically decide these party-centered elections.

_{Continues after picture}

Change the rules

Other procedural changes within the House and Senate could also promote better outcomes for all. These would include changing rules within the House that give the majority party’s leadership extraordinary control over committee memberships and procedures and prevent members of the minority party from having a significant say in important legislation. Likewise, changing or removing the so-called filibuster rule, which allows an organized minority of members in the Senate to block most forms of legislation, would also help to ensure that various electoral reforms would have a better chance of passing into law.

Americans want a Congress that gets things done. It’s unlikely that new Democratic majorities in the House or the Senate or both will be able to accomplish much on their own with this current president and the united Republican minority standing behind him. But they do have the opportunity to push for internal reforms within Congress and to support local and state efforts aimed at ensuring free and fair elections. If Americans hope to repair the “broken branch,” then they and their representatives have much work to do.

Further reading

• Trump as King Midas
• Redrawn House maps raise the bar for a Democratic majority to 1.5 million extra votes