Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here's how we fix it | Lawrence Lessig | TEDxMidAtlantic

Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig makes the case that our democracy has become corrupt with money, leading to inequality that means only 0.02% of the United States population actually determines who's in power. Lessig says that this fundamental breakdown of the democratic system must be fixed before we will ever be able to address major challenges like climate change, social security, and student debt. This is not the most important problem, it's just the first problem.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

So, it turns out exactly a year ago,

right now, right this minute,
a year ago in Hong Kong,

an extraordinary protest began.

Protest begun by students,

literally, high school
and college students,

elementary school students,

then their parents
felt a little embarrassed

that they had let their kids work so hard
and then they showed up as well.

And the protest was about a law.

And the law was proposed by China.

The law was to determine

how the Governor of Hong Kong
would be selected.

The law said, "The ultimate aim
is the selection of the Chief Executive

by universal suffrage upon nomination

by a broadly representative
nominating committee

in accordance with democratic procedures."

OK, so the idea was,
there's a two step process.

The first step was nomination,

and then the second step
was an election.

The nominating committee
would be comprised of about 1200 people

which means out of seven million people

that is .02 percent of Hong Kong.

Alright, .02% as you can see
is a really tiny number.

(Laughter)

Really, really small.

If you thought about it,
relative to all the people in Hong Kong,

it would look something like this,

this tiny little corner is .02 percent.

So .02% get to pick the candidates,

that the rest of Hong Kong
gets to vote among.

And the protest was because the fear
was this filter would be a biased filter.

The claim was that .02% would be dominated

by a pro-Beijing business
and political elite.

So 99.98% would be excluded
from this critical first step

with the consequence, obviously,
of producing a democracy

responsive to China only.

OK, now, it turns out the Chinese
stole this idea from an American.

Don't worry, there was no patent,
no copyrights,

there's no IP violations going on here.

But they stole the idea from an American.

Maybe the greatest
political philosopher in America -

a man named Boss Tweed.

(Laughter)

Boss Tweed had
a Tammany Hall political party.

He used to say,
"I don't care who does the electing,

as long as I get to do the nominating."

(Laughter)

So, this conception, this kind of -

(Laughter)

(Applause)

conception of politics
has an obvious logic to it, right

because, if you control the nomination,

every candidate was going to worry
what you, the nominator, think.

So, you practically control the candidate,

whether or not you control
the ultimate election.

We can call that genius theory -

that genius theory for
destroying democracy -

Tweedism.

Any two stage process
where the Tweeds get to nominate

and then the rest get to select
is Tweedism.

And the consequence
of Tweedism, obviously,

is producing a system responsive
to Tweeds only.

Now, Tweedism was practised
not just in the North,

not just in New York,

it was practiced in the South too.

Texas in 1923
practiced Tweedism by a law.

In 1923 Texas passed statute that said,

"In the democratic Primary
only whites could vote."

Only whites could vote.

Blacks can vote in the General Elections,
if of course they could get registered,

given all the barriers to registration.

But only whites
could vote in a democratic Primary.

And of course, back then,
hard to imagine,

but back then the only party that mattered
was the Democratic Party in Texas.

So, in this two stage process,
blacks were excluded from the first stage.

16% of Texas excluded from
this critical first stage,

with the consequence obviously

of producing a democracy
responsive to whites only.

Now, those cases are obvious to us.

Everyone looks at that and says,
there is something obviously wrong

with those so called democracies
to set up their structure in that way.

So why don't we see it here?

We take it for granted in the US,
that campaigns will be privately funded.

But we need to recognize funding
is its own contest,

funding is its own Primary.

We have the voting system,
where people vote,

but in the first stage to that
there is a Money Primary

that determines which candidates
are allowed to run

in those voting elections.

Now, that Money Primary takes time.

Members of Congress
and candidates for Congress

spend anywhere between
30 and 70 percent of their time

dialing for - this is an old telephone,
you might not recognize this -

but dialing for dollars.

Calling people all across the country
to get the money they need

to run their campaigns,
or to get their party back into power.

B. F. Skinner gave us this wonderful
image of the skinner box

where any stupid animal could learn
which buttons it needed to push

for its sustenance.

This is the picture of the life
of the modern American Congress person

As the modern American Congress person -

(Applause)

comes to learn which buttons
he or she needs to push

to get the sustenance he or she needs
to make his or her campaign successful.

This is their life, and it has an effect.

Each of them, as they do this,
develop a "sixth sense",

a constant awareness of how what they do
might affect their ability to raise money.

They become, in the words of "X Files",
"shape shifters",

as they constantly adjust their views
in light of what they know

will help them to raise money.

Not on issues 1-10,
but on issues 11-1000.

Leslie Byrne, a Democrat from Virginia,
describes that when she went to Congress

she was told by a colleague,
"Always lean to the green."

And to clarify, she went on, "You know,
he was not an environmentalist."

(Laughter)

So this obviously is a Primary too.

It is the Money Primary.

It's not the White Primary,
it's the Green Primary.

It's the first stage
in a multistage process

to select the candidates
who will represent us.

So, if this is the structure,
we should interrogate who are the funders.

Or we can think about
who the biggest funders are.

In the 2014, the top 100 gave
as much as the bottom 4.75 million funders

to congressional campaigns.

In this election cycle so far,
400 families have given half the money

in the election contributions
and contributions to Super PAC, so far.

Four hundred families!

That is not American democracy.
That is Banana Republic democracy.

(Laughter)

And then we can think
not just about the biggest funders

but think about the relevant funders.

Of course the people giving
millions of dollars have the attention

of the members of Congress.

But how much do you need to give
to be relevant?

How much do you need to give
to be big enough to matter

to those Congress people
as they are dialing for dollars

to raise money from you.

Let's take people who maxed out in 2014.

And in 2014 - that means you gave
5,200 dollars to at least one candidate

in the General Primary
and in the General Election.

In 2014, it turns out,
57,874 Americans maxed out in that way.

So we could say,
57,874 gave enough to matter

to control, to be the dominant force
in this first stage

of the election process.

And, some of you out there,
the math genius out there

might do the numbers.

54,874, hey wait a minute,
that's .02% -

(Laughter)

- of America.

.02% of America dominate this first stage
in the process of electing the candidates

who will represent us.

They pick the candidates,
because you can't be credible

unless you get their money.

And we get to vote for those candidates.

This tiny fraction of the 1%,
this Chinese fraction of the 1%

dominate the first stage
with the consequence, obviously,

of producing a democracy responsive
to these funders only.

It's Princeton study,
which, as a Harvard professor

I'm not allowed to talk about much,
let's get it off the stage quick.

By Martin Gilens and Ben Page,
the largest empirical study

of actual decisions by our government
in the history of political science,

related the actual decisions
of our government over the past 40 years

with the views of the economic elite,
the views of organized interest groups

and the views of the average voter.

And what they found was
there was a nice correlation

between the views of the economic elite
and what our government actually did.

So, as you go from 0% of the elite
supporting something to 100%,

the probability of that proposal
being passed, goes up.

Same thing
with organized special interest groups.

As the number
of them support something increases,

the probability
of that proposal being passed, goes up.

Here is the graph for the average voter.

It is a flat line.

Flat line, literally and figuratively.

What this is saying is,
as the percentage of average voter

supporting a proposal goes from 0 to 100%

it doesn't change the probability
that that proposal will be enacted.

As they put in English,

"When the preferences
of the economic elites

and the stands
of organized interest groups

are controlled for,

the preferences of the average American
appear to have only a miniscule

near-zero, statistically non-significant
impact on public policy.

In a democracy, this is true.

Alright, here's the picture that we had,
we were told of our democracy.

There we were, citizens, driving the bus.

But here is the reality, the reality is --

(Laughter)

(Applause)

the reality is the steering wheel
has become detached from this bus,

we don't drive the bus anymore.

We do not, that anecdotally,
in the most aggressive empirical analysis

have no relationship
to what our government does.

This is a product of Tweedism.

And what Tweedism is, is first corruption.

It's a corruption of the design
of our representative democracy.

When Madison gave us
our representative democracy

he described it, in "Federals" 52,
to be a system that would have a branch -

Congress that would be,
"dependent on the people alone."

An exclusive dependence.

But that's not our Congress.

They are dependent on the people
and dependent on the Tweeds.

And then to go on, to clarify,
Madison in "Federals" 57 said,

by the people he means,
"Not the rich, more than the poor."

Not the rich, more than the poor.

But that is not our reality.

The people today mean,
not the rich, more than the poor,

except for the Tweeds.

The Tweeds have more power
than the middle class and the poor.

This is corruption.

It is not criminals, it is a system
in which decent people

who come to this city
to do the right thing

find themselves bent to do the thing
the Tweeds demand -

because that's the only way
you can survive.

It is corruption.

But it is caused by a basic inequality

that we have allowed to evolve
inside of our representative system.

An inequality.

Remember Orwell's, "All animals
are created equal."

And what we've got here,
all animals are created equal

but the Tweeds are more equal than others.

It is inequality.

But what is critical about recognizing
that it is inequality

is, if we could remove the inequality;

if we could address
that fundamental inequality

in this representative democracy;

If we could neutralize this Tweedism,
then we could crack the corruption

that makes it impossible
for our government

to do any of the things
we want our government to do.

We could achieve a system dependent
on the people alone

because only the people
would be having the influence

inside our government.

It would be a system where not the rich,
more than the poor were the people

because every one would,
because of this equality,

have the capacity to press the government

in the direction they want
the government pressed.

Equality.

I'm not talking about wealth equality,
that's important to worry about too.

That is not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about inequality
we have as citizens.

And to get that, what I've been arguing,
we need to talk about is a statute,

that Congress ought to pass tomorrow.

Statute, let's call it
the Citizen Equality Act.

What the Citizen Equality Act does first,
it changes the way campaigns are funded.

To make it so that instead
of this Green Primary

we have a Money Primary,

but citizens are funding these campaigns,
as much as anyone else.

The money comes from all of us
through proposals

like the American Anti-Corruption Act,

or John Sarbane's
Government by the People Act

that would provide
small dollar public funding

to fund congressional campaigns.

So that they wouldn't be dependent
on this tiny few, to fund their campaigns.

That's the critical
first dimension of equality

we ought to insert back
into this representative democracy.

And there's other inequalities
inside of our system.

We need equal representation
inside of our system.

This article, this fantastic article
written by Christopher Ingraham

for the Washington Post

graphs these gerrymandered districts
in the United States.

These are congressional districts
in the US.

Here is my favorite example of this.

You can see the natural community
that bonds these people together here.

(Laughter)

This is a system -

they said it's crimes against geography,
that's kind of a nice way of putting it.

This is the system where the politicians
are picking the voters.

The voters
aren't picking the politicians.

And they pick the voters
to create safe seats.

Democrats and Republicans
both play this game.

So, in our Congress today,
90 seats are competitive.

Which means 345 seats
are these safe seats.

Which means, if you are minority party
in each of these 345 seats,

you don't matter to the representative

because the representative knows
he or she doesn't need you.

Which means 89 million Americans
are not represented in this system,

because we structured this in a way
that makes sure

that these people don't count.

That is inequality.

And Fair Vote has a proposal
which is incorporated

in the Citizen Equality Act

to radically change the way
we make these districts work

so that we have proportional
fair representation across the country.

And finally, an Equal Freedom to Vote.

The absurd ways in which we make it hard
for people to vote.

And it is not accidental
how we make it hard for people to vote.

In the last election 10 million people
had to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.

Which for people with nannies and iPhones
might not seem like a bad thing

but if you are a working family
who can't afford that kind of support,

that's a poll tax
that is too high for too many.

And of course as the -

(Applause)

as the Brennan Center found
in a study that they made of this,

this poll tax
is correlated strongly with race.

It is racially correlated in a sense that
where there are black or brown districts

they are less likely to have

the resources necessary
to make it possible to vote easily.

That, of course, I think is more directly
correlated with party

which leads to many proposals incorporated
in the Citizens Equality Act,

including
the Voting Rights Advancement Act

that would attack some of these provisions
that make it hard for people to vote.

And Bernie Sanders' suggestion
of Democracy Day,

where we move voting to a holiday
so working people can vote

just as easily as those who don't have to.

(Applause)

So these three ideas
get wrapped into one statute,

the statute Congress could pass tomorrow
to achieve this equality

to make
this representative democracy possible.

OK, now, I push this as the core fight
we ought to have

and people say, well why?

There are so many issues out there
why would you pick this one to push?

And there is a practical reason.

The practical reason is we will get
nothing from this government,

until we get this.

You want this government to address
the problem of climate change,

we will not get
climate change legislation,

until we address
this fundamental inequality

in this broken democracy.

You want Congress to address
the problem of social security

to make sure that there is social security

we will not get a government
to address that problem

until we fix this democracy.

You want Congress to address
the problem of student debt.

We're not going to address
the problem of student debt

until we address
this problem of democracy.

So it is not that this
is the most important issue.

It's not that those issues
are the most important issues,

this is just the first issue.

This is the issue we have got to solve,
if we are going to have any chance

to solve the long list
of critical problems

that we as a nation must address.

So practically this is why
we need to put this first.

But it is not just practical, it is moral.

400 years after slavery came
to these shores,

I think it is time we have
a peaceful fight for equality.

That we have a campaign,
a national campaign,

everybody who rallies around the idea
that it is finally time

that we stand up
for this idea of equality.

It is an embarrassment to our traditions

that in 2015 we have movements that need
to assert that black lives matter.

How can that possibly be?

(Applause)

Well, I can tell you that it is

because we have a political system
that doesn’t count us equally.

We have a political system
that counts some more than others.

We have a political system that betrays

the fundamental idea
of a representative democracy.

54 years ago, Martin Luther King
went to Lincoln University,

gave a speech in which he said,
"America is essentially a dream,

the substance of the dream is expressed
in these sublime words

words lifted to cosmic proportions:
that all are created equal."

We've heard it said that the Pope
shouldn't talk about climate science,

so I shouldn't talk about
what the Creator meant,

but let me tell you about the reality,
whatever the Creator meant,

reality is we are not equal
in America today.

Reality is we do have
second class citizens in America today.

And the reality is until we confront
the fact that this ideal

is a fantasy in America today,

we will not begin to have a democracy
that represents us.

We need to learn

from our brothers and sisters
fifty years ago

who risked their lives
to fight for equality.

And we need to learn
from our brothers and sisters

from all the way around the world

who are risking their lives now
to fight for equality.

To fight for equality,
to love for equality.

To sacrifice that sense of love,
to sacrifice for equality.

because if we don't,
how will we look at our children,

who will look back at us and say,

"Look at what you inherited
and then squandered.

Look at what you had and then left to us."

Because we were given the nation
with the potential

to be the greatest democracy in the world

and we have allowed that potential to die.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)