America's Move Toward Single Party Rule

In 2017, the Economist magazine wrote regarding the tendency of American elections to no longer convert majority votes into control of government due to an inherent bias that favors rural Republicans:

“EVERY system for converting votes into power has its flaws. Britain suffers from an over-mighty executive; Italy from chronically weak government; Israel from small, domineering factions. America, however, is plagued by the only democratic vice more troubling than the tyranny of the majority: tyranny of the minority. 

This bias is a dangerous new twist in the tribalism and political dysfunction that is poisoning politics in Washington. Americans often say such partisanship is bad for their country (and that the other lot should mend their ways). The Founding Fathers would have agreed. George Washington warned that ‘the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge…is itself a frightful despotism’.”

In November 2018, a Washington Post article, The U.S. is in a state of perpetual minority rule, focused on minority rule in the US:

“Look behind the midterm elections’ outcomes — and the distortions produced by small states in the Senate and by gerrymandering in the House — to focus directly on the votes that constitute democratic bedrock, and a very different picture comes in to focus. The partisan balance of power — even the new balance, including a Democratic House — subjects the United States to undemocratic minority rule. 

Both results represent trends rather than historical anomalies or accidents. Research by the political analyst David Wasserman (of the Cook Political Report) shows that the current Republican biases in both the House and Senate elections are at all-time highs — greater than the partisan biases in favor of either party at any prior time for which data exist. 

President Trump and the Republican senators have used their offices to remake the judiciary in their own image. Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh entrench a reliable conservative majority at the Supreme Court, in spite of being nominated by a popular-vote-losing president and confirmed by senators who, our research shows, collectively won (in each case) about 24 million fewer votes than the senators who voted against the nominations.”

The WaPo asserts that the president and Republican senators are using their their power to extend and entrench Republican advantage in elections. The Supreme Court could consider election law cases that could solidify Republican power and foster a further move toward minority rule.

Various republican efforts are underway in some states or have already been put in place. In Wisconsin, the GOP has a clear vision of how to proceed: “If you can’t win elections, rig them. If the rules say you can’t do something, change the rules. Then if voters still elect Democrats, take away their power.” There republicans reduced early voting, making it harder for citizens to get to the polls.

Similarly, in North Carolina in December 2016, the republican-controlled legislature passed laws that severely limited incoming democratic governor’s ability to make key cabinet appointments without GOP approval. The GOP also changed the Board of Elections so that republicans would control it in election years. Republicans in Michigan also limited the power of incoming democrats after 2016 elections.

The intense urge to exert lasting influence despite the GOP's perception of an increasingly minority status (real or not) appears to be driving its willingness to impose single party rule and policy choices to the extent possible. Republican fear of a growing liberal majority is a major factor. Presumably, most or essentially all republicans would deny that they are rigging the system, pursuing minority dominance or that they exert anything close to a tyranny of the minority.