“In California we basically say to Trump: screw you!” – An Interview with Joe Mathews

During his visit at the Mehr Demokratie-office in Berlin we talked to Joe Mathews (editor at Zócalo Public Square and board member of Democracy International) about the current state of democracy in the USA. “The US is very democratic on the local level, pretty democratic on the state level, but it is not democratic on the federal level”, he summarises.

Interview by Neelke Wagner

NW: You mentioned that, in the era of Trump, it has become difficult to broaden the definition of what it means to be American, what is American. We have a similar kind of identity debate in Germany right now – do you think it’s similar?

JM: Yes, it is similar. We have this context of being a country of immigrants, but now, there is definitely an attempt of Trump and the people around him to say: Some people don‘t belong. The country is split. For example, here in California, we basically say to Trump: screw you! We won‘t do any of these things you tell us to do. The police in L.A. are formally telling people not to open their doors to federal immigration agents. They say: If someone is knocking on the door and shouts „Police!“, do not open the door. Because it‘s not us. Open the door only if you hear „LAPD“. That’s us. The others could be the immigration agency and we are not helping them in any way. People may say that certain people have the right to be here and others don’t, but in the end that’s not so clear. We have a lot of immigrants. Many came in a legal way, and their status expired, but they are still seeking to come a legal way. And now we have the situation that people who stick by the rules and try to do things the legal way are pulled out of the country, especially if they are non-white. 

American democracy isn’t a great democracy…I want to catch up with you

But that is not the only problem we face. We are fighting for the environment – Trump wants to expand oil drilling on the Californian coast, which is of high cultural and ecological value for us – or for healthcare, where we have dozens of lawsuits at the moment. It‘s a fight! And if the Trump folks are beaten in this fight, this could open up to a greater moment for democracy. At the moment, this fight is allowing some very dark things, but it opens up a broader conversation about American democracy as well. 

American democracy isn‘t a great democracy, particularly on the federal-national level. The US is very democratic on the local level, pretty democratic on the state level, but it is not democratic on the federal level. I mean, people don‘t even become president if they get the majority of the votes! There is a bigger conversation about that right now. It is a dangerous conversation because when you raise it, you’re often called anti-US-American. But it is going both ways. It’s not necessarily bad, because it’s a necessary conversation how to make the United States a modern democracy, because on the national level, it’s still shaped in this 18th century form of democracy. 

After WW II, American political scientists came to Germany gave a lot of good advises about democracy. You guys have the best of 20th century American thinking on democracy, but Americans live under the best of thinking of the 18th century, so I want to catch up with you! 

Why don’t we have a federal electoral commission as good as the one in Mexico?

NW: Is there a movement for a better democracy on the federal level? 

JM: I think there is a beginning of such kind of movement, but it‘s not about direct democracy. The last time this came up was about a decade ago, when the war in Iraq started. It came from an anti-war perspective. A former senator from Alaska argued for a national referendum about the question if we should go to war. I mean, it’s not a bad idea, but it didn’t go anywhere.

We don’t even have national elections! This is what the electoral college is about: We have only elections on a state level, and that gets us perverse things like more people vote for one person, but the other one gets elected. Why don’t we have a federal electoral commission, as good as the one in Mexico? They run pretty good elections on the national level, better than the American are. Our system is still primitive, it’s not very well developed. 

There is a national democracy movement, it consists of many different pieces trying to fix different things democrately, but they remain within the confines of this 18th century structure. The big thing is redistricting. We still have single member districts that are drawn by the politicians themselves. A big coalition has formed itself, from left to right – Governor Schwarzenegger is a part of it – that wants to create citizen’s commissions that draw the districts. Then we would still have this single member districts, but at least they would be drawn more fairly, to keep communities together and not serve the politicians. That’s a minor improvement to stop Gerrymandering, but all the other strange kinds of perversions that our system brings would still be in place: 

We can do it! 

We don’t have proportional representation, we think we are voting for people, but we have no idea who these people are because media is weak and doesn’t cover things. Here in L.A. the media doesn’t cover any of the legislative elections because there are so many different congress people to vote in Greater Los Angeles. Southern California is more than 20 Million people by itself, so if you do one congressional district, you are talking to about 900.000 people and so are ignoring 95 percent of your audience. For example, if you take California, divide it into its regions and set up multi-member districts regionally and have proportional elections, that would make a ton more sense. People would be happy – at least they would be much more represented and the system would be more competitive. But when you suggest things like that, they say: That works in Europe, but not here. I keep saying: I know Europeans, they are not any smarter than we are. We can do it! 

It’s becoming more about money 

There is an architectural frustration to this, that’s an issue in Western democracies, and maybe that’s why we see the rise of populism. In the western United States, in a state like mine, direct democracy has been a part of this kind of conversation. The system is still used, but it’s fraying in a lot of ways. Last night I got a phone call from a guy who runs one of the largest petition companies in California. You know that signature gathering is done privately here. He was mad on me because I had written something on two different campaigns for initiatives of his house, the first was about splitting California in six states, from 2016. The other one was about creating a neighborhood legislature.

They had to get some 585,000 valid signatures and they count only a few thousands short in both of the initiative. And I said, this is ridiculous! Why do you spend millions of dollars and then you don’t spend just a little more to get the rest? What’s going on? And he called me and told me that he sees the whole system is breaking down. It’s becoming more about money. He said 3 million is not enough, it’s probably five million dollars to get on the California ballot.

That’s really the test: money.

There are greater restrictions on where you can go with petitions. Grocery stores in California no longer allow people to gather. So much of the petitions were done outside retail and malls. I don’t know if youhave the “retail apocalypse”? So much commerce moves on to the internet that just getting to people in an efficient way has become very hard and costly. 

We will either go in a very bad direction, towards more authoritarianism, or there will be a moment to rebuild democracy 

And then he told me I was wrong because they actually had enough signatures, they turned in about 700,000. But the counties – we have about 50 counties in California, that in fact conduct the elections, even the presidential elections are organized on the county level –

those counties have so little staff and so little money, so they aren’t really checking the petitions accurately. He sees the whole architecture of direct democracy breaking down, and he doesn’t work only in California, but as well in Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada...

So, there is a sense of a real withering of institutional infrastructure even for direct democracy, and yet no willing is among the leads to try to build new infrastructure. Even in a state like California, you can’t do any kind of petition’s regulation online – it’s illegal, the courts have said, if you want to bring forward a law or a constitutional amendment.

Democratic structures are withering across the United States. We will either go in a very bad direction, towards more authoritarianism, or there is a moment to rebuild something, a new birth of democracy. It’s gonna be very interesting either way! 

Our politics is very lonely. I would wish it could be more build around a Biergarten… 

People are very focused on money, on who is spending with the rules of the game, but there isn’t a lot of thinking about the structural, the cultural dimension of democracy, what Bruno uses the word infrastructure for. This democratic infrastructure is what is breaking down. We never invested in that. I find it cool when I come to Europe, because you go to places like San Sebastián, where we had the Global Forum on Direct Democracy last year, that they have an office for public participation in that old Franco prison, with people in there who can help you. In L.A. you don’t have a place like that, you don’t have democracy navigators like in Falun in Sweden for example.

You are very much left on your own. I think there is a bad US-American vision on democracy that it is something you are doing by yourself – in the voting booth by yourself, watching some horrible TV spots by yourself – rather than it being something you do with your family, your neighbors, your community, where it might be fun. Everything that has something to do with political parties is bad. We can’t have it in public space or a public building, but in the end, political parties are just the way that human beings participate into politics. 

Our politics is very lonely. I would wish it could be more build around a Biergarten even though I don’t drink, because that is a place that connects people to each other. We have become a kind of lonely society. This is maybe because Zócalo[1] seems to be such a small thing. It is so hard to get people to go out and meet each other and talk with each other, that feels such a big hurdle. To you, it may seem a minor thing, but for us, it is hard.

[1] Zócalo Public Square:

• Founded in Los Angeles in 2003, Zócalo Public Square connects people to ideas and to each other by examining essential questions in an accessible, broad-minded, and democratic spirit. It syndicates its journalism to 290 media outlets worldwide and has hosted more than 500 events in 25 cities in the U.S and beyond. It is a non-profit organization that frequently partners with educational, cultural, and philanthropic institutions, as well as public agencies.