In the British elections of 1831, the borough of Dunwich elected two members to the House of Commons. Funny thing, though: Over the centuries, Dunwich had pretty much been swallowed by the North Sea. So by the 1800s, the members were essentially chosen by two people. That’s hardly democracy in action.

“Rotten boroughs” such as Dunwich were ended in the United Kingdom by the Great Reform Act of 1832. Perhaps it’s time to end what’s rotten in politics in the United States as well.

We pride ourselves on the American democracy established by ratification of the Constitution in 1788. But as great as that achievement was, the Founders left the job unfinished.

Most votes for members of Congress just don’t matter nowadays. In 2019, the Supreme Court acknowledged that partisan gerrymandering may be “incompatible with democratic principles” but went on to hold that the federal courts ought not intervene anyway. In 2022, North Carolina elected seven Republicans and seven Democrats to the House. After gerrymandering, the result in 2024 was 10-4 in favor of Republicans. This gave the Republicans at least two seats more than the popular vote had warranted.

According to the nonpartisan organization FairVote, 84% of House seats in 2024 were decided by more than a 10% margin. As FairVote CEO Meredith Sumpter said, “Uncompetitive elections lead to unrepresentative outcomes, and to a Congress that is polarized and unproductive instead of one that accomplishes the people’s work.”

Sumpter was on to something. The current system leads to ideologues who are loyal to their party rather than the people they represent. The result is a democracy in name and promise but not in reality, a government that cannot govern with broad support or even agree on how to fund itself.

In the last three elections, the choice of president has been decided by only 15% of the total electorate: the voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Nevada. (In 2024, 94% of the general election campaign events took place in those states.) That left the rest of us with no real say in the contest. Voters in the other 43 states and the District of Columbia, over 130 million voters nationwide, cast ballots that could have been thrown in the trash for all the difference they made.

A poll taken this summer found 76% of Americans believe issues that divide them pose a serious threat to democracy. The Economist’s Democracy Index ranks the U.S. 28th, behind countries such as Norway, Taiwan and Uruguay, and just one spot above Chile. Over half of college students believed their votes didn’t matter in last year’s election.

Of course, those students were right. The choice of who governs is shrinking to a few states and a few congressional districts. Our democracy is not quite as bad as pre-1832 Britain where it took only two people to select who filled two seats in the legislature, but it’s getting close.

At least two things could be done to make America more democratic:

No. 1: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact offers a way to make every ballot matter.

No. 2: As of April, seven states have set up independent redistricting commissions designed to give neither Republicans nor Democrats an unfair advantage in elections to the House of Representatives.