PROPOSITION: DEMOCRACY IS THE WORST FORM OF GOVERNMENT EXCEPT FOR ALL THE OTHERS

AFFIRMATIVE:  When We Are Governed, Ballots Are Best

- JESSE WALKER

THERE ARE COUNTLESS drawbacks to democratic government, but most of these are problems with the government part, not the democratic part. It is true, as the old joke goes, that unconstrained majority rule is two wolves and a sheep debating what to have for dinner. But unconstrained minority rule is just the same debate with more sheep. The lesson should be that we need constraints on any state, democratic or not.

Constitutional constraints on power are often described as countermajoritarian measures, but the best of them are counterminoritarian too. (The same First Amendment that is there to protect us if Congress passes a law criminalizing speech is also supposed to protect us if an unelected police chief starts harassing his critics.) Democratic input itself can be a constraint on power-not the most effective constraint, but one we're better off with than without. I prefer it when government does not claim powers over people's lives; but when it does claim those powers, we should at least get some say in when and how they are wielded.

One possible objection to this is that democracy doesn't really give us much power: Outside the most local level, it is virtually impossible for one voter's ballot to change an election's outcome. This is undeniably true, and I would never try to hector a citizen into the voting booth. But when a large number of citizens get upset at once, that actually can have an impact. Keeping one person from voting is not likely to have a long-term impact on public policy, but systematically barring a population from the polls-as in the Jim Crow South, to give the most obvious example-can allow all sorts of oppressions to thrive.