No problem in the American system at this moment is as acute and disruptive as the one posed by the Republican Party. Our system of elections — first-past-the-post voting, the Electoral College, single-member districts and partisan gerrymandering — feeds into and amplifies our partisan and ideological polarization. Our system of federalism and dual sovereignty between state and national government allows for laboratories of autocracy as much as testing grounds for democracy. Our counter-majoritarian institutions and supermajority rules stymie democratic majorities and turn stability into stasis, putting terrible stress on our entire political system. When Donald Trump was in office, it was revealing to see the extent to which Republican majorities in Congress struggled to write and pass any legislation of consequence.

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