Here's How Dems Should Fix Our 'Broken Democracy'

No claims match the selected verdicts. Show all

1. Claim 1

   Accurate99% confidence▶ 0:25

   “You can confirm U.S. Supreme Court justices without a filibuster.”

   Supreme Court justices can be confirmed without a filibuster.

   Since 2017, Senate precedent allows cloture on Supreme Court nominations by simple majority rather than the 60 votes formerly needed to overcome a filibuster. The Senate’s official history describes this change as lowering the cloture threshold for Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority.

   • US elections and domestic politics

   Sources

   • 1U.S. Senate: About Judicial Nominations | Historical Overview↗

     SupportsIn January 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy, and Senate Republicans deployed the nuclear option to lower the cloture threshold for Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority, leading to confirmation by slim margins of Gorsuch and subsequent nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

2. Claim 2

   Accurate50% confidence▶ 1:10

   “If they can win 10% of the votes in a state where there are 10 House districts, then you could get one of the seats.”

   Under the described proportional-representation system, 10% of the vote in a 10-seat state delegation would produce one seat.

   This is the basic proportional-representation calculation: 10% of the vote in a 10-seat constituency corresponds to roughly one of the ten seats. The exact result can vary by electoral formula and thresholds, but under the proportional system described, the arithmetic is correct.

   Sources

   • 1FairVote - The Case for Proportional Representation↗

     SupportsA party or group of voters that wins 10 percent of the popular vote in this district, then, would win one of the ten seats; a party or slate of candidates with 30 percent of votes would win three seats, etc.

3. Claim 3

   Accurate100% confidence▶ 1:20

   “It's not how it works right now,”

   The proposed proportional-representation approach is not the current system for electing the U.S. House.

   Federal law generally requires states with more than one Representative to use separate congressional districts, with no district electing more than one Representative. That is not a proportional, multi-member-district system.

   Sources

   • 12 U.S.C. § 2c: Number of Congressional Districts; number of Representatives from each District↗

     SupportsRepresentatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative.

4. Claim 4

   Misleading95% confidence▶ 1:21

   “when the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the voting rights act”

   The Supreme Court substantially weakened the Voting Rights Act by invalidating the coverage formula used for federal preclearance.

   Shelby County v. Holder held the Section 4(b) coverage formula unconstitutional, preventing the ordinary Section 5 preclearance regime from operating for previously covered jurisdictions. The Department of Justice expressly notes that the Court did not rule Section 5 itself unconstitutional and did not invalidate the entire Act.

   Omits: The Supreme Court invalidated Section 4(b)'s coverage formula, which made Section 5 preclearance effectively inoperative for jurisdictions previously covered by that formula; it did not invalidate the entire Voting Rights Act or Section 5 itself.

   I judged the intensifier "gutted" as implying that the Voting Rights Act as a whole was gutted. Read more narrowly as saying the decision severely impaired Section 5 preclearance, the statement would be substantially accurate.

   • US elections and domestic politics

   Sources

   • 1Civil Rights Division: About Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act↗

     RefutesThe Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of Section 5 itself.

   • 2Civil Rights Division: About Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act↗

     BackgroundOn June 25, 2013, the United States Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional to use the coverage formula in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act to determine which jurisdictions are subject to the preclearance requirement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013).

5. Claim 5

   Accurate50% confidence▶ 1:42

   “if one party can draw maps where they get 51 of the vote in every district they control everything even though they only represent half the people”

   If one party wins 51% of the vote in every single-member district, it can win all the seats while receiving only a bare majority of the votes in each district.

   In a winner-take-all single-member district, the candidate or party with the most votes wins the seat. Therefore, a party receiving 51% in every district would win every seat, despite having only a narrow majority of votes in each district.

   Sources

   • 1The Apportionment Act of 1842: “In All Cases, By District”↗

     SupportsIn many cases, states adopted the now-familiar single-Member district in which one person, the candidate with the most votes, was elected to represent a geographically distinct district in the House.