American states, which were once praised by the great jurist Louis Brandeis as “laboratories of democracy,” are in danger of becoming laboratories of authoritarianism as those in power rewrite electoral rules, redraw constituencies, and even rescind voting rights to ensure that they do not lose. —Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die ( Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018 , 2)
Trends in State Democracy With the State Democracy Index in hand, I first explore variation between states, and within states across time, in democratic performance. Figure 2 shows a map of state scores in the year 2000 (left panel) and in the year 2018 (right panel). The maps in Figure 2 show some clear regional variation, especially in 2018. States on the West Coast and in the Northeast score higher on the democracy measures than do states in the South. New Mexico, Colorado, and some Midwestern states also have strong democracy scores. The maps also show within-state change during this period. States like North Carolina and Wisconsin are among the most democratic states in the year 2000, but by 2018 they are close to the bottom. Illinois and Vermont move from the middle of the pack in 2000 to among the top democratic performers in 2018. Figure 3 highlights a case of major change in democratic performance, North Carolina. Although the state was notoriously difficult to democratize during the civil rights period (Mickey Reference Mickey2015)—it maintained its Jim Crow literacy tests for voting until the 1970s—North Carolina had become a leader in expanding access to voting during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The state had expanded opportunities for early voting as well as implemented policies to expand voter registration, such as same-day registration and preregistration for youth. Voter turnout had increased by over 10 percentage points on average during this time. But a major shift occurred after the Republican Party won control of both legislative chambers in 2010. Beginning in 2011, North Carolina made a series of changes to its election laws and procedures. The state redrew its legislative district boundaries. The new districts, which received rapid condemnation from Democrats and civil rights groups, clearly advantaged white and Republican voters. In 2018, for example, Republicans won about 50.3% of the two-party vote in North Carolina—but this bare majority of votes from the electorate translated to fully 77% (10 of 13) of North Carolina’s seats in Congress. Scholars of gerrymandering such as Christopher Warshaw have called North Carolina districts “probably the most gerrymandered map in modern history.”Footnote 14 After electing a Republican governor in 2012, the unified Republican government then implemented a strict voter ID law and curtailed early voting laws in areas with heavier concentrations of Black voters. These changes are reflected in Figure 3. Figure 4 shows trends in state democracy by party, with the solid line representing unified Republican states and the dashed and dotted lines representing Democratic and divided states, respectively. The states polarize by party over this period: the average divided state and Democratically controlled state become more democratic, whereas the average Republican-controlled state becomes less democratic. However, the groups of states controlled by each party change over this period; I do not know from Figure 4 whether Republican states are becoming less democratic or whether less democratic states are becoming more Republican. The partisan relationships could also be confounded by other potential causes of democratic changes: competition and polarization.