Restoring democracy

If the Democrats win next year's election, then aside from "normal" legislation in areas like health care and taxes, it will be necessary to repair the damage the Republicans have done to American democracy and restore a level playing field.  This is what I believe will be necessary to accomplish that.  It assumes the Democrats hold the House and win the Presidency and a Senate majority.

1) Abolish the filibuster so legislation can be passed by simple majority in the Senate.  This will be necessary to get anything else done, since there's no realistic possibility of Democrats winning 60 Senate seats.  Allowing 41 Senators to block legislation that would otherwise pass is grossly undemocratic, especially when each state has two Senators regardless of population, so that those 41 may represent far less than 41% of the American people.

2) Pass legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, and appoint and confirm non-wingnut judges to the new seats.  This is necessary to offset the effect of two judges (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) having been appointed by a President illegitimately elected due to foreign interference and laws calculated to suppress the minority vote, one of those seats having been stolen from President Obama anyway by McConnell.

The objection was raised in a comment here that this "would make the Court look partisan", but in fact the Supreme Court already not merely looks partisan, it actually is partisan, with those two judges who are there only because of flagrant violation of democratic norms and the process by which such judges have always been selected.  One might also object that the Republicans would merely enlarge the court again and appoint more wingnuts as soon as they get a chance, but doing so would require a majority of both Houses plus the Presidency, a trifecta the Republicans would be very unlikely to achieve in the foreseeable future (see below).

3) Pass federal legislation sweeping away all state-level gerrymandering and vote-suppression laws.  The Republicans rely on gimmicks like these to keep political power beyond what the number of actual votes they get would justify.  Eliminating such gimmicks would restore the "one person, one vote" principle; the Republicans would need to either broaden the base of voters they appeal to, or see their legislative power shrink to what the size of their voting base justifies.

4) Pass federal legislation guaranteeing election security by whatever means are determined to be most effective -- mandating paper ballots, increasing security on computers that handle election-related data, or whatever else.  Yes, this would be legal.  Article 1, section 4 of the Constitution gives the states the authority to manage elections, but also gives Congress the power to "by Law make or alter such Regulations".  Congress has successfully intervened in corrupt state voting practices in the past.  It would also be a good idea to enact a nationwide version of the vote-by-mail system used here in Oregon, where it has proven highly effective at increasing voter turnout.

The Republicans would, of course, scream bloody murder, but they are pretty much guaranteed to crank it up to 11 no matter what the Democrats do.  Maximal outrage and hysteria is their default setting now.  Trying to make nice with them and cater to their frothing delusions doesn't do any good.  Obama spent eight years proving that.

The above program is actually doable by simple Congressional majorities plus the President.  It would do no more than restore effective democracy by canceling out the various schemes the Republicans have imposed over the years to tilt the playing field in their favor and entrench minority rule.  In fact, it still wouldn't level the playing field entirely, since the Senate and the Electoral College would still over-represent states with small populations, the majority of which lean Republican*.  So they would retain a small part of their unfair advantage, but there's nothing we can do about that, since changing those things would require a Constitutional amendment.

Enacting this program would require some boldness on the part of elected Democrats, but we need to be as ruthless in restoring democracy as the Republicans have been in undermining it.

[*It's still unlikely that Republican party as presently constituted will be competitive for the Presidency much longer, because demographic changes are pushing Texas toward becoming a swing state and eventually a blue state.  Eradicating vote-suppression laws would allow this shift in Texas to happen more quickly.]