Howard Dean and Catherine Vaughan

Opinion contributors

President Trump, as dangerous as he is, is actually the direct symptom of a much larger political problem for Democrats: We aren’t winning at the local level. And this power descent began long before the infamous escalator ride that Trump took on his way to announcing his candidacy.

Democrats lost their House and Senate majorities over the last decade, and the carnage at the state level has been even worse. Since President Obama was sworn in, Democrats have lost 13 governor’s mansions and more than 900 state legislative seats. All told, Democrats hold only 42% of America's 7,383 legislative seats, down from about 55% in 2009.

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State governments are now overwhelmingly Republican: In 26 of them, the GOP controls both legislative chambers and the governorship, while Democrats have just six of these “trifectas.” This has created a vicious cycle of increasing GOP dominance: by winning at the state level, Republicans have expanded their power to suppress voting rights and draw congressional districts guaranteed to keep their party in control.

Americans can start to reverse this undemocratic imbalance from the ground level up by participating Tuesday in state elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Washington. Here’s why that’s so essential:

State policies affect our lives.

Take reproductive rights. The Republican Party targeted vulnerable state legislatures to test out restrictive abortion bans before rolling them out across the country. Now 20 states have bans on abortion after 20 weeks. In Virginia, Republican delegates have promoted a 20-week abortion ban. Republicans control both legislative chambers, so the only failsafe is a Democratic governor. That job is up for election, along with the entire House of Delegates, on Tuesday.

Watching national politicians and experts debate women’s reproductive rights can make us all feel like the battlefield is at the federal level. But state legislatures have the real power over what women do with their body--and they’re using it nefariously while the country is focused elsewhere.

States control federal elections.

In most states, the legislatures control the redistricting process, which determines how many Democrats and Republicans are packed into each state legislative and congressional district. That’s why one of the most punishing results of Republican gains at the state level since 2008 has been rampant gerrymandering. To maintain their grip on power, Republicans have drawn lines to pack Democratic voters into just a few districts, or to spread them out across many districts. The results are stark: in North Carolina, 47% of voters cast their ballots for Democratic House candidates in 2016, yet only 23% of the state's House members are Democrats. Our losses at the state and federal levels are not unrelated; instead, our losses in Congress are a direct result of Republican gains in state legislatures.

States also have the authority to empower, or suppress, voters. A shining example of voter empowerment is automatic voter registration, which was recently passed in Alaska, Illinois, Rhode Island and Utah after rollouts in Oregon and California. But in key Republican-controlled battleground states, voter laws are much more restrictive. In Florida, residents with felony convictions are barred from voting for the rest of their lives. As a result, 21% of African-Americans in the state have no voice in government. In Wisconsin, where Donald Trump won by fewer than 23,000 votes, a judge found in 2014 that 300,000 voters did not have the identification required under the state’s restrictive laws — laws modified but not eliminated before the 2016 election.

So what do we do now?

State politics has never been as sexy as national politics: It's not what cable news channels or the late-night hosts talk about, and it's easier to have an opinion on, say, gay marriage than on a local land ordinance. And sometimes participating at the local level isn't easy, either: information about what state legislatures do is often hard to find or unclear.

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But there is hope. A few weeks ago, Flippable brought donations, door-knockers and phone-bankers to Miami to help Florida Democrat Annette Taddeo compete for a state Senate seat. She defeated her Republican opponent by a margin of 3.8 percentage points.

We face our biggest test yet on Tuesday in Virginia. While the state has increasingly voted for Democrats in presidential elections, its 100-member House of Delegates is 66% Republican, largely due to partisan gerrymandering. Flippable has identified the most competitive districts in the state and given readers an opportunity to learn more about the candidates running in these districts. We’re working with dozens of local and national partners who share our goal of flipping Virginia blue.

We’ve seen millions of Americans activate since last November’s election, channeling their passion and energy into the fight for a stronger democracy. In this moment of fear and uncertainty, we can choose to respond with purposeful action and hope. There are 7,383 seats to win on the way back to retaking the one behind the Oval Office desk. Let’s get to work.

Howard Dean is the former governor of Vermont and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Catherine Vaughan is CEO and co-founder of Flippable, a grassroots movement to elect progressives to state government. Follow them on Twitter: @GovHowardDean and @CVO