Would you agree that in an ideal world that democracies would embrace, sovereignty of the people, government based upon consent of the governed, majority rule, minority rights, a guarantee of basic human rights, free and fair elections, equality before the law, due process of law, constitutional limits on government; social, economic, and political pluralism; values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation and compromise?

If yes then consider that as early as spring 2008, ‘The New York Times’ reported that both major political parties were in agreement that there would be at most 14 battleground states in 2008.

In 2004, the candidates concentrated over 66% of their efforts and money in just five states; over 80% in nine states; and over 99% of their money in just sixteen states.Even before the 2008 presidential election began voters in 36 of the 50 states never really mattered, so basically if you live in one of those 36 States then you might reasonably ask yourself if there’s really any reason to vote.

The dictionary says that a democracy “is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system”, or as Abraham Lincoln, said “a democracy is a government of the people, by the people and for the people”.

Democracies basically fall into two main categories, direct and representative. In a “direct democracy” every citizen participates in making all public related decisions and there is no need for elected or appointed officials. However such a system is obviously only practical with relatively small numbers of people and historically the largest number of people that have ever taken part in a ‘direct democracy was 5,000 – 6000 in ancient Athens.

The most common form of democracy today is therefore “representative democracy” and it is the elected officials that make the political decisions and formulate the laws and oversee programs for the public good.

In a democratic society, majority rule has to be coupled with laws that guarantee the individual’s human rights and ethnic, religious and political freedom and the rights of minorities should not depend upon the goodwill of the majority which in essence means that the laws in modern democracies are not decided upon by the majority.

Based on the forgoing, it would seem that the democratic system as it presently exists in the U.S. requires some serious changes, the first of which should probably be the ability to elect the president by a national popular vote.

Secondly, under a national popular vote, every person’s vote, in every state, would be of equal importance regardless of his or her political affiliation and as a consequence there would be no red states, no blue states and no battleground states and politicians would be therefore be obliged to address the concerns of every voter.

I believe that only after making the above changes might we perhaps be justified in saying that America is a true “representative democracy”.

Last 10 posts by Michael Redbourn

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Tags: democracy, government, politics

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 12:25 pm and is filed under democracy, government, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.