We teach our school children that America is built as a democratic government, ruled by the people, for the people. Everyone has a say in how decisions are made and how laws are enforced. All adult Americans have the right to vote, and the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of government are controlled by the separation of powers which utilizes checks and balances. No one branch of government has the authority to take control over the other two. Essentially, we stretch the truth.
•America is actually a representative democratic republic. We employ a system of democracy in which elected representatives from each independent state come together to form a common republic. Then, that system of representatives votes on particular issues keeping in mind the good of the people they represent. Regular citizens rarely get the chance to vote directly on national issues. In fact, this is a different type of government system altogether, known as a direct democracy. America could never work as a direct democracy, however, because quite frankly, the country is just too big. Imagine counting the votes of every single American citizen dozens of times per day in order to make decisions. Although it is much easier to get things accomplished with a system of representatives, there are still many problems with how our government is run.
•For instance, how is it that a presidential candidate who loses the popular vote can still be elected over another? When we vote in our representatives, we trust them to make decisions based upon the popular opinion of the people who elected them in the first place. This does not always happen. The representatives make up what is known as an electoral college. In presidential elections, the people vote directly for the candidates that they wish to run the country. Then, the electoral college analyzes the votes, and the representatives from each state place their vote for president depending upon the outcome of their respective state’s vote. Sometimes, however, a representative will disagree with the outcome of the popular vote in his state, and will instead choose to vote against the wishes of his people.
•The electoral college affixes a set number of points, or votes, to each state depending upon the population of that state. A presidential candidate could technically win more states than anyone else involved in the election, but if the states he wins do not count for that many votes, he could still lose the election to someone who collects the votes of bigger and more heavily populated states.
This is the biggest problem with American democracy. Since the president of this country has more power than any other person in the country, he or she should be directly elected, especially since a person, a representative, can be swayed in many ways. For instance, let’s say that the representative of a state wants to pass a law for government funding for some humanitarian projects. If he or she knows that one candidate is more likely to vote yes on his or her cause, then that representative may vote for that candidate regardless of the outcome of the popular vote. It is much harder, however, to sway the votes of millions of people in the same way since everyone’s interests can be rather diverse. Abolishing the electoral college would also strike up more public interest in the voting process. Less than half of the current registered voters in the United States actually show up to vote. If we elected our presidents under a direct democracy, there would probably be much less controversy in our government.
Tags: Democracy, democratic government