> You need a well-educated population with equal access to opportunities, a free, healthy, and diverse press, an independent judiciary, a healthy political landscape, etc.
Then the US isn't a democracy?
Then the US isn't a democracy?
One such fact — that for the first time ever, the United States is no longer considered a “full democracy,” but rather a “flawed democracy”...
The US designation as a “flawed democracy” is really more nominal than anything, simply meaning that the country’s Democracy Index — which is based off of five categories related to governance — has fallen below eight out of 10.
https://www.globalcitizen.org/fr/content/the-us-is-now-a-fla...
Not true at all. The minute the VRA was gutted, there were bills passed in nearly every Republican state to make it harder for PoC to vote. Look at the elections in Atlanta last month for example.
Election Day problems are hardly new to Georgia, where Republican officials have overseen voting procedures that have led to hours long lines, most recently during the 2018 governor’s contest, which Brian Kemp, a Republican who at the time was secretary of state and in charge of running the election, won by 50,000 votes over Stacey Abrams. Tuesday’s primary was also a test of the state’s preparations to hold an election during the coronavirus pandemic.
Voting is a deeply felt and politically intense issue in Georgia because of its long history of disenfranchising black voters. The governor’s race was marred by accusations of voter suppression, particularly of African-American and other minority voters, which Mr. Kemp denied.
Look at Florida's attempts to re-disenfranchise felons with a 21st century poll tax.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/16/supr...
Look at the constant gerrymandering in every state.
We don't live in a "one person, one vote" country when half of the country consistently tries to make voting as hard as possible for the other half.
https://www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=De...
I've noticed a correlation with poor opinion of the government and willingness to accept undemocratic actions. A lot of people give a cynical quip and check out.
The world will be wonderful again. The press will be free again. Maybe they'll even give him a peace prize in the first year, right before he launches several large wars and destroys several nations.
People from lesser populated regions can't trust a government based on population and people from highly populated regions can't trust a government based on equal geographic representation. Marry the two ideas to mitigate the impact of government.
Government is an institution that can never be just trusted because at the end of the day it's run by people, who may or may not have your best interests at heart.
I actually think that widespread perception that the government is corrupt increases corruption. If you think you can bribe an officer of the law, or a judge, then you might try. If an officer or judge believes that it wont' be reported or that nothing will happen because of it, they may ask for a bribe. If Republicans think Democrats are cheating in elections, then Republicans are going to cheat to even the odds.
Trust, but verify, right?
The law. Are we arguing essentialist philosophy here? The things that were seen as implicit by cynics (and observation) were made explicit. We just know all of the megadonors by name now, and monitor their relationships with various candidates (and the ways those candidates can influence the donors' businesses, for possible investment opportunities.)
When you eliminate principles in law, society becomes unmoored. If they eliminate the First Amendment, will we just say "there wasn't ever really total freedom of speech anyway. Remember cancel culture?" That's the most useless possible internet-typical reaction to catastrophe.
I suppose you haven't been looking.
Again, I ask, how are people kept from voting? If showing ID is an example, I'm sorry, that's just silly.
I also reject your framing. Unlike some other countries, the United States has a constitutional prohibition on poll taxes, called the 24th Amendment. Regardless of what sophistry SCOTUS might hold, it is empirically self-evident that requiring only forms of ID that cost money is equivalent in outcome to having a poll tax.
False. In Canada, a voter with ID can vouch for one other voter, whose name and address are recorded.
Also, you'd have a better point if voter ID laws were not combined with a well-documented campaign to make it more difficult for POC to get IDs. This is classic voter suppression - install a byzantine set of rules that unwanted demographics will have a harder time navigating.
Also, I may point out that disenfranchising eligible voters happens to be voter fraud - carried out by the state.
So USA is now a "flawed democracy" now, as its systems allowed an outsider to upset the status quo.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...
I wonder why people think "the wrong guy won".
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index there are 22 full democracies. The US is flawed democracy (rank 25)
Let's ask ourselves: what do you think is the probability a year from now that the US presidential election later this year will be contested by a significant portion of the country, regardless of the outcome?
Not like the Obama terms where much different. Just a different group of people saying "My team didn't win so I'm going to have a tantrum".
I predict the next election cycle will just be more of the same, no matter who wins.
I don't think many contested Bush in 2004, when he got a majority (not even just a plurarity) of votes. They might not have liked it, but it was a given.
Clearly in 2000 there were complaints, Gore got more votes, on top of that was the whole hanging chad fiasco.
In both 92 and 96, Clinton got the plurarity of votes, but didn't reach 50%. Most who voted, voted against him. Not as bad as not getting a majority of votes, but will lead to some resentment.
Now on top of that there's the whole "Hacking" the election, which is far more woolly, and isn't just because of Russia and Cambridge Analytica, it's also about how informed a population is, the ease of getting onto the voting register, the ease of casting a vote, etc.
Democracy is hard
Especially if that candidate is the acting president and refuses to go through the peaceful transfer of power.
And the fact it's even being discussed as a serious possibility that the current acting president would do that should raise so many alarm bells about how democratic the US really is ... it's not even funny.
That was discussed with the same seriousness by the other side with Obama stepping down. Complete load of tosh.
If the electoral college fails to elect Trump as president when it meets at the end of the year, the secret service and/or army will remove Trump and Pence from the White House at noon on Jan 20th, revoking their security clearences. That will be done by force if necessary, and the winner of the EC will take the presidency.
If the EC fails to meet before Jan 20th for whatever reason (including elections being unable to be held etc), Then at noon on Jan 20th both Trump and Pence are removed and (baring a change in the makeup of the House), Nancy Pelosi will be sworn in as President.
The idea of a military coup in a country so enamoured by its constitution is fantastical.
This is absolutely not something Obama has done and claiming the situations are similar is blind and absurd.
Removing the president by force does not help the stated case by the way.
The peaceful transfer of power is about the operation of the government transferring - the head of the army, the secret service, the finance, etc.
You might get civil unrest if some Trump supporters refuse to accept it, but unlike other countries where ballots are counted, the US does not elect a president by popular vote, instead a joint session of congress counts registered votes from 538 electors across the country. The sitting president isn't even the room. There is no question.
Nobody said the president will just remain a president if he just says so. What I originally said is that the fact this (the acting president refusing to go through peaceful transfer of power) is a serious discussion is symptomatic of a serious issue, and I maintain that, and nothing you said contradicts it. You then replied with a weird tangent about Obama.
You should note, the man has shown many times to be able to gather a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people with a few tweets, and phone calls.
It won't be a matter of a few secret service agents escorting Trump out. It will be a full on armed standoff in the white house with 40% of the country rooting for Trump.
Top that off with a raging pandemic, unprecedented economic devastation, homelessness, shutdown schools, and sophisticated digital propaganda campaigns designed to exacerbate every divisive issue and it is hard to see how US democracy survives.
If the secret service can't cope with a few protesters what is the point of them?
I'm just going to call that out as a straight-up distortion and falsehood. In it's effect, equivalent to a lie.
Show me reliable quotes of saying Obama he would "have to see" about the election results, as Trump has, and I'll be more charitable.
Otherwise I (mostly) agree with you. Bear in mind though that when Trump wanted to deploy paratroopers to cities during the first wave of protests and the riots associated with (but not really a part of) them after the murder of George Floyd, the only check and balance in our system left was our military leadership itself, which, to their credit, saw that such an order would be immoral, probably illegal, and un-American.
But literally all the other checks and balances meant to prevent a President from turning the military / law enforcement into their own personal squad of doofuses have been removed at this point.
Look at Barr and the FBI. Or the current behavior of DHS in Portland.
So I mostly agree with your prediction but certainly have my unsettled moments.
I mean the guy got the Army to have a Blackhawk helicopter go hover over and intimidate peaceful protestors like it was part of an occupying force.
Plus, let's not forget that the election could be a shitshow this year in terms of how long it takes to count the votes, voter access to polling places (because of neglect or deliberate disenfranchisement), etc.
So there could be a lot of gray areas and areas of concern unrelated to a "military coup."
It's meaningless what Trump says or does. It's what Congress, Senate, Military and (in the short term) various federal agencies like the secret service. The Federal government obey legal orders from the President. Come 12:01pm on Jan 20th, barring a valid electoral college vote being declared in a joint session of congress in Trumps favour, Trump ceases to be president, and the Federal entities start following the lawful orders of either Biden or Pelosi (assuming Biden wins the EC or the EC doesn't happen but the democrats maintain control of the House)
Of course it's entirely possible for the election to be "stole" by keeping all non-trump voters away from the polling booths, that's a far woolier version of the word "stole" though.
Also I'd like to point out that the orders to create concentration camps for immigrants which Trump issued to ICE may very well have been illegal. Federal agencies receive orders all the time from various folks and sometimes those orders are later acknowledged as illegal.
But if all the votes aren't counted yet - like what happened with the Bush/Gore election - then the Supreme Court or whomever makes these decisions could legally extend the timeline (however it happened before). Trump remains President then until it's sorted out.
And it probably would get sorted out. But my point is that there is historical precedent for a gray area of when an election is over - I mean come on, the Supreme Court had to decide when the Bush / Gore election was over, and Gore could have contested that, if he had chosen to.
So it's obviously a possibility considering how messed-up our electoral process could be this year from a combination of covid-19, neglect, and deliberate neglect. And possibly foreign sabotage though I'd put that at the bottom of the list.
> The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January
It could not be plainer.
Supreme court can rule about the process of counting, when the joint session to verify the votes happens, when a given state has to appoint its electors etc, but can't possibly interpret this as anything other than the plain text it says.
What if on January 20 there is disagreement about who the President is?
I actually don't know how that works.
It's the distribution of benefits that accumulate within the system, and also the ease with which costs/hindrances/outright abuse can be inflicted on selected elements in the population.
The more concentrated the benefits, and the easier and more violent the restrictions and abuse, the less democracy exists.
It is teetering on the brink.
https://www.salon.com/2020/07/23/ruth-ben-ghiat-on-trump-and...
But even if we set this aside, we can certainly question if an institution like the electoral college doesn't deliberately move power from the people to the ruling group.
We can question if the extreme form of gerrymandering we practice around here doesn't remove power from the people.
We can debate Citizens United.
We can debate the existence of blatantly partisan media, and the monoculture of media owners.
We can debate a regime that has clearly abandoned ethical delineations, and that values loyalty over competence.
All of these, individually, chip away at democracy. The question is if together they've chipped away enough that we aren't one any more. (My current assessment is that we still have a small window to turn this around, but it's closing. It's open wider than in Hungary, it's less wide open than in Germany or France)
TLDR: it's pretty debatable
> The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.
Article 1, Section 2.
In the Early US, only white male land owners could vote (the upper class, aka, the aristocracy). Inasmuch, it was not what most people would consider a democracy. The lower class had no representation whatsoever.
So, when you say that a "A republic is a kind of democracy" it's actually not true, at least not for what most people would consider democracy.
It was a bit wider than that, the US was notable at the time for a highly unusual degree of land ownership. After all, there was a lot of land to steal from the native americans.
Regardless, the US was a democracy before women could vote, and it was a democracy before black people could vote, and it was a democracy before non-landowners could vote. It was a democracy in which many inhabitants didn't truly have full citizenship, but to this day there are millions and millions of people who live in the US (including many citizens!) who cannot vote, and it's still a democracy.
There are people marching through the streets chanting, "this is what democracy looks like." They don rose-tinted glasses - projecting their mob rule fantasy of popular vote and pure democracy on our explicitly democratic republic.
Words have meaning. It's not misguided pedantry.
It's sort of like how functional programming can just mean "programming with pure, mathematical style functions" or more broadly it can mean the techniques associated with functional programming like pattern matching, currying, etc.
In this case, it seems to me that the intention was to use the most broad sense of democracy.
You can have democratic (e.g. Iceland) or oligarchic republics (e.g. Ukraine), all the way to dictatorships (e.g. Russia).
Being a democracy and being a republic are completely orthogonal.
[1]: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
[2]: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...