USA a false democracy?

Discussion in 'Elections & Campaigns' started by LafayetteBis, Nov 27, 2020.

  1. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    insulting me doesn't play with me. Sorry.
     
  2. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Most people understand the goal of wanting nationwide popular vote is to make is so one or two states can steal the entire election, which they can't do now.

    Other counties actually have election safeguards including requiring an ID and have an in-person election day, not a month long election where anyone can mail in as many ballots as they want to with zero safeguards of any kind whatsoever in many states.
     
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  3. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What insult ? How have I offended thee ?

    I am sorry if my pointing out your lack of understanding of what the Establishment is - insults you .. but - this is a debate stage after all .. the point of which is to point out the flaws in the other's position .. so if you can't take the heat then perhaps this is not your kitchen .. with all due respect :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2020
  4. Enuf Istoomuch

    Enuf Istoomuch Well-Known Member

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    Claiming it does not make it so. No one is sending in as many ballots as they want. No county or state operates with zero safeguards.
     
  5. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    What insults me is referring to my having no mind. Go back and read what you wrote.
     
  6. Heartburn

    Heartburn Well-Known Member

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    What kind of safeguards would you consider essential?
     
  7. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    We are NOT a Democracy how many times does that have to be repeated. You can't fail at something you are not and in fact guarantied by the governing document, the Constitution, you will not be. We are a Federal Republic. And by design the STATES elect the President not the People. It's called the great compromise and continues to be one of the most innovative and important parts of our country and the states and how it is governed.
     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2020
  8. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Why on earth would 3/4 of the states agree to that? Why would so many of that 3/4 give up power at the federal level?
     
  9. Enuf Istoomuch

    Enuf Istoomuch Well-Known Member

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    We already have them. Verification of residency and identity. Considering the rarity and ineffectiveness of unlawful voting upon our elections, we are doing very well.

    If I could make changes it would be to have an absolute proof of citizenship. While this is not a problem it is logical to me that it should be so. When this is proposed there are often complaints that not everyone has the documentation, the means of proving identity. That this disenfranchises the poorer citizens, or other citizens in certain situations.

    My reply is that I want everyone to vote. So, if these problems exist, and I do not doubt that they do, then explain the problems and propose how to correct them. If that means that public funds should be spent to send election officials to every disadvantaged person across the country, so be it, I am in favor.

    Every citizen should vote.

    Very Briefly:

    We are in fact a democracy. The term Democracy is a general one meaning rule by the will of the people. From that general term many different systems of democracy have been created. Most democratic nations make use of Representative Democracy, and the United States is the prime example of this.

    The USA is also a Republic, a form of nation-state where ownership of the country is by the people rather than a monarch, a family or an authoritarian leader. The concept of a Republic and a Representative Democracy are very closely tied to each other but are not the same. "Republic" is who owns the country while "Democracy" is who decides the affairs of the country.

    The United States of America is a Constitutional and Presidential Representative Democracy with a Federal system featuring independent bicameral legislative, judicial and executive branches. It is also a Republic and a Union of States each of which are all the preceding terms in their own right. The confusion comes from the complexity of what our nation is, and the failures of our educational systems to explain it.

    The Great Compromise refers to the bicameral legislature, specifically to the creation of the Senate, not to the Electoral College. It was an attempt to balance legislative power between larger and smaller states.

    There were and continue to be a series of compromises in the Constitution, and the Electoral College is one of them.
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2020
  10. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    We are a FEDERAL REPUBLIC and you can name national federal election that has ever occurred in this country. You don't even have a right to vote for the President or VP. The Great Compromise included the Senate and how the President and VP would be chosen and even the Senate was not at the beginning by an election and we should repeal the 17th amendment to return to that. The founding fathers abohored Democracy and guarantied to the States we would not be one.
     
  11. Enuf Istoomuch

    Enuf Istoomuch Well-Known Member

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    A very strange response. You use terms that are in complete agreement with the terms I use and yet you seem firmly set on denying the meaning of the very words we have available to describe our form of government.

    You say we are not a Democracy, which is beyond nonsensical for there are many forms of such, and our nation is among them and globally renowned across our history for this very fact..

    Yet you also say that we are a Republic, which we also truly are and is in no way adverse to the other thing, but you do not appear to grasp the fact.

    This then is one of those pointless exercises so often encountered in internet forums.
     
  12. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    "We" the federal government as in this discussion. It is NOT a Democracy it is a federal republic. The citizens do not vote on national issues. As I noted we don't even vote for the President and Vice-President at the federal level. The STATES elect the President and Vice-President. You have no right to vote for them and you don't get to voted on legislation. The citizens are represented by members of Congress in the federal system. We have some democratic processes in the states where citizens do vote directly for certain matters. But not at the federal level.
     
  13. Enuf Istoomuch

    Enuf Istoomuch Well-Known Member

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    Once again you utilize terms that are in complete agreement with what I have stated and then you go on to claim the opposite If you are unwilling to learn, or to so much as use a common dictionary of political terminology that has existed for over two centuries, then this conversation is pointless.
     
  14. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    You simply do not understand our form of government on the federal level nor the Constitution nor the persons who wrote it and why the abhorred Democracies. Before you get snarky perhaps you do a little learning yourself. Lack of rebuttal noted.
     
  15. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    The Founding Fathers were rightly cautious of Democracies but there is no real evidence they "abhorred" them. Many in fact came from actual functioning "town hall" democracies which had been the form of government in the several New England States and some of which remain so to this day.

    Benjamin Franklin was a student of the Iroquois "Long House" governments, which were a sort of hybrid of Democracy and Tribal Oligarchy and its influence on the Constitution is subtle but there according to many scholars.

    As an aside it should be noted that the Electoral College is NOT a normal and necessary part of Plato's original Republic or any other of the known Republics in history that I have ever heard of. It is an indirect method of election by the people of the individual States and NOT a method by which the States can or should ever overturn or defy the majority will of their State's citizens, which is actually illegal in most states
     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2020
  16. TOG 6

    TOG 6 Well-Known Member

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    Indirect election of the head of government is the norm among western democracies - in fact, NO western democracy chooses its head of government through popular election.
     
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  17. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Not talking state and local talking the United States and they had seen the classical attempts at democracies and the failures. Thus they created one of it not the best government to have ever existed with it's federal republic of states which also guarantied individual rights of the citizens. And as a not the EC is about OUR republic of States and the EC nor the Constitution requires or even stipulates or mentions a vote by the people. You only get to vote for the electors of your state by the good graces of you state legislature. They could revoke it and you would have no constitutional case against them doing so.
     
  18. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Yell it all you want. It doesn't make it more correct. Paul Ryan said "This is the oldest deliberative body in the world. We are the oldest democracy."
    https://www.politifact.com/factchec...yan-claims-us-oldest-democracy-world-he-righ/
     
  19. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    He was talking about the Senate internally and while quaint even the Senate engages in non-democratic process as with super majorities. This is about the Federal Government. When was the last time you voted directly for a President or Vice President or piece of national legislation or national tax policy? When was the last time you voted for some new national federal regulation?

    Article IV, Section 4:
    The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,

    And note it's to the STATES, not the People. We are the United STATES.
     
  20. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    No Federal Constitutional case, no, but except for female suffrage, most voting matters are left up to the States by the Constitution anyway. I think most State Constitutions and/or State Statutes specify how the State's residents are to vote for the Electors.

    The EC was put in for 2 reasons. One was to stop runoff elections, which the Founding Fathers thought might be far more frequent than we have now since they thought we would usually have several candidates, not a binary choice. The other was as a bargain with the Slavehoking States which would have more Electors with fewer people since Slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for all electoral purposes
     
  21. Esdraelon

    Esdraelon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A good start would be having no more votes cast than the state has registered voters. Seems PA has discovered just over two hundred THOUSAND extras.
     
  22. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    Semantic obfuscation. The Constitution does not speak of 'We the States' but "We the people". The idea of that clause was to make sure that no State could be a Monarchy, the FF didn't want hereditary kings and nobilities to confuse all the issues in Congress.

    We are a Federal Republic, no doubt, but we are very definitely and quite thoroughly democratically based.
     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2020
  23. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    Fake News

    https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:content:9887147615

    Obvious and scurrilous lie by Republican Senator Frank Ryan, who should be arrested and impeached for fraud
     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2020
  24. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Civics 101 it speaks of both and no where speaks of Democracy.

    Article IV, Section 4:
    The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
     
  25. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    It doesn't have to. The practices it enjoins make it quite clear that the will of the people are the basis of them all.

    Next you'll be saying that the words of the Constitution mean that the Democratic Party is unConstitutional
     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2020

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