Letter to the Editor: Our democracy has two failures
Democracies are the only form of government that is based upon the will of the people. A democracy with a majority of civilized people will ensure peace, freedom, liberty, health, prosperity, equality, and fairness for its entire populace.
Contrasting that to the other forms of government like dictatorships, plutocracies and oligarchies, the people have zero say in their governance and must, repeat must conform to dictator’s every wish or else…
The U.S. is a democracy of type constitution-defined democratic republic. We democratically elect our representatives (50% + 1 votes to win). But that isn’t always true and represents a fatal flaw in our Constitution.
Our U.S. Constitution is a wonderful document but contains three major anti-democratic provisions. The first issue is the Senate. Each state gets two Senators independent of the state’s population. Wyoming has ~600,000 people while California has ~39,000,000 people. This violates the equal representation requirement of a democracy. If the Senate were a fair institution, California would have ~78 Senators. And unfortunately, the Senate is the first target for corrupt corporations and the wealthy to buy Senate votes.
The Electoral College selects the US President and is a huge democratic failure. Anything other than electing a president by popular vote is undemocratic. The Constitution even undemocratically states that ‘Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…’ This is the basis of Moore v Harper Supreme Court case. This court could rule that State legislators can pick a president independent of who the people voted for. If the Supremes allow this change, our democracy is basically dead.
The combination of these failures leads to the final major failure. With undemocratically elected presidents (i.e. loses popular vote) and resulting corrupt justices and judges, Congressional districts are gerrymandered such that the legislators pick their voters instead of voters picking legislators.
This is ‘rule by minority’. This is corruption. It doesn’t reflect the will of the majority. And of course, the corruption is coming from the Republican Party. They can’t legitimately win elections so they have to cheat. They gerrymander districts, throw people off voting roles, make it harder to vote (one voting area for many voters), unfair ID requirements, and many other undemocratic tricks.
America is failing because Republicans hate democracy and all the protections and laws that come with it. One telling example: leading cause of children deaths ages 1 – 19 is by guns. A true democratic civil society would never allow this.
Mark Mihevc
Graeagle