Deep Thoughts: Invisible Dictatorship 3 (why America is a dictatorship cross-dressed as a democracy) - serial essay by Adam Ash

III. YOUR VOTE COUNTS FOR NOTHING MUCH

10. In a democracy, you’re free to vote, but your vote is not democratic

Let’s go on to another way in which democracy is supposed to work for you.

You can vote -- for all sorts of elected representatives: city councilor, mayor, congress person, president. The idea is that these people campaign for your vote, and promise to represent your best interests in the higher councils of the land. Sometimes they even make specific promises, though they’re more often wonderfully vague, and appeal to your “values” instead of committing themselves to actually doing anything tangible and specific for you.

Consequently, most voters send their representatives off to Congress with wistful hope rather than the confidence that they’ll be well represented.

In the year 2000, a majority of people voted for Al Gore to be president, but George W. Bush became president. The will of the majority did not prevail. Our president was not democratically elected. In the end his election came down to a party vote in the Supreme Court, whose benches support the behinds of more Republicans than Democrats, and are in fact appointed by the President. The people appointed by a President voted for one. How democratic is that?

The reason our President is not democratically elected is because the people vote state by state for representatives to an Electoral College, who then vote for the President. So a candidate can win a majority of states, without winning a majority of votes over-all. On three occasions this has resulted in the minority candidate becoming president. This bizarre voting procedure, unique to our “democracy,” is enshrined in our “democratic” Constitution, often said to be the envy of the world.

This same Constitution also guarantees that the highest legislative body in the country, the US Senate, is not democratically elected either. Every state sends two Senators to the Senate. The biggest state is California, with 36m people. The smallest state is Wyoming, with 500,000 people. If you live in Wyoming, your single vote is equal to the votes of 72 Californians.

11. Winner takes all, loser takes zip

Our other elections happen in constituencies all over the country, where people vote for politicians to represent their constituency. The politician who gets the most votes, wins. It’s called the winner-takes-all system. If one party wins in every constituency with 51% of the vote, they get all the representatives, and their opponents none. The winner takes all.

So who represents the other 49% of the people? Nobody. In many democracies, like Italy, Israel and Sweden, this striking discrimination is remedied by a system of proportional representation that ensures everybody is fairly represented according to their percentages of the vote. But not in our “democracy.”

The winner-take-all voting system leads to another undemocratic outcome. It promotes the survival of very few parties. In our country, that big number is two. You have only two ways to vote that counts. You get more shampoos to choose from than parties. Your hair appears to be more important than how you want the country run. It’s as if all the opinions that represent all Americans had to be squeezed into two bottles, Egg Shampoo with Lemon and Egg Shampoo with Aloe.

There is, for example, no African-American party, which would surely exist if we had an Italian, Israeli or Swedish system. Accordingly, after 50 years of assiduous voting, African-Americans find that their issues and problems are consistently ignored by the government. Even when a tragedy like Katrina exposes the great poverty that exists in African-American communities, absolutely nothing is done to redress it. African-Americans are reduced to voting defensively, to ensure that things don’t get worse. They can’t hope for anything better. Meanwhile, if they had the means, or the balls, to form their own party, they could be an important swing vote to prevent the country from spilling over to the right, as is happening now,
Since these undemocratic election procedures are part of our constitution, they’re virtually impossible to change. They’re built-in for all time.

Well might you ask: why do we call America a democracy when it doesn’t work like one in many ways?

We will soon get to investigate hard evidence that goes further. We will show that America not only has a less-than-perfect democracy, but that its “democracy” works more like a dictatorship than a democracy.

But meanwhile we need a little philosophy before we walk any further on this journey. We need to strap on a little cortical body armor to enter a territory riddled with landmines.

TOMORROW: Sing a song of philosophy.