Democracy

    Democracy is the current form of government that the United States has in place. There are various types of democracy, and the US has what is called representative democracy. Representative democracy (also indirect democracy, representative government or psephocracy) is a type of democracy founded on the principle of elected officials representing a group of people, as opposed to direct democracy, where the people vote on political issues “directly,” instead of through an elected official. Despite democracy being considered by many as “the best system, we have,” there are still many flaws that come with this form of government.

    An example of one of the flaws of democracy in our country is gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries, and gerrymandering is apparently completely legal to do in the US. There are various ways to gerrymander, like by “cracking,” which involves spreading voters of a particular type among many districts in order to deny them sufficient votes in any particular district or “packing,” where the goal is to concentrate as many voters of one type into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts. Utilizing these methods almost always ensures that a candidate from either side (because both parties engage in gerrymandering) wins the election. Gerrymandering is only one of many problems, however.

    Despite there being many flaws with democracy, I truly do believe that it is the best system we have. It may not be perfect, but we’re always trying to perfect it as best as we can. One thing about democracy that I like though, is that it is nearly impossible to execute radical changes, which was a problem with countries like France, who had an absolute monarchy, and the founding fathers took that into consideration, which is why they wanted America to have a system that shared power among the different branches and they wanted to prevent one branch from being more powerful than another. Representative democracy was the solution to that dilemma and we’ve stuck with it ever since it was implemented into our country.