9 ms·

The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

126 points by kushti 10y ago

bpodgursky 10y ago
The US is also the longest established continuously democratic government... so clearly there is also something going right, historically at least. Ranking Brazilian government above the US is a joke.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- venomsnake 10y ago
  You probably have 5 or 6 completely different USG models so far - from the very limited initially to the current situation where states are mostly afterthought and it is driven by the imperial bureaucracy in Washington. Each vastly bigger than the previous.
- aylons 10y ago
  This is not a government rank, it is an elections ranking. From your comment history, I can see you have an axe to grind in Brazilian politics. Please keep it to relevant discussions.
  - bpodgursky 10y ago
    It's from the first sentence of the article. Brazil is fair game.
    - aylons 10y ago
      "They all outranked the United States in a comparison of election standards and procedures conducted by the Electoral Integrity Project" The sentence is specific about election process, not all the government. If you want to discredit the research, do it properly.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
People aren't willing to make their politicians accountable. It's always the other person's fault, the other side's extremes; never their own. You've got Clinton running an email server exposed to the world as secretary of state, ignoring warnings about it and then lying about it. Yet she will probably end up getting elected because it's all a "Republican conspiracy". Meanwhile, Trump is calling a judge's ruling into question about his if not fraudulent, largely worthless "university" due to their race. Then there's Bernie who refuses to acknowledge any extremes of socialism. Oh, yes, and then there's the Lt. Gov. from my state Tweeting a statement like this after the worst mass shooting in US history. It's either sick or incredibly tone deaf: "A man reaps what he sows." [0] Knowing his stances on Muslims and the LGBT community, it's not clear what he's referring to. This is a sickness and the modern tech industry is directly responsible. We are creating echo chambers. There is endemic corruption and misinformation at all levels. Will we do something? We used to have big dreams, even if the reality on the ground didn't live up to them. Now we just Tweet. http://www.chron.com/news/article/Texas-Lt-Governor-Dan-Patrick-tweets-reap-what-8076147.php http://www.chron.com/news/article/Texas-Lt-Governor-Dan-Patr...
- yequalsx 10y ago
  The only controversial thing in your post is the last paragraph. This part will be the least talked about and thus demonstrate your overall point.
- threatofrain 10y ago
  People enjoy echo chambers and they like intuitive morality -- where their intuitions naturally judge themselves moral. People have the prerogative to associate with whomever they want in real life and on Facebook, and people have the prerogative to engage in mutual communications with those they wish. That means people have the prerogative to create their own bubbles, which exists as much online as it does offline. This is the product of the sum of free choices, not the people who work on the iPhone or Instagram. The tech industry simply made it possible for people to communicate cheaply and easily, but technology workers do not own the tech industry, and they do not own the media industry. The technology community is numerically tiny and disorganized as a voting bloc. They don't even have a union, or a professional association like the APA or AMA, which are known for their lobbying power and organization. And most importantly, they are not owners. They do not own the handful of American media empires. It is not their prerogative to select which talking heads will show up to which distribution channel. That is the prerogative of Rupert Murdoch and friends. So when is there going to be the American Technology Association to build consensus and look for channels of influence?
themartorana 10y ago
Gerrymandering has outrageous results [0] and voter suppression of minorities is right out of a novel [1]. It's so screwed up that votes almost don't matter, depending on who last classified what voting district you're in. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-is-actually-what-america-would-look-like-without-gerrymandering/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-... [1] http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-voter-id-study/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-vo...
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Gerrymandering is completely overblown as a problem. Proof: the 2016 Presidential primaries.
  - psychometry 10y ago
    Your "proof" that gerrymandering isn't a problem in our electoral system is an event outside our electoral system? Try again.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Would you mind expanding the thought a bit? Many states have closed primaries (so participating in one primary precludes participating in others) and the delegate allocation rules are pretty complicated. Lots of delegates are awarded at the state level, where Gerrymandering won't have much impact.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      Please see my reply to "nitwit005". Basically, we're doing a terrible job electing people in all our races, but gerrymandering only affects US House races. Therefore, even if we completely fixed gerrymandering, it's not going to have much effect.
  - nitwit005 10y ago
    The congressional districts are what get gerrymandered. They're completely irrelevant to the Democrats or Republicans picking their presidential candidates.
droithomme 10y ago
I am not sure the term elections accurately describes what goes on. I don't want to make this political, but the candidate I voted for, and which I know many voted for, in the 2012 election, received 0 votes in my district.
ScottBurson 10y ago
This doesn't even mention the very troubling questions that have been raised about the security of the electronic voting machines that some states are using [0]. [0] https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/ https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/
H0n3sty 10y ago
I'm surprised this post hasn't been flagged as too political yet.
NautilusWave 10y ago
The US is not a democracy, it wasn't even founded as a democracy. You'll find pockets of it in certain state and local governments, but the US is a federal republic. Given the historical restrictions on who could vote and participate in government and more modern corporate influence, it's always been an oligarchy in practice. This is probably a problem intrinsic to the lack of democracy on a federal level.

126 points by kushti 10y ago

The US is also the longest established continuously democratic government... so clearly there is also something going right, historically at least. Ranking Brazilian government above the US is a joke.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
venomsnake 10y ago
You probably have 5 or 6 completely different USG models so far - from the very limited initially to the current situation where states are mostly afterthought and it is driven by the imperial bureaucracy in Washington. Each vastly bigger than the previous.
aylons 10y ago
This is not a government rank, it is an elections ranking. From your comment history, I can see you have an axe to grind in Brazilian politics. Please keep it to relevant discussions.
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  It's from the first sentence of the article. Brazil is fair game.
  - aylons 10y ago
    "They all outranked the United States in a comparison of election standards and procedures conducted by the Electoral Integrity Project" The sentence is specific about election process, not all the government. If you want to discredit the research, do it properly.

aaron-lebo 10y ago

People aren't willing to make their politicians accountable. It's always the other person's fault, the other side's extremes; never their own. You've got Clinton running an email server exposed to the world as secretary of state, ignoring warnings about it and then lying about it. Yet she will probably end up getting elected because it's all a "Republican conspiracy". Meanwhile, Trump is calling a judge's ruling into question about his if not fraudulent, largely worthless "university" due to their race. Then there's Bernie who refuses to acknowledge any extremes of socialism. Oh, yes, and then there's the Lt. Gov. from my state Tweeting a statement like this after the worst mass shooting in US history. It's either sick or incredibly tone deaf: "A man reaps what he sows." [0] Knowing his stances on Muslims and the LGBT community, it's not clear what he's referring to. This is a sickness and the modern tech industry is directly responsible. We are creating echo chambers. There is endemic corruption and misinformation at all levels. Will we do something? We used to have big dreams, even if the reality on the ground didn't live up to them. Now we just Tweet. http://www.chron.com/news/article/Texas-Lt-Governor-Dan-Patrick-tweets-reap-what-8076147.php http://www.chron.com/news/article/Texas-Lt-Governor-Dan-Patr...

yequalsx 10y ago
The only controversial thing in your post is the last paragraph. This part will be the least talked about and thus demonstrate your overall point.
threatofrain 10y ago
People enjoy echo chambers and they like intuitive morality -- where their intuitions naturally judge themselves moral. People have the prerogative to associate with whomever they want in real life and on Facebook, and people have the prerogative to engage in mutual communications with those they wish. That means people have the prerogative to create their own bubbles, which exists as much online as it does offline. This is the product of the sum of free choices, not the people who work on the iPhone or Instagram. The tech industry simply made it possible for people to communicate cheaply and easily, but technology workers do not own the tech industry, and they do not own the media industry. The technology community is numerically tiny and disorganized as a voting bloc. They don't even have a union, or a professional association like the APA or AMA, which are known for their lobbying power and organization. And most importantly, they are not owners. They do not own the handful of American media empires. It is not their prerogative to select which talking heads will show up to which distribution channel. That is the prerogative of Rupert Murdoch and friends. So when is there going to be the American Technology Association to build consensus and look for channels of influence?

themartorana 10y ago

Gerrymandering has outrageous results [0] and voter suppression of minorities is right out of a novel [1]. It's so screwed up that votes almost don't matter, depending on who last classified what voting district you're in. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-is-actually-what-america-would-look-like-without-gerrymandering/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-... [1] http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-voter-id-study/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-vo...

Grishnakh 10y ago
Gerrymandering is completely overblown as a problem. Proof: the 2016 Presidential primaries.
- psychometry 10y ago
  Your "proof" that gerrymandering isn't a problem in our electoral system is an event outside our electoral system? Try again.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Would you mind expanding the thought a bit? Many states have closed primaries (so participating in one primary precludes participating in others) and the delegate allocation rules are pretty complicated. Lots of delegates are awarded at the state level, where Gerrymandering won't have much impact.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Please see my reply to "nitwit005". Basically, we're doing a terrible job electing people in all our races, but gerrymandering only affects US House races. Therefore, even if we completely fixed gerrymandering, it's not going to have much effect.
- nitwit005 10y ago
  The congressional districts are what get gerrymandered. They're completely irrelevant to the Democrats or Republicans picking their presidential candidates.

droithomme 10y ago

I am not sure the term elections accurately describes what goes on. I don't want to make this political, but the candidate I voted for, and which I know many voted for, in the 2012 election, received 0 votes in my district.

ScottBurson 10y ago

This doesn't even mention the very troubling questions that have been raised about the security of the electronic voting machines that some states are using [0]. [0] https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/ https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/

H0n3sty 10y ago

I'm surprised this post hasn't been flagged as too political yet.

NautilusWave 10y ago

The US is not a democracy, it wasn't even founded as a democracy. You'll find pockets of it in certain state and local governments, but the US is a federal republic. Given the historical restrictions on who could vote and participate in government and more modern corporate influence, it's always been an oligarchy in practice. This is probably a problem intrinsic to the lack of democracy on a federal level.