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> accountable to American lawmakers, and thus voters If lawmakers were accountable to voters, voters would on occasion get what they want.
by willcipriano 3y ago
> accountable to American lawmakers, and thus voters
If lawmakers were accountable to voters, voters would on occasion get what they want.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoDo you believe the US is not a democracy? I think we have serious problems, and we need to fight to ensure they don't get worse, but I also think voters continue to wield significant power.
- willcipriano 3y ago> I also think voters continue to wield significant power. I disagree. Have you seen this famous study? "Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people? Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all." "The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
- mrguyorama 3y agoAnd yet, millions of people got exactly what they wanted when Roe v Wade was overturned, and had explicitly voted and pushed for for decades.