Are Republics Democratic?

[RyanPsych]

The United States is supposed to be a democracy but is it really? If we live in a country where some citizens' votes count more than others - in other words, in which "one person, one vote" is really not the standard - how can we claim to be a real democratic state? At best we have a limited and imperfect democracy.

It seems that having been set up as a "republic" we have just the sort of government that does not work on the one-person one-vote principle. A recent article in ScienceDaily ("Not all Citizens' Votes Created Equal, and Study Says It Shows in Funding" 5-28-11) points out that many democracies have been set up to water down the power of the vote, denying the idea of equal distribution of voting rights based on the one-person one-vote formula.

Here is just one example: California has 66 times the number of people as Wyoming yet they both have two U.S. senators. Considering the power of the Senate, how is it democracy when states with little populations can block the will of the people in states with large populations? In fact, the Senate was deliberately created to block the popular will (originally the people did not even get to vote for their senators).

ScienceDaily reports that these disproportions become really important when it comes to the distribution of money (and goods and services).
The study looked at long-term (decades) trends in nine different federal-type republics, including the U.S., along with Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Spain and Switzerland.

keep reading on: http://peoplesworld.org/are-republics-democratic/

[SDuderstadt]

1. Sorry...

No sale.

Educate yourself about checks and balances.

[RyanPsych]

3. What do checks and balances have to do with it?

How about two democratically and proportionally elected chambers of congress?

What would you say about the Electoral College?

[SDuderstadt]

5. The Senate is designed the way it is...

to keep the large states from overpowering the small states. That is the check and balance.

Take a civics class.

[damntexdem]

7. Oh, yes, to keep 66 people in California from overpowering 1 in Wyoming.

Face it: the only real checks and balances are the checks drawn on corporate balances that bribe our elected officials into doing the corporations' business.

[BridgeTheGap]

9. Checks and balances apply specifically to the branches of government not to the states. Yes, the

Senate was created as body to balance the power of smaller and larger populated states, the main reason may have been to institute a more pragmatic system of national governance.

[RKP5637]

2. IMO some of the ways we do things are obsolete and need to be retooled for

the 21st century. I have no idea how that would be accomplished anymore with honesty and integrity, but it is clear IMO some of our methodology is obsolete and does not maintain a democracy and in fact works against a democracy.

[OHdem10]

4. Islamic REPUBLIC of IRAN

[CJCRANE]

6. A republic is a form of democracy.

In fact there is probably no pure form of democracy in existence, it is always a combination of different systems in order to provide checks and balance, minority rights etc.

[Igel]

8. The Republic existed before Republicans and Democrats.

It's a form of democracy in that it's representative.

"Pure" democracy, one man/one vote, has to be limited. It sounds nice when there's an issue that you're in the majority on. It's not so good when you're on the 50% minus 1 side.

The limits are in the Constitution, which has onerous requirements fo being changed. They're found in having two chambers in the Congress. One says that states have some rights; the other says that it's the people that have rights. They're found in the distinction between executive and legislative; in having a separate and independent judiciary.

5 people can overrule Congress, if the Constitution (or an interpretation of the Constitution) is on their side. Congress can often, but not entirely, overrule the President. The executive is proscribed from investigating members of Congress.

How would majoritarianism work with a divided government? Would the majority's president overrule Congress?

The problem with having two identical houses to Congress is that there's no check on the other. It means that it's easy for the majority to get its way. So this month 50% + 1 say that gays have rights, blacks can vote, Jews have freedom of religion, and women aren't property. Next month, 50% + 1 reverses this month's majority and decides that Jews should be provided temp housing in Auschwitzian ovens. In other words, you want limits, you want checks and balances, you don't want to live in that most heinous of dictatorships, a majoritarian democracy.