The Pros And Cons Of American Democracy

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If you asked Americans on the street Many Americans are under the false impression that the United States of America is a democracy, when in fact it is not. The word “democracy” is never mentioned once in The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, The Constitution or The Bill of Rights. Both, Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution reads, “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government” and the pledge of allegiance, “”to the republic for which it stands” clearly state the United States as a republic nation. The ancient Greeks are regarded as the founders of Democracy. It is because of them that we indebted for the earliest examples of Democracy. The word itself has Greek …show more content…

The branches of the government are set up to protect against each other to prevent the use of unconstitutional power. The People choose representatives to make policy decisions on their behalf. It is a decentralized system of checks and balances, which is the method of choosing congressmen, senators, and the president. Unlike a democracy, it is not a majority rule. It is widespread which is why electors chosen by the states elect the president. Article II, Section 1, Clause II, specifies how many electors each state is entitled to have. There have been 538 in electors in each presidential election since 1964. The number of electors is equal to the total voting membership of the United States Congress: 435 representatives, 100 senators, and 3 electors from the District of Columbia. Each state gets its number of electors based by its population size. There is a census that starts every ten years where states can either gain or lose number of electors based by their population at that time. In order to win presidency, the presidential candidates must add up elector’s votes in as many states as possible and surpass 270 or just over half of 538 votes. Most presidential candidates try to win electors votes in the bigger states such as Texas, Florida, New York, because they have

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