Perhaps the most important principle of American democracy is that each citizen, regardless of the citizen’s education, income, religion, race, or gender, holds the same weight that any other citizen would.\u00a0 This is a very simple principle of American democracy that is often taken for granted.\u00a0 Both the Pearson textbook as well as Robert Dahl’s piece stress this point heavily, and view it as proof of the success of American democracy.<\/p>\n
The trouble with this view, however, is that it overlooks a significant complication that has been the source of controversy for the United States in recent memory.\u00a0 Ever since the Supreme Court ruling of\u00a0Citizen’s United vs. F.E.C<\/em>, campaign finance has turned into a debacle, with corporations and wealthy Americans donating ever larger sums of money to the candidates that best represent their interests at the local and national level.\u00a0 One study<\/a> has found that 91% of the time, the candidate with the most campaign donations win the election that they are competing in.\u00a0 Thus, we can see that the candidate who has the most money, and therefore the most exposure, is more likely to win than the candidate with the best policy proposals.\u00a0 This not only sets up an unequal election system, but it also poses a grave threat to policies that may be in the best interest for Americans.\u00a0 For example, in 2017, the fossil fuel industry spent over 125,000,000<\/a> in lobbying.\u00a0 If a US congressperson is receiving a substantial amount of funding from the fossil fuel industry, it is safe to assume that he or she will likely vote for policies that will favor the oil and gas companies.\u00a0 And with the imminence of climate change, policies that support the fossil fuel industry will be detrimental to most Americans, to say the least.\u00a0 Obviously, both the unfairness of elections and the ultimate influence that corporations have on our elected officials is a major cause for concern.<\/p>\n The frightening development of candidates with the wealthiest donors winning the lion’s share of elections across the country raises a number of key questions. If all citizens in the United States are equal, why should a wealthy few be able to decide who the representatives for the vast majority of American citizens are?\u00a0 Why should one candidate have an such an unreasonably unfair advantage over another candidate?\u00a0 If we are subject to such a one-sided system, is the system of government that we, as Americans, are currently living under really a democracy?<\/p>\n Ultimately, if the United States is to preserve its system, it must abolish the private funding of elections and replace it with a publicly funded system.\u00a0 This way, the people of the United States can ensure that its elections are fair and that what is best for the nation will come before what is best for corporations.\u00a0 \u00a0Admittedly, this solution will not end government corruption or be the final reform that the US should make to its governmental system.\u00a0 It is, however, a compelling solution that would do the US a lot of good.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perhaps the most important principle of American democracy is that each citizen, regardless of the citizen’s education, income, religion, race, or gender, holds the same weight that any other citizen would.\u00a0 This is a very simple principle of American democracy that is often taken for granted.\u00a0 Both the Pearson textbook …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3775,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40541,40530,68425],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9am-section","category-our-unique-experiment","category-spring-2018","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3775"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}