Horse 219 - Why American "Democracy" isn't

The USA prides itself on being a shining example of democracy when in actual fact nothing could be further from the truth. The American version of "democracy" is one of the most fundamentally flawed things in the world, and few people actually realise just how incidious it really is.

1. Non-Compusory Voting - Americans have the right not to vote or rather, only those people who actually care do. What this means is that the president will only be elected by about 30% of the population at best. Under 1 in 3 people voted for the president assuming an abrnomally high turn-out of 60% of the voting public. 40% of the population can't be bothered to vote so that's hardly the voice of the people is it?

2. The Electoral College System - The way the presidency race works, is that you vote for the president, and those votes are tallied for your state. The state then finds out who wins the presidency for that state and sends out a number of "college votes". The number of college votes is based on the importance of population of the state. What this means in reality is that the president only needs to win the popular vote in 7 key states or 8% of the population (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Maryland & New Jersey). This means to say that the other 43 states are never catered for as they never matter.

3. The Cabinet - Having assumed that 40% didn't vote and that 43 states didn't vote for the president, this president then gets the privilege of appointing the executive of the nation, ie. the cabinet. None of these people are elected persons, not one of them has to go under any public scrutiny at all. The president is literally free to appoint anyone he feels like, and since he is most likely to appoint the people who supported his campaign, effectively very rich people can bribe their way into positions of extreme power.

To summarise:
Of the 260,000,000 US Citizens
only 195,000,000 are old enough to vote
only 117,000,000 actually bother
only 20,800,000 people's votes count in reality
only 10,400,000 actually voted for the president who's votes count (4% of the total population)and not one single person other than the president decide who goes in the cabinet.

That's democracy?