A Quote by George Monbiot
Representative democracy is a remarkably blunt instrument. Hundreds of issues are bundled together at every election, yet the vote tends to swing on just one or two of them.
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The American experiment with representative democracy has been a great success, but we need to realize that it needs to be a genuine representative democracy where ordinary people have a vote, have a voice in choosing the candidates who represent them.
Americans voted for Trump. A lot of people in this country feel the system of representative democracy hasn't worked for them for a long, long time. And those are the issues that this election gives us an unfortunate opportunity to engage with. And engaging instead with the Russia conspiracy takes up that bandwidth.
We have a huge struggle for our sense of what a democracy is. We're not living in reality when we think we have some sort of democracy. We're really on the edge. We have two presidents who lost the popular vote but won the election. This is not working.
When we support or vote for candidates outside the two major political parties we are immediately lectured about wasting our vote or making it easier for the less desirable of the two major candidates to claim victory. These lies are repeated every election and they must be ignored. You never waste your vote if you vote your conscience.
The protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. But increasingly, and especially in the US, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote". Rather than correcting the market failures, the political system was reinforcing them.
But also the constituency determines the vote of the representative. He is not only representative, but participant. Like can onlybe known by like. The reason why he knows about them is, that he is of them; he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of the thing.
There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down the taxes, and in election after election the people vote into power representatives who are as unable as they are unwilling to do anything about it.
The presidential campaign was oriented toward the way we elect the presidency, Electoral College, not the popular vote. The popular vote doesn't matter. This is not a direct democracy. We have a representative republic, and the popular vote doesn't matter and it never has, by design.
And when a few noncitizens vote, those can swing a close election.
Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy.
We have two responsibilities when it comes to an election as citizens. We have the responsibility to vote and then to honor that vote, even if we disagree with it. That doesn't mean that we blindly follow. It just means we can't afford the president to fail.
I advised the Kremlin on election law and created Rock the Vote Russia, later called 'Choose or Lose,' to push democracy-minded youth to vote.
A fraudulent vote is a stolen vote. It steals a vote from the thin air and nullifies the legal and legitimate vote of a tax-paying citizen, whose rights to a fair election shouldn’t be tampered with. Winning an election is important, but winning it honestly is imperative in a Constitutional Republic.
I got involved because I wanted to help inspire more people to get off their butts and register and vote - not just in this election, but in every other election from now on, you know?
I'd rather support the issues I truly believe in than give my vote to parties that court votes at the time of the election. I like to think that my vote strengthens the green foundation stone.
When we talk about Cuban democracy we are referring to participatory democracy which is big difference with representative bourgeois democracy. Our is a democracy in which everything is consulted with the people; it is a democracy in which every aspect and important decision that has an impact in the life and society of the people, is done in consultation.
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