Is the election process in the US democratic? and does it produce well qualified candidates?

Question

I have a paper to do, and I know my stance, but I don't really know where to start.. Help please!

Answer 1

We have historically had mixed results with elections in the USA. Several presidents have been threatened with impeachment, one president resigned his office. Lincoln and Kennedy have been shot and killed while president. Robert Kennedy was killed while running for president.
However, we still have the greatest government in the world. People are fighting to get INTO America, we dont have to fence them in, anybody can leave if they want to. (Altho now, you have to have a passport). I think I would give our country an "A" in spite of some bad mistakes.

Answer 2

Yes we are a democratic nation where we have the power to ensure proper government but we often choose to abdicate that power. The ever increasing influnce of money, especially corporate money and by extension the corporate ownership of the media, is corrupting the process. But corporations have no votes so the power is still ours to exercise. The question is "Will we?"

As George Bernard Shaw said,"Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. " We ultimately deserve the candidate we get, for better or worse.

Answer 3

This may be a starting point.
Well qualified candidates? Hmmm. Those who rob Peter to pay Paul, will always have the support of Paul.

The Life and Death of Democracy




About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new
constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."
"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters
discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."
"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the
beginning of history, has been about 200 years."
"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1 from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage"

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Number of States won by:
Gore: 19
Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by:
Gore: 580,000
Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by:
Gore: 127 million
Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore: 13.2
Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country.
Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in
government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase
of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy,
with some forty percent of the nation's population already
having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million
criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say
goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years. ----------

Answer 4

I do not believe it is how can we have democratic elections if the mainstream media blocks our access to the facts on Candidates or promotes them.
Media heavily determines the outcome of an election so if an election is to be democratic then the media must be too.

This documentary will give you and Idea of how media and elections work
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6737097743434902428&q=outfoxed&total=248&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Another documentary here shows how the voting system is ineficient and depending on opinion not democratic
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4463776866669054201&q=hacking+democracy+duration%3Along&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Answer 5

No and No. In a democracy, the people vote for their leaders and the laws. In the United States, we vote for some of our leaders and some of our laws, but most of them are chosen for us by other people. Some of those people represent us and some don't. We have the illusion and the legal structure of a representative democratic republic. We have the reality of an oligarchy. -yk

Answer 6

Yes it is


As for the second part

John Kerry
Al Gore
Walter Mondale


It does not always produce good candidates. the three names above prove that

Answer 7

No. We live in a republic.