The Undemocratic Democracy Or The Role Of Dictatorship

The UN consists of 193 nations, with 123 of these using the political system labelled democracy. The Oxford English Dictionary describes democracy as “a political system that allows the citizens to participate in political decision‐making, or to elect representatives to government bodies”. Politicians are keen to encourage democratic systems, as they say, it allows anyone the right to stand for what they believe in and the right to vote for ideas which match their own, in this way the views of the citizens being respected and represented in any election result. This is simply false. Democracy can have the undesired effect of leaving vast numbers of people unrepresented and in some cases completely at odds with the majority decision of an election. Just accept the result! You are a sore loser! These are remarks commonly used by the winning side towards those complaining about the result of a polarising argument, no matter how close the result. When a government is elected by a minority of voters or the policies of that government evolve in contrary to what a large minority of the population wants, passions will run very high and people will feel ignored. Democracy, taken at its base level, means that every citizen is equal and has a voice. When this appears to either not matter to the elected representatives or be completely ignored, then democracy becomes undemocratic.

On 23rd June 2016, 33.5 million citizens in the UK cast their vote on a referendum to decide whether the UK should stay a member of the European Union or leave and become an independent nation. This produced a result of 52% to 48% in favour of leaving the European Union. There were only 1.27 million votes between the two sides with those who wanted to remain made up a huge proportion of the population. The government are pressing ahead with leave negotiations, ignoring calls for a compromise position given the closeness of the result, and even threatening to leave the EU without a deal in place, which if agreed would make the transition of leaving smoother for businesses and citizens. This is not respecting the views of the 48% of the voters who wished to stay within the EU. If only 2% of those who voted (671,546 people), or roughly the population of Glasgow, had cast their vote differently, the UK would still be a member of the European Union.

The UK is being led by in the withdrawal negotiations by Prime Minister Theresa May, who was a strong advocate for staying within the European Union during the referendum. Her conflict of interests needing to negotiate a path at odds to her personal feelings may influence her to maintain strong political links with the European Union, links which the country has narrowly decided to severe. Accepting the result of a close vote which goes against your own opinions can be difficult enough on a personal basis, but when a country’s decision is ignored, democracy can be described as dead. Scotland voted 62% to remain a member of the European Union but is being forced to leave because of currently being a member of another union, the United Kingdom. This action may eventually lead to another Scottish Independence referendum and ultimately the breakup of the union, which was voted against only in 2014 by 55% of the voting population. In so many ways, democracy is undemocratic.

Politics is a dirty game, and both the leave and remain campaigns mislead and misinformed the public in favour of their own ideas. The leave campaign pushed negative propaganda about the bureaucracy and cost of Europe to the UK citizen and the fears of many about immigration. The remain side did not campaign on the perceived benefits of the European Union but focused on negativity and how the world would stop turning if the UK voted to leave the EU. Too many people, this was irrelevant. Much of the information provided by both sides during the campaign has since proved inaccurate and untrue, and voters were led by enthusiastic speakers and vitriolic rhetoric to believe a pack of lies on both sides. Democracy cannot be democratic if those who are aiming to persuade the citizens to their point of view are lying.

Healthy democracy requires the participation of all citizens to ensure fairness and representation. Currently, younger people can feel discriminated against in politics. They can feel that their voice is not heard, and if it is heard, it is not listened to. Historically, two-thirds of people ages 65 and older vote in elections compared to less than half of adults under age 45. The political parties tend to aim favourable policies towards these older age groups, side-lining the needs and requirements of the younger generations, reinforcing the impression that young people are unimportant. In the EU referendum 73% of ages 18-24 voted to stay within the EU with 66% of people ages 65 and older voting to leave, but because there were more older voters, the young vote was overwhelmed. In 30 years, the country will still be experiencing the consequences of such a leave vote, impacting those who did not vote for it and did not want it whilst those who did vote for it will be long gone. The younger generations views were silenced, and democracy failed for many.

The USA prides itself on its democracy and holds itself up as the gold standard, but its political system is also riddled with injustice. In the process of electing the President of the United States, the Electoral College System is used. Based on its total number of representatives in Congress, each US State gets a certain number of electors, there being a total of 538. Each elector casts one vote following the general election. For example, California has 55 electoral votes with a population of almost 40 million compared to Alaska which has 3 electoral votes and a population of 700,000. The candidate who first exceeds half the electoral votes (270) is declared the winner. To decide these electoral votes, each state uses the first-past-the-post voting system, whereby the candidate who receives the most votes wins the election, and all other votes are disregarded. The winning candidate for each state is guaranteed those electoral college votes. Many states are so traditional in their views that they are considered safe states and uncontested by candidates, for example, the state of Maine which has been Democratic since 1980. Democracy dies in these states, as engagement and turn out for elections is very low as people don’t think their vote counts as the result is a foregone conclusion. This leads to candidates focusing their efforts and policies towards those states which will yield the greatest number of electoral college votes. In 2016, the Electoral College System elected Donal Trump the President by 77 electoral votes over Hillary Clinton, but this has thrown up the bizarre circumstance that he is also running a country in which he got 3 million fewer votes from its citizens than Hillary Clinton. Of the 129 million people who voted for Trump or Clinton, the majority, 52%, have had their democracy smashed and are living in an undemocratic country ruled by a President most citizens did not vote for. That cannot be democratic.

Evidently, many aspects of democratic political systems are undemocratic. There are election results which were gained with lies and fake news, there are people who feel disenfranchised and not listened to, and there are leaders in power who are majority unwanted. Communism, Monarchy and Dictatorship are all derided by democratic nations as being terrible political systems, bad for the population, but democracy needs to get its act together and prove itself democratic for all and not just for the few.