Reason Why Elections Are Less DemocraticThe reason why elections are less democratic is because some people say thatmoney is taking away from our well known democracy, but in other instances wehave the greatest democracy compared to other countries of our vast magnitude. Throughout the nineteenth century campaigns were ran and geared toward the party. Instead of voting for a person you were voting for an individual party eitherfederalist or democratic-republican. Today, in the twentieth century, we votefor the candidate and their true character or what they have to offer us. Torun a successful campaign now-a-days you need money, a good pollster, wellorganized debate, direct mail, and positive publicity.
Money is the mother’s milk of politics if you don’t have you aren’t going togo any where. Campaign money is received part from federal and part fromprivate donors in a presidential election, but congressional elections are allprivate donors. Most of the money for a congressional leader comes fromindividual donors, but they also have political action committees (interestgroups) that raise money for their campaign. Presidential candidates also raisemoney from individual donors because the federal government will match themdollar for dollar. Reform has been successful in the fact that it minimizessome fat cat buying his or her own pet politician, but it also takes away fromthe parties, provides an advantage to wealthy challengers, gives advantages tocandidates with high ideological appeal, penalizes those who start late in thecampaign, and helps incumbents and hurts challengers. The Democratic Party has more registered voters so logically the democratsshould win.
The reasons why they don’t always win is because those who aredemocrats are not firmly stuck with their party like republicans are,republicans also do better with the independent voters, and more republicansactually come out and vote than democrats. Realigning elections are also known as critical elections. It happens when amajor party suffers such a defeat (because of a major issue that comes about andseparates the party) that it disappears or it is the shifting of voters betweenmajor parties. There has been three major realigning elections: 1860, 1896,and 1932.
In 1860 it was the slavery issue, in 1896 it dealt with economicissues, and in 1932 it occurred because of an economic depression. Some peoplesay we are getting ready to have one because of the effects of the New Deal, butothers say it won’t happen again because party labels have lost their meaning. For any given party to win an election you must retain your old voters, butalways gain new ones. The people usually targeted are young voters coming ofage, immigrants becoming citizens, and blacks that are now eligible to vote. Policy is rarely effected by an election in our government compared to othercountries such as Britain.
The reason why is that there are so many offices tobe filled that it is to hard for everyone to be united under one policy. In1860 a party came to power that was opposed to slavery, in 1980 a party came topower that reversed the direction of policy in the last half-century, and partyplatforms either pass laws through the House of Reps. or in the Senate.History
