The traditional definition of democracy is "rule by the people." That means that the citizens remain active in the political process and vote in at local and national elections. Based on this definition, it would be easy to make the assumption that Americans vote more than other democracies, as international affairs tends to designate the United States as the leading democratic country.
Founding Fathers
The founding fathers took the political and cultural experiences of the European empires and built a democracy that would be free of all previous mistakes, such as centralized government or the people's lack of political involvement. They created a transparent system where the activities of both the lower house, and the upper house can be monitored and in which the media is free to inform the public about national and international events.
It is surprising therefore to realize that even though Europe went through much more political and physical devastation than the U.S., European citizens tend to be more involved in the political process than the Americans. In the past 40 years more than 70% of the Europeans voted while only about 50% of the voting-age American population voted at the presidential elections. While there are many reasons why American voter turnout is traditionally lower than European, decreasing living standards, and disapproval of the country's foreign policy are on top of the list. Thus, this year's real estate and loan crisis together with the low approval rate of the War in Iraq made citizens vote.
It is interesting to observe that the American voter turnout on presidential elections has been stuck around 50% with a few exceptions of the 1960's elections with 63.1% and the 1964 election with 61.9%. 50% means that only every second voting-age person actually votes leaving about 110 million Americans without participation in the decision making of selecting the new president of their own country.
The Importance of Elections
Even if the government is created in a careful way to make prevent a centralized government, the citizen's participation is still a crucial element of the democratic process. Not only prevents the government to make the most important decision about the country on its own, but it keeps the citizens involved in their nation's affairs.
Therefore, the key elements to be a good citizen are:
- follow local, regional and national politics
- follow international affairs and American foreign policy;
- vote at all local, regional and national elections.
The 2008 presidential election brought the voters back to political consciousness. To decide between Senator Obama and Senator McCain, 62.5% of the American voting-age voted not only electing the first African American to the White House, but waking up American political consciousness from its sleep.
 |
