{"id":7803,"date":"2012-01-24T00:08:37","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T23:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7803"},"modified":"2012-01-24T00:08:37","modified_gmt":"2012-01-23T23:08:37","slug":"how-democratic-is-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7803","title":{"rendered":"How democratic is the United States?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On my web site, I explain <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/2010\/currentaffairs.shtml\">the political systems of some 11 countries<\/a> and these pages are very popular. I&#8217;m sometimes asked which nation is more democratic than another and, when I&#8217;ve time, I propose to write something about how to critique a political system.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the questions that I would ask are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How extension is the right to \u00a0vote?<\/li>\n<li>What proportion of those with this right are actually registered to vote?<\/li>\n<li>What proportion of those registered to vote actually do so?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These tests, when applied to the United States (a country often thought of as one of the most democratic in the world), present a disturbing picture.<\/p>\n<p>As explained in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/magazine-16681575\">this story<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There are 50 million American citizens who are not registered to vote<\/li>\n<li>There are 20 million names on registration lists that ought not to be there<\/li>\n<li>Turnout in presidential elections is often below 60% and can fall as low as 51%<\/li>\n<li>Of 172 recognised democracies, the US is ranked 139th in voter participation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On my web site, I explain the political systems of some 11 countries and these pages are very popular. I&#8217;m sometimes asked which nation is more democratic than another and, when I&#8217;ve time, I propose to write something about how to critique a political system. Some of the questions that I would ask are: How [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7803"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7811,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7803\/revisions\/7811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}