Nothing about the government of the United States can be described as a democracy. In fact, the founders specifically stated that democracy does not work, thus, outspokenly avoided the same. Anyone calling our government a democracy is clearly ignorant. We have a republican form of governance or a constitutional representative government.
Every definition of "republican form of governance" involves some level of democracy. It's not "direct democracy", but it is "representative democracy".
In the "good old days" there were some offices where the people voted for state representatives who in turn selected federal representatives, but even in these cases there was some role for citizen voters to play in who represented them.
Anyone who says that the US is a republic and not a democracy doesn't really understand what the word "republic" means. If you want to completely eliminate democracy from our governance system then you are a true Rightist who wants us to go back to a monarchy or similar.
Of course the reality is that we are neither a direct democracy nor a republican representative democracy. For some time we have been an oligarchy ruling over state fiefdoms. So niggling over what type of democracy we have is beside the point.
Nothing about the government of the United States can be described as a democracy. In fact, the founders specifically stated that democracy does not work, thus, outspokenly avoided the same. Anyone calling our government a democracy is clearly ignorant. We have a republican form of governance or a constitutional representative government.
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My preference is to call it a Constitutional Republic.
Ahhh but what the founders feared about a democracy has actually come about. The founders made no provision to impede the literal purchase of riff raff votes.
It was the riff raff of Athens that killed democracy. It is the riff raff of the American City States that have been bought with money and the false promises of equality. The riff raff votes allow control of the City States, that in turn allows control of the states that control the nation