
Visualizing the State of Democracy, by Country - jonbaer
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/state-of-democracy-by-country/
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ebg13
It's an interesting visualization, but, to reuse a phrase that I heard here
recently, these scores are a Ouija board based on entirely arbitrary choices
made by an entirely arbitrary group of people.

The US has not met the alleged criteria for Full Democracy or even Flawed
Democracy within the bounds of my living memory.

None of our elections are fair because of:

\- extreme gerrymandering

\- rampant voter suppression

\- first-past-the-post decisionmaking that entrenches two faces of a
neoliberal corporatocracy distinct only in their identity politics but not
significantly in their economic or foreign policies

\- laws that prevent or obstruct ever investigating plausibly fraudulent
election outcomes in favor of announcing results expediently

\- media conglomerate kingmaking

\- perpetually fatally flawed vote casting mechanisms that regularly and
repeatedly flip, invalidate, and discard votes, often without any kind of
oversight or potential for review (e.g. a paper trail)

\- voter fatigue because this shit just keeps happening over and over

\- repeatedly discarding mailed-in votes just because and then not making
voting days a mandated holiday

\- and a million other things that I'm not even thinking of

On top of that our executive branch has zero transparency whatsoever, and many
of our highest positions of power go to people who are there only because they
kiss the ring, including people currently who have literally no merits other
than being related. We even have a justice department memo now saying that the
Whitehouse is exempt from Federal Anti-Nepotism laws.

Also the questions are just complete rubbish, from treating "confidence" as a
valid proxy for democracy to believing that some random schmoe's answer to "On
average, other people X" means fuck all.

~~~
burfog
You missed a few, but not a million other things.

You missed the voter fraud. There are some ingenious and horrifying methods
described here: [https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-
vot...](https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-
with-mail-in-ballots/)

You missed the fact that non-citizens in California have given the state an
unfair representation in the US House of Representatives. This one is
particularly bad, since the state has an incentive to help people violate the
law.

You missed the fact that voters don't even have to identify themselves
properly in many states. India and Mexico can manage this, but here it became
a political issue. Trust in democracy is eroded because there is no possible
way to even tell if ID fraud is occurring.

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burfog
Let's call that a "Flawed Visualization".

I always start with a quick check, comparing the USA with a few specific
European countries. I can see that the USA got ranked below the UK, below
Sweden, and below Germany. OK, we can disregard this data. Another quick check
is to look at the USA by year. If the rating suddenly dropped in 2016, when
the people got what they wanted despite heavy opposition from the powerful
elite, then the rating is junk.

~~~
colejohnson66
Sure, Trump had opposition from rich people, but make no mistake: the
_conservative_ elite _wanted_ a right-wing candidate

~~~
burfog
What conservative elite? Are there any?

If you mean the republican party leadership, they wanted Jeb! Or maybe, it
could have been Rubio or Kasich. They definitely did not want Cruz or Trump.
They kept fighting against the people's choice even after he got in office.
Romney is still fighting.

