Nothing like watching Fox News and being told about some péché mortale done by the "Democratic" party. Or the reverse on MSNBC, that is the "Republican" party is bad. Problem is that BOTH parties are pretty much the same thing, which is why they need those "Hot button", "culture wars" issues to differentiate themselves the same way Pepsi does from Coke.
Bad news: it's the big donors who call the shots otherwise Bernie Sanders would be well into his Second Term by now (there's a post simmering on why Sanders would have been more popular than most people think, but the short form is that he represents what was historically a red state and was popular with a focus group of Fox News viewers!).
Big money needs to be removed from US politics as one of the top reforms. Although that gives Tucker Carlson something to act surprised about when a Google consultant works to install an FTC head.
Anyway, the elections are not free and fair on a secret ballot by any stretch of the imagination in the US.
The US needs to start practicing what it spend a good portion of the 20th Century telling other countries to do while pretending they were pratising what they were preaching. Here's this from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
Article 21
- Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
- Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
- The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
See also:
This is pretty good too:
