In a real democracy, voting is one way to express one’s point of view. The elected representatives and the policies of our government are supposed to reflect the people's will.
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All rights depend on voting rights, but the current structure of our government, as well as the election process that perpetuates it, is very corrupt and undemocratic in many ways.
There is no national law that gives a legal right to vote, and each state makes its own laws. Often one political party is in charge of the elections and can make it very difficult for people to vote, especially in poor communities.
The two main political parties are supported by large wealthy corporations which demand that candidates make laws to benefit their own particular interests, not the interest of most of the population.
These parties use their power and money to limit the participation of alternative parties and to silence the voices of progressive candidates.
Because of a 250-year-old law that was created to give favor to states that practiced slavery, a candidate can win an election by just winning the vote in certain states, even if they get millions of total votes less than other candidates.
Also, the powerful branch of government, the Senate, is very undemocratic because it limits the number of representatives from states having large population and gives more decision-making power to the representatives of states with smaller populations.
One of the biggest areas of corruption is that the voting is done on machines made by private corporations, and the public is not allowed to look at or monitor the machines to see if they are accurate or fair in counting the votes.
The counting of the votes is usually controlled by a single government official in that state that belongs to the party of one of the candidates.
Our challenge is to counteract this corruption of our country's democracy. Equally important is to fight against our government’s intervention in the other countries' elections.