The "Rigged" System

To Trump, Trump's supporters and Sander's supporters who are complaining about 'the system:'

The system has been this way for a while, it is only now that you have realized that? Or are you only complaining now because you are at a disadvantage because of the system?

But the accusation that the system is rigged brings up another issue: How Democratic is America, really?  

America has never been a true direct democracy. It wasn't in the beginning, but it has gotten closer to that over the years. This, in my opinion, is perfectly understandable. You need at least three things to have a functioning democracy:

1) A population that is willing to compromise and has an understanding of the common good.

2) An electorate that is informed AND knowledgeable. (They need to have background knowledge and a familiarity with context in order to make use of information they are given.)

3) An electorate that is educated to think critically about goals and solutions (not just criticize and complain). To put it simply: properly educated.

The founding fathers of the US knew that they didn't have a population that fit the second and third criteria. That is (at least in part) why they limited the right to vote to landowners. Landowners would be more likely have the means to be informed, knowledgeable and educated. Remember, there were no public schools and very few people could afford the time or money to be educated back then. Also, the only way to spread information was via print distributed by foot or on horseback. The Electoral Collage and a Senate that was not directly elected also helped mitigate the dangers of having an uneducated and uninformed population.

As education and information became more common, the electorate was expanded. (As prejudice against blacks and women became weaker, it expanded along those lines as well.)

The candidates for the general election used to be chosen by the party leaders; it was not a very democratic process at all. That has changed over time as well.

There is still a way to go of course, but I wonder if the environment it right for making those changes. One contrary example is the affect that the internet is having on the electorate.

The internet is really not the World Wide Web that connects people anymore. The algorithms that curate our News Feeds and searches work with the data from our clicking history to give us more of what they think we want to see. The information we get from the internet is selected in a way so as to give us more of what we have already seen, more of what 'we want.'

To see this in action, do a search on a controversial or ambiguous topic on your own computer or device. Then logout, clear history/cookies, go incognito, etc. and do the same search. (Or make it easier on yourself and just find a public computer that you are not logged into.) The results will be different. The same sort of thing is true of your FB Feed. The things you click on and like change what ends up in your top stories feed.

In this way the internet has become more of a divider than a uniter. It puts each of us in our own little echo-chamber. We become less likely to want to compromise and less aware of what a compromise would actually look like because we know so little about those we disagree with. Our body of background knowledge and our understanding of the context of knowledge and information becomes skewed. We think and analyze less of what we take in because there is so much information coming at us so fast and so little of it actually challenges us or call us to think.

I am personally not concerned that the Republican Party may deny Trump the nomination. His popularity has a lot to do with the growing shortcomings of the electorate. He is not reputable, reliable or responsible candidate, and the party should step in to slow (if not stop) him if they have the means to do so. I am also not concerned that the Democratic Party is putting up roadblocks for Sanders. His ideas are not very practical, and beyond that, they will have little support in Washington. That means they will not get implemented, and that will only increase the frustration and divisiveness of American politics.

Those are short term solutions though. In the long run, something needs to be done about the state of the electorate—the mindset and resources of the voters. If the electorate does not have those three things listed above, a democracy (or any government chosen by it) won’t function properly. These things that make people complain about the process being ‘rigged’ are actually ways devised to protect the population from an electorate that is not functional. Of course they can be abused by those in power, but they were designed to keep the general public from abusing itself. They should not be taken lightly and should be allowed to serve their purpose when needed.