Siddarth Kamath Week 10: American Citizens and their Poltical Power
When we think of a democratic society we always imagine the people with the political power. We imagine the vote going to the populous and the citizens having the will of the country. But we forget to remember our past and how we, Americans, have bypassed the system and created an unequal playing ground for political platforms.
The poltical power in 19th century American were with the political machines. These groups of individuals would take unreasonable actions to make sure the general population would vote for a certain politician. This would be by either giving money as a source of illusionment to show the generosity of the political party or more ruthlessly, "buying" the voter's ballot to rig the voting system. Political machines were controlled by some authority under the politician and the loop grew to become a powerful factor in 19th century politics and real life. Many poor people would take the money and vote for whoever the political machine wanted, making competition very difficult for the poorer side of politicians. Just like the proverb "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," the rich politicians got the votes and became successful while the rest were less fortunate.
Another incident with voting happened around the same time in the 19th century dealing with African Americans in the South. African Americans were told to take literacy tests to use their status of education as a reason to deny their vote. Most African Americans right after the Emancipation Proclamation were illiterate and therefore succumbed to these literacy tests. The idea was for Southern Americans to diminish support for the Republicans by decreasing the African American voters. In other words, the Southern Democrats would gain an unfair advantage in the number of votes and would win the election.
Though in the 19th century, American did not qualify for a perfect democracy it is safe to say that our democratic values have increased from that time to now. As the Time mentions, Americans have and will be experiencing rigged voting of some form or another but we can guarantee that the number will decrease over the years. In other words, our system will become lean toward democratic values and the "perfect" political power will be truly given to the American citizens.
Hi Siddarth! The topic of this blog post is quite intriguing because there is still an ongoing debate over Americans’ voting rights; a handful of states have been implementing restrictions on early voting and absentee ballots, which many activists claim have disproportionately negative impacts on voters from minority communities. In the second paragraph, the examination of how unjust voting systems pervaded economic inequality during the 19th century was effective in demonstrating how imperfect America’s democracy truly is. To build on the ideas in that paragraph, you may find it beneficial to include an explanation of how politicians managed to get rid of political machines in order to make the elections more fair. The third paragraph of this blog post is also interesting because of the parallels between it and a currently ongoing issue—as I said earlier, some states in the South are placing restrictions on voting that make it more difficult for Black Americans to participate in elections. This parallel made a smooth transition into the concluding paragraph, which focuses on the progress that America has made in improving its democratic values and ends with an optimistic message about future improvements to America’s democracy. However, this optimism raises the question—will America ever have a truly “perfect” democracy? I believe that our democracy will most likely not reach perfection because there could be multiple meanings of a “perfect” democracy depending on the perspective taken.
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