Even those with mental defects?
What I mean is, what about those who are too far gone?
I’m asking about those who can’t be cured, or even those who can be functional.
Teddy Kennedy seems to have trouble getting elected …
Er, no trouble that is …
In today’s society, there is no chance that any individual’s vote will be the deciding vote. Any election where the final vote totals are within a fraction of a percent of each other will in the end be decided by a judge, rather than by a count of the votes.
On the original post, that doesn’t work at all for reasons already noted. What does work is abolishing “winner takes all” for state electoral college votes, and making them proportional. (And you’d probably want to multiply the votes by 100, to get some granularity for smaller states/college votes).
So, California currently has 52 college votes. Let’s multiply by 100, for 5200. Candidate A. gets 40% of the California vote, candidate B. gets 50%, candidate C 10%. A gets 2080 votes from California, B 2600, and C gets 520.
North Dakota currently has 3, X 100 = 300. In the scenario listed above, A gets 120 votes from Dakota, B gets 150, C gets 30.
The states’ current relative voting strengths are preserved, and you greatly reduce the possibility of a candidate winning the EC without winning the popular vote. (It can still happen in freak scenarios.) You also eliminate the effective disenfranchisement of Republicans in strongly Democratic states, and vice versa.
What do you mean by “works”, williambaskerville? The system we have now works after a fashion. It does select a president. The “One State, One Vote” plan would select a president as well. The same with the proportional plan you suggest. It seems to me not a matter of what works but of chosing what works best and “best” is in the eye of the beholder. I think the best system is the one that makes everyone equal. Voters are unequal now, would be more unequal following the plan of the OP, and would be less unequal under a proportional system. Less unequal but still unequal. Some would still have more voting power than others because of where they lived and those of us that don’t reside in a state or the federal district would still have no vote at all.
Oh and California currently has 55 electoral votes.
Considering we’ve only had an Electoral Fiasco ala 2000 three times in the 214 years we’ve used the electoral college I do not think it is a big issue. And one of those three times we cannot even be sure of (there is no way we know for sure whether or not Jackson won the popular vote in 1824, the mechanisms for recording popular votes were not well in place at that time.)
We live in a Federalist country. From my short time posting and reading on this board I can see that most of you here are the paranoid, small-government crazy types. That being the case I’d think if you investigated the matter further you would see that a federalist country is exactly the type of nation you prefer.
When James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote up the Federalist Papers they explained how their proposed system of government would work. Madison argued eloquently that Government must be divided and set against itself. He accepted that such a government would not be the most efficient government possible, but it would be the most deliberate. Which ultimately means the government cannot act swiftly, but instead must slowly gain consensus anytime a decision is made. This makes it much more likely that the government, if controlled by a majority faction that suddenly rises up, will not be able to stamp out the liberties of its citizens quickly. Hopefully any attempts to do so would ultimately take far too long and the majority faction would fall from power.
To insure that government was divided and set against itself Madison proposed the government be divided several ways.
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Horizontally between Judicial, Executive, and Legislative powers.
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Vertically between Federal and State powers.
This system had several advantages. One primary advantage was it made sure that the national government would not be too powerful. Another important advantage was it recognized the facts of the time. People were loyal to their State Governments and would not feel comfortable joining a union in which local affairs were not largely and mostly decided by local leaders.
This system of government is ultimately preferable to one in which the central government is all powerful. In our system of government the vast majority of day-to-day functionings of government are decided by local and State leaders. Even after the arguments over State’s Rights, even after the Civil War, the vast majority of governmental functions that affect YOU every day are decided by State and Local leaders. This in my opinion is the most preferable system.
Who should better decide how taxes collected inside Virginia be disbursed and managed, who should better decide how education is set up in Spotsylvania County? I think the people of Virginia, through their leaders in the State legislature and the Governor’s mansion, should decide how said taxes are spent. I think the people of Spotslyvania county should decide how education is managed and ran, with oversight from the State.
Now of course we are not just a loose confederation of State’s. We are a Union of States and that is why our State’s contribute tax dollars upwards into the federal government. That is why laws passed by Congress supercede any laws passed by an individual state. An important thing to look at though, is that Congress is limited in what issues it can pass laws in respect to. Due to these limitations, while the State’s must surrender to Congress on some matters, on others the State’s have sole say of what happens.
It’s a balancing act. And one that protects us from both overzealous national leaders and overzealous local leaders. One that protects us from someone in Washington managing something they have no understanding of (like local school systems) and one that protects us from local leaders managing something they have no understanding/authority over (like the U.S. Armed Forces.)
The Electoral College is part of this federalism. There is a reason popular vote overall doesn’t mean anything to the Electoral College. George Bush didn’t win a national election for President. Neither did Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Ronnie Reagan, et al. Precisely because no national election is held for President. Fifty state elections and one district election are held for President. And the winner of the combination that gives the most electoral votes takes office.
This is a system that balances the idea of State’s having power (Federalism) and the fact that some State’s are larger than others, contribute more money, more soldiers et cetra, and those State’s are represented with more electoral votes.
It is not perfect, but it is the best system we have. It is better than a system that gives far too much power to the state’s (1 vote for all system) and it is far superior to a system that ignores State’s - the basis of our Federal union- altogether.
We don’t live in a Democracy so your arguments are mostly moot. We live in a Federal Republic and one of the greatest guarnators of our liberty against government encroachment is the vertical division of power, which would be eroded away if the EC was abolished.
Anyways, since 38 state’s would have to approve a plan to remove the electoral college, unless we get about 20 more high population state’s it is never going to happen.
So if I don’t want the job, I’ll be sure and do really lousy in it.
In a simple plurality, a candidate will ignore the regional needs of population centers that are small. An individual Iowa vote will count the same as one in California, but politicians will cater to California’s regional preferences to the absolute exclusion of Iowa’s, to the extent that the two conflict.
The EC still permits this to some degree, but it minimizes it. California’s EC votes are less than proportionate to its percentage of the overall population. Iowa’s EC votes are disproportionately larger. Abolishing the EC in favor of a simple plurailty will absolutely increase the likelihood of candidates focusing on larger population centers; there is no incentive to appeal to every individual voter. Limited resources and all that. Those large population centers would become more valuable than they currently are.
The reason a candidate can win while getting less votes than another is the fact that people don’t have an equal vote. Citizens aren’t denied an equal vote once or twice a century. They have never had an equal vote. Never in 216 years.
Have you ever read the Federalist? Clearly you aren’t familiar with Federalist #68 or you wouldn’t have made a claim so foolish in this context:
"The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States."
It seems you missed Federalist #39 as well. We are not just a union of states. We are also a union of people. We are not just a federation but also a nation:
"The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national."
Indeed there is a reason, because that’s now things were set up. The existance of a status quo does nothing to justify the status quo.
It’s the ONLY system we have. How about producing an argument to support your conclusion that it’s better than a popular vote?
Ignorant people keep repeating this but it doesn’t make it so. Open a dictionary and you can see for yourself that there are definitions of “democracy” that do fit the United States.
Now here’s a promising lead. Can you follow through? How would liberty be endangered if the EC was abolished?
This is an outdated assumption. I myself have thought up a plan to move to a popular vote without amending the Constitution by getting the states to agree to an election which pledges their Electors to the most popular candidate nationwide instead of the most popular candidate in each state. Since the eleven most populous states control a majority of the electoral votes if just those states agree then the most popular candidate nationwide will win every time and there’s nothing the “small” states can do about it.
If the preferences are exclusive then certainly candidates will favor the more popular choice. How is this a problem? If we don’t want popular government then why bother holding elections at all? But of course, only some preferences are in conflict so on most matters candidates can find a common ground via compromise or log-rolling and give all of their supporters some, if not all, of what they want. Politics is the art of compromise.
Then there is the fact that the interests of Iowa are not the same as the interests of Iowans. Iowans, like the residents of all the states, disagree amongst themselves. With a popular vote individuals would be free to take their vote beyond the borders of the state in search of likeminded people to join in support of a candidate. They aren’t ever forced to watch their share of the electoral power be given to a person they voted against.
I think we can do better than a simple plurality election but I don’t agree with your assessment of its flaws. A popular vote, however counted, does give politicians an incentive to appeal to every individual voter. The incentive is: their vote is worthwhile because it can help or hurt the candidate. This is lacking in our current system where there are so many worthless votes that largescale vote trading schemes such as the “Nadertraders” can occur.
Resources are a factor in advertising but not in policy. A candidate can more easily appeal to rural voters via campaign promises than to urban voters because cities are more diverse. If I may be permitted an exaggeration, finding a lever to move the rural monoculture is much simpler than finding policies to address the various wants and needs of the multitude of urban cultures. But lets not forget that a popular vote is a vote of people not of places. Geography isn’t a factor. Demographics are. Places are only important in how they affect voter preferences.
Again, so fucking what? People aren’t endowed with the right of an equal vote. The President was not even designed to be elected by the people, but by State legislatures. The President was from the very beginning supposed to be chosen by the STATES not the people, simple as that.
No, I’m a huge flaming asshole that talks about things he’s never read.
Wait, I’m not, I have read every single one of the Federalist papers. What is amazing is you’ve actually quoted part of them that has little to nothing to do with what we are talking about.
All that quote says is that in the process of election the Presidency won’t just fall to whomever is the most popular. No, but instead it must be a man who fits the sensibilities of a majority of the states.
In fact your quoted article even seems to support my argument, and not an argument against the EC.
I never said that the nation was exclusively Federalist in nature. In a perfect Federalism two levels of government would rule over the same territory. But one level of government would have exlusive powers that do not interact with or contradict with the other powers of the other level of government. Obviously you can see why, like so many “purisms” in governmental theory such a system has never existed.
No one here ever denied we were a nation. But we are a Federal nation, and the people who designed this country made our system for electing a president decidedly federal in nature.
Of course one reason it is this way is because it was set up this way. Here’s a present: The Captain Obvious Jackass Award. Have fun with it. I never said the only justification for the EC was “that is the way it is” so sod off on that point, it was not one I was making.
I already have. Federalism = division of powers. Division of powers = weaker government. Weaker government = more liberties. That’s the theory we’ve based our government on. Some nations have different ideas that have worked out fine (France, the UK) but our people set our nation up this way. And I tend to think that over the past 214 years we have been the most consistently free. Our government did not halt the publication of an article in a magazine that told in painstaking detail how to build nuclear bombs. Our government allowed investigative journalists to expose extreme corruption and bring about the downfall of a President.
France has laws that ban certain types of movies about French colonial wars. In France and the Uk the central government can at any time disband the local governments (obviously it won’t happen due to practical concerns.) But local governments don’t have the absolute right to exist like our state governments do. And state government is the key to making sure local interests and local regards get respected within their localities.
What is the point in a Republic or a Democracy if your opinions are held dear in your region but completely ignored in the nation as a whole? You ultimately become a slave to interests of people thousands of miles away.
Democracy is two things. Big “D” democracy is a “true democracy” type government ala New England town councils or the Greek city states.
Little “D” democracy is a decision making process. That is why we are a democratic Republic but not a Democracy. These are how most political scientists define things. A dictionary isn’t an authoritative sourcebook on idealistic terms, the dictionary just tries to boil things down into their commmon usage.
We would have a national leader that doesn’t give any regard to entire regions of the country. That is not national. Since we are a “nation” you must recognize there is more to a nation than population. Nations that have not done so have met with disastrous consequences.
The small states would immediately pass an amendment destroying that plan, that I can guarantee. And since they have the more than 38 votes required to do so, there is nothing the large state’s could do about that.
Your idea is insanely against democracy though. It is basically saying the people in a state could vote for someone, but then their votes are “changed” because a candidate is more popular in another region.
Let’s say in 1968 for whatever reason all the major parties implode. We had your voting system in place.
Let’s say George Wallace was extremely popular in the South. Popular enough that he got 25,000,000 popular votes. Other candidates tended to play themselves off against one another, so that while the vast majority of the nation was against George Wallace, he had the highest number of popular votes. So state’s that certainly didn’t vote for him: New York, California, even probably Texas, have to give their electoral votes to him eventhough their people did not vote for him.
That’s insanity and goes against everything this nation stands for. That is basically saying that people do not get to decide how their vote is distributed, they just get a vote. A vote which is mostly meaningless since an idiotic and completely arbitrary bill makes all the decisions.
Now I’ll admit the electoral college isn’t perfect, but I haven’t seen any suggestions that are preferable so far. Yours is probably the worst I’ve seen (other than the lottery idea, which at least was more morally acceptable to me than your monstronsity.)
Furthermore your plan (from now on we’ll just refer to it as The Monstrosity) is not even beneficial for the eleven large states. For one, which states are the eleven biggest, which number control the most electoral votes, et cetra changes every census.
For example take a look at the 2000 election results:
Al Gore - 50,996,116
George Bush - 50,456,169
Top Eleven State Results:
California:
Al Gore - 5,721,195
George Bush - 4,437,557
Monstrosity Effect - No votes changed.
Texas:
Al Gore - 2,429,329
George Bush - 3,796,850
Monstrosity Effect - 1,367,522 votes would effectively be “changed” in order to give Al Gore this state’s electoral votes (since Al Gore won the overall popular vote.)
New York:
Al Gore - 3,767,609
George Bush - 2,235,776
Monstrosity Effect - None
Florida:
Al Gore - 2,907,451
George Bush - 2,909,176
Monstrosity Effect - 1726 votes “changed” to give Al Gore this state. Negligible though, with recount fiasco et cetra.
Pennsylvania:
Al Gore - 2,465,412
George Bush - 2,264,309
Monstrosity Effect - None
Illinois:
Al Gore - 2,588,884
George Bush - 2,019,256
Monstrosity Effect - None
Ohio:
Al Gore - 2,117,741
George Bush - 2,294,167
Monstrosity Effect - 176,427 votes changed
Michigan:
Al Gore - 2,141,721
George Bush - 1,947,100
Monstrosity Effect - None
Georgia:
Al Gore - 1,110,755
George Bush - 1,416,085
Monstrosity Effect - 305,331 votes changed
North Carolina:
Al Gore - 1,236,721
George Bush - 1,607,238
Monstrosity Effect - 370,518 votes changed
New Jersey:
Al Gore - 1,747,445
George Bush - 1,253,791
Monstrosity Effect - none
Overall Monstrosity Effect - 2,221,524 votes changed.
Wow, that’s really worth it isn’t it? Keeping Bush out of office is worth so much to you, that you would change 2.2 million peoples votes?
LOL, let’s just throw any pretense at democratic decision making out right now, obviously you have.
It’s not a problem per se. There are arguments to be made for a simple plurality. There are pros and cons to any approach. One of the pros for the EC is that it helps to ensure that regional interests are not completely disregarded for smaller states. It’s the same principle that gives each state 2 Senators–this whole “union of states” concept that says we’re part of a greater whole, but we won’t cede our regional identities and needs completely. I prefer this approach, though I understand that reasonable people can disagree. It is a value call that says one benefit is greater than another, in this instance, IMO anyway. There’s no definitive right or wrong.
I don’t see how regional interests can be divorced from this equation. And there are indeed limited resources–limited campaign resources, limited Federal dollars, limited any resource you can think of. Those resources will naturally be doled out in a way that has the greatest possible chance of getting someone elected. There’s a Darwinian purity to this concept that I believe is inarguable. And to the extent limited resoucres force a candidate to make hard choices, those choices will be made in favor of the largest population centers. I don’t know how it could be any other way.
I don’t think the Electoral College system EVER gave much power to the small states it’s supposed to benefit. THe argument has always been that “no candidate would bother campaigning in Wyoming or Hawaii without the Electoral College,” but you know what? No candidate bothers campaigning seriously in those states NOW! Wyoming is a sparsely populated state that always goes Republican, and Hawaii is a small state that almost always goes Democrat. So, the Democrats never bother to campaign in Wyoming and the Republicans never bother to campaign in Hawaii. Worse, since the Dems know they can take Hawaii for granted and the GOP knows it can take Wyoming for granted, those states are even neglected by the candidates from the parties they’re loyal to!
And this year, I expect we’ll see Kerry and Bush ignoring even more states than usual. Both will spend huge amounts of time in Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania, while ignoring the states that are either too small or too likely to vote the other way. John Kerry probably won’t set foot in most Western and Southern states (I wouldn’t, if I were him) and Bush will completely ignore smaller states (and D.C., of course) that usually go Democratic.
So… how exactly would the small states be worse off if we had direct voting?
The only state’s that matter are swing states, large or small. That’s why states like West Virginia and Delaware are getting lots of political ads and visitations.
In the 2000 election about 105 million votes were counted for president. Eleven million of those in California.
The bottom 26 states cast a total of about 20 million. So under the one state-one vote rule, a candidate could have won with only 10 million–and an absolute majority in those 26 states.
Smaller states are presently overweighted in the electoral college.
I disagree. In American democracy, the scum floats to the top.
I submit that those who seek power are most likely to abuse it. I have no evidence of this other than my own 30-some years worth of observing human nature. But in American democracy power goes to those who seek it by running for office.
I like Tuckerfan’s idea because power goes to those who do not seek it, and because a random sample is a more representative sample of the people than a sample taken from the class of people who seek power. But it’ll never happen.
As I have already been forced to point out once before, the existence of a status quo doesn’t justify the status quo so no, it’s not as simple as that. I think people should be equal. The Founding Fathers disagreed but they are long dead and most Americans today do agree with me. I’m sorry that you do not but am grateful at least that you are honest about it. I’m afraid I can’t prove to people like you that the Electoral College should be abandoned so I won’t try. I’ll try to limit myself to just pointing out your errors. The first of which was that the President was never designed to be elected by state legislatures. That method was considered and rejected. Instead the Constitution leaves to individual states how they will select their Electors.
What we are talking about here is your reference to the Federalist with the claim that it “explained how their proposed system of government would work.” The only part of the Federalist that I’m aware of that relates to the mode of electing the president is #68 titled “The Mode of Electing the President”. Does that article sound like an explanation of how the mode of electing presidents actually does work? No, it doesn’t. In fact it is so far removed from today’s reality that it provokes amusement. That’s why it was silly of you to make that claim in this context.
True. But you implied it with “We are a Union of States and that is why our State’s contribute tax dollars upwards into the federal government.” Which statement, is, I believe, incorrect. I am unaware that the states do pay money to the central government but I do know for a fact that the opposite occurs. The central government is empowered to directly taxes the citizenry. Gaining this power was the ostensible reason for holding the federal convention in the first place.
This is a good one. Equality equals slavery. Yep, that’s what you kept hearing the slaves mutter in the dark of the night. “Please God, please don’t make me EQUAL!!!” :rolleyes:
The term “democracy” means many things. The only one of those that I am aware of that was signified by a capital “D” was in use back in the early 19th century when America had one party rule. The sole party was refered to as “the Democracy”. And no, you wouldn’t find that reference in a dictionary. They don’t list all possible meanings but all the meanings they do list obviously are possible.
A “nation” is a population. That’s where the word comes from though it is now identified with the countries the populations have formed. The Palastinians don’t have a country but they are the Palastinian Nation. Same with the Kurdish Nation or the Cherokee Nation. They are strictly populations. So yes, a leader selected by the people as a whole would be a national leader.
“38 votes”? What do you mean? Given that no one has ever been able to propose let alone ratify an amendment to alter the mode of selecting the President since 1804 I doubt the “small” states could manage it. On every poll I’ve seen on the question most Americans would prefer to abolish the EC.
No. My plan removes the direct connection between the individual votes of the residents of a state from the electoral votes of a state. This is not undemocratic because it is done in service of democracy. Residents of a state are asked to give up direct local control of electoral votes in order to give every American an equal vote. No individual votes would be “changed”. Instead they are just counted in a more equitable fashion.
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The President most certainly was originally intended to be elected not by direct election. That is why the Electoral College was created and why in the beginning the vast majority of state’s chose electors via State Legislatures. That is what I meant to say.
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I never said the Federalist Papers describe in painstaking detail how the President is elected. To do so would be superfluous, the Federalist papers were commentary on the proposed Constitution, so people reading them would know to look to that Constitution for the precise facts pertaining to the actual text of the Constitution.
That is why the Federalist papers only talk about why they arranged the EC the way they did, not how it is arranged. You seem to be not realizing the dual meanings my phrase could have had. When I said Madison explained how it would “work” I was saying he was explaining how it would “work” in terms of how it was the correct/best means devised. Not the actual mechanics of it, because again, for him to document that would be superfluous.
We can go back and forth with me using sentences that can be interpreted in more than one way (as most sentences can) you calling them errors, and smugly correcting them. I don’t think it has much to do with the actual debate, so I won’t be engaging is such behavior anymore.
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When I said State’s contribute taxes upwards I was talking about the taxes that residents of a state pay to the federal government. I was not talking about State’s as a governmental entity in that context, but in the dual meaning of a state - a geographic reason with X number of people.
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Your reference to equality = slavery, et cetra is a non sequitur and not worth answering directly.
To clarify my point though:
Your mentioning the Palestinians was actually quite a good example of why a direct election for President is not preferable.
The Palestinians have inherent problems with Israel for various reasons, some of them the fault of the Palestinians and some of them the fault of the Israelis.
However I think all of us can agree that the Israelis in general have had the bad habit of making Palestinians second class citizens in their own country. The Palestinians are a large group of people with a certain idea as to how a country should be ran. The Jewish population in Israel is quite different from the Palestinians and they have their own ideas as to how a country should be ran.
However, the Israelis have all the power of government, so Palestinian interests are ultimately ignored. When you marginalize a large segment of the population you are inviting chaos.
When the South even thought it was being slowly marginalized by an ever growing majority, it seceded and 600,000+ Americans died. That is why in our system of government local interests are given their proper regard.
It stretches all the way back to England. Peasants felt fealty to their local lord, not the king. The King didn’t know squat about their individual concerns, the local lord did.
If the King didn’t give any regard to their region at all, the problem became even more exarcerbated, the people would grow to be solely loyal to the local lord and completely ignore the King.
As long as we have a Federal UNION OF STATES FORMING OUR NATION, we must realize that those state’s must be given power. If they are just powerless regions then we do not have local government. Local government is the keystone of democracy. If local interests and local policies have NO BEARING on the President (which is what will happen if we go direct popular vote) we are destroying a keystone of our federalism. Federalism is extremely important to our liberty, and I find it dangerous that you do not recognize this.
I do agree most Americans would want the Electoral College abolished. However most Americans do not get to decide. When it comes to Constitutional Amendments national legislators and State Legislators make the decisions. And these politicians know exactly why the EC is preferable for small states, and it is those people that will keep it around. The national legislators from small states and local legislators in small states will never support an amendment to destroy the EC. And they would have the power to support an amendment to destroy your crazy Monstrosity plan.
They might not have popular support in doing so, but these politicians know what is in their state’s interests and I think they would be able to convey that to the electorate.
As I said, and you cannot hide from this: In your system during the 2000 election Texas would have to give electoral votes to a man the overwhelming majority of Texans did not support.
You are basically trading an unfortunate situation (the fact that not everyone can have an equal vote while maintaining the extremely important local interests/federalism) for an abominable situation. A situation where the minority is “force” changed into the majority simply because the majority is the majority.
Your system may give people equal votes but their vote would be meaningless. I wouldn’t even vote under such a system, I’d in fact probably grab a gun and join my nearest militia group, because I would be giving up on government at that point.
In your system there really isn’t even a need to vote for a particular candidate. People can just submit their votes, completely blank, and we’ll let a popularity poll instead decide on how the votes should be apportioned.
Also, I’m sorry but you are wrong - just because something is a status quo IS A GOOD REASON FOR KEEPING IT THE STATUS QUO.
An intelligent, reasonable man will recognize this basic and absolute maxim: Societal change is only worthwhile when the positive benefits of the change are greater than the negative impact inherent with any major societal change.
Your insane, and quite simply undemocratic and abominable ideas are not done “in service of democracy” they are done in service of centralization and monopolization of power.
We do NOT live in a democracy because our nation is not governed under this idea:
“The Majority Rules.”
So stop trying to say we live in a democracy when we most decidedly DO NOT. I don’t care what definitions you can pull out, every political science text I’ve ever read refers to democracy as 1) a form of government in which the majority rules and makes all decisions via a democratic decision making process, or 2) exclusively a process and not a form of government.
Of course some texts recognize “modified” democracies but they are labelled as different types of government and are not considered “pure democracies.” Arguing semantics is just a good way to hide the facts.
All you are doing is trying to distort the true meaning of democracy to fit any government that allows participation of its citizens.