Making America Grate
New Zealand Listener|November 24 - 30 2018

The weird ways the US runs elections and airlines leave plenty of room for greater greatness.

Joanne Black
Making America Grate

For a country that talks a big game about democracy, the US is not very good at it. Nowhere near as good as it is at, say, baseball. It is very good at baseball. Elections? Not so much.

Most importantly, it is not particularly strong on the fundamental democratic concept of one person, one vote. It sounds simple and, to be fair, when a voter is white the system works pretty well. However, when voters are not white, the one person, one vote concept remains great in principle but becomes hazy in practice.

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