fixing democracy
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Fixing Democracy. POLS 125: Political Parties & Elections. One word. What ONE WORD best describes your impression of the presidential candidates?. ?. Word Cloud constructed from the responses people gave to a Pew Research Center poll, January 2012: - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Fixing DemocracyPOLS 125: Political Parties &
Elections
One word
?
What ONE WORD best describes your impression of the
presidential candidates?
Word Cloud constructed from the responses people gave to a Pew Research Center poll, January 2012:
What ONE WORD best describes your impression of... Barack Obama
Word Cloud constructed from the responses people gave to a Pew Research Center poll, March 2012:
What ONE WORD best describes your impression of... Mitt Romney
?
What ONE WORD best describes your impression of the
Democratic and Republican parties?
Words that Democrats use to describe Republicans
Words that Democrats use to describe Republicans
Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, August 2012
Words that Republicans use to describe Democrats
Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, August 2012
What ONE WORD best describes your impression of Congress?
?
Word Cloud constructed from the responses people gave to a Pew Research Center poll in March 2010:
“One word that best describes your impression of Congress"
So we don’t like POLITICAL CANDIDATES, or the PARTIES they represent, or the INSTITITUIONS they manage,
How then do we feel about the democratic ELECTIONS that seek to change those things?
What one word describes your current state of mind?
Throughout Election Day in 2008, NYTimes.com readers submitted the words that best described their moods.
One year later…
What’s Wrong with U.S. Elections?
Can we take these words and combine them into sentences that identify the weaknesses of the U.S. electoral system?
• Candidates• Parties • Institutions• Process
What’s Wrong with U.S. Elections?
Inefficient, unfair election proceduresSystem corrupted by the wealth and greed of special interestsPolarized political partiesOut-of-touch candidatesUninformed and apathetic votersA sensationalist media intent on uncovering scandal
But is any of this new?
William McKinley, 1896
1896
James Blaine, 1884
1860
William Henry Harrison, 1888
Adlai Stevenson, 1892
1876
What’s the message here?
Whatever is wrong with U.S. elections, it is nothing new.Is this a comforting conclusion? Why or why not?