Not A Democracy
What is a democracy? Many definitions will feature a reference to its etymology, to its roots in classical Athens, to the ideal of popular sovereignty. But meaning is in use, not in etymology.
France is a democracy. So is the United States, and Indonesia, and India. China and Saudi Arabia are not democracies.
Sometimes people, particularly in America, will say “this is not a democracy” or even “this is not a real democracy” in response to non-democratic events. These include an election being stolen, a candidate winning an election legally based on factors other than being the most popular and supported candidate among the voting population, or decisions being made by unelected officials. Such cases are real departures from the ideal of democracy and examples of the people’s will not determining the actions of the government. There are important ways in which other countries - Australia, Israel - are realer democracies than the United States. But by the same standard, the United States is far realer of a democracy than China or Saudi Arabia.
The electoral college is an intentionally designed anti-democratic element of the US political system. But it is not uncorrelated with popular democratic voting, and has actually become legally more democratic over time. The 2000 Presidential Election was awarded to a candidate who by several accounts won the electoral college by winning Florida despite the fact that more Floridians cast their votes for his opponent. This was a betrayal of democracy, and one of the least democratic presidential elections in the history of country. His victory was assisted by popularly elected officials in Florida and Supreme Court justices appointed by popularly elected presidents. Stealing the election in this way was far more democratic than a military coup or vote tampering. Abraham Lincoln won his first presidential election with 39.8% of the popular vote and his name was not allowed on the ballot in most of the southern states.
Lyndon Johnson bought votes in his first two Senate races (and likely more). In the first, he failed to buy more than his opponent. In the second, he succeeded in buying enough and preventing the interference from being exposed. In both, he campaigned extremely hard to win the votes of people through persuasion because in 1940’s Texas you could only buy so many votes. Texas was and is a democracy. Rigging elections is hard work and can often only succeed with a baseline level of popular support. Sometimes votes are invented, sometimes voters are coerced, sometimes the numbers themselves are made up. All these methods make a democracy less democratic, but by differing amounts.
Iran is more democratic than Saudi Arabia, but less democratic than the United States. The Guardian Council is completely unelected and has ultimate authority over the country. Sometimes the Guardian Council determines the results of presidential elections through fraud, other times by banning candidates from opposition parties. But seemingly the votes of the people do at least sometimes determine the president, even if among limited candidates. This is better than nothing. Iran’s presidents are often unpopular (though this is difficult to measure). Putin wins every election in Russia and is willing to use any method of fraud and intimidation of the opposition to do so, but also appears to consistently be the most popular candidate. Putin stepped down from the presidency as was constitutionally required in 2008 and won the position back in 2012. Many unelected kings also have broad popular support, and sometimes unpopular kings are replaced with a more popular family member. Monarchies are not democracies.
At the higher levels, it becomes hard to say what is more democratic. If the United States abolished the electoral college, got rid of the senate, and reformed the apportionment of house districts, it would be much more democratic. But by some arguments it would be even more democratic if it elected its legislature based on proportional elections using approval voting. But some prefer ranked choice to approval voting. Representatives ought to be elected frequently, but frequent elections might favor highly politically engaged voters unrepresentative of the general population. Strong presidential systems may be less democratic than parliamentary systems. The ideal minimum voting age is difficult to determine to make a system ideally democratic. It might be argued that no system can be truly democratic if the constitution and system of government and electoral systems themselves are not subject to regular voter choice.
There is no single standard of democracy to measure against. Translating the voice of the people into a government is not a simple and rational process, some information will always be lost. But the signal ought never to be discarded because it is noisy.
In the original democracy in Athens, citizens were only a small part of the population of the city. But many of the positions of government were not chosen by elections at all, but by a lottery system where every citizen was a candidate. Athens was very different from any democracy that exists today, but it was also a democracy. In the future, there may be other democracies not yet imagined.