Luis Carrillo
American Government
17 April 2015
Dr. Blumenfeld
Voter turnouts
American Democracy is actually not a true democracy but rather a representative
democracy as evidenced by the key factor that the U.S votes on people who represent their
ideology and thus elect someone else to determine legalization. This defining aspect has
benefits as the U.S was established on an essence of government not interfering in personal
lifestyles. Through time, this evolved in to a system where naturally government does
affect everyday life. However, the principle of people not having a requirement to
participate in government also carried over. This now leads to a predicament as turnout for
local elections runs lower than 10%. The turnout rate is higher for large-scale elections
because of the amount of publicity that they garner due to the President being the highest
electable position and having substantial power that can overrule local electorates. What
this boils down to, is that the populace is too concerned with their own day-to-day lives
that they cannot invest time in to researching the local elections and thus opt to not
participate. The consequences of this can be seen with the high disapproval ratings that end
up occurring despite the elections being held legitimately because the citizens who do vote
are a minority that can afford to take a day to attend the election and have formed well
developed opinions concerning who they would like elected; this minority tends to be the
target of those who run because of these factors hence why in large-scale elections the
