{"id":203,"date":"2004-11-02T00:34:29","date_gmt":"2004-11-02T04:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2004\/11\/02\/voting-only-the-beginning\/"},"modified":"2004-11-02T00:34:29","modified_gmt":"2004-11-02T04:34:29","slug":"voting-only-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2004\/11\/voting-only-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Voting… only the beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The problem with democracy in America today is that we equate it
\nwith elections, when elections are really just the beginning of the
\ndemocratic process. As Howard Dean writes<\/a> today, “On
\nan A – F scale, voting gets a ‘D’. It is the bare minimum required to
\nkeep our democracy alive.” Yet, Americans treat democracy as a sporting
\nevent that, like the other Greek legacy,
\nthe Olympics, come every four years.\n<\/p>\n

This exclusive focus on electoral politics as the locus of democracy
\nis wrong. I’m afraid that also includes Dean’s claim that vibrant
\ndemocracy requires “ordinary Americans… to run for office,” or at
\nleast contribute to those campaigns. All of this is true, of course,
\nbut democracy is more than just elections and horse races. Democracy happens when we care enough about our polity to
\nremain involved even after the last vote has been counted. Democracy is
\nabout reading the local newspaper and calling your city council or
\nstate representative to weigh in on issues that affect you. Democracy
\nmeans taking the time to find out how the issues do <\/i>affect you.\n<\/p>\n

Merely holding elections in Afghanistan or Iraq does not suddenly
\nturn those societies into democratic ones. Neither country will have
\ndemocracy until their citizens feel ownership of their governments and
\nare brazen enough to hold them accountable. But then, who are we
\nAmericans to expect that of Afghanis and Iraqis when so few of us
\nexercise that power on election day, never mind the rest of the year?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The problem with democracy in America today is that we equate it with elections, when elections are really just the beginning of the democratic process. As Howard Dean writes today, “On an A – F scale, voting gets a ‘D’. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}