5 Ways U.S. Democracy Is More Rigged Than You Think | Cracked.com
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None of you are naive or think government works exactly the way you learned it in elementary school. We all know there are backroom deals and bribes and blackmail and probably, like, orgies and shit behind the scenes.
But what many people don’t realize is that the most unfair and outright broken parts of the system we have in the USA aren’t a result of people breaking the law. No, the craziest, most overtly bullshit practices are perfectly legal .
#5. Your Congressional Representative Has Already Been Chosen for You
... the party in power simply finds all of the most loyal voters on the map and draws the district around them. That’s how we wind up with the complete madness that is Illinois District 4:
#4. The Two Controlling Parties Actively Sabotage Their Competition
the current two parties in the USA are also in charge of setting the rules for ballot access for third parties. As such, these rules are roughly as fair as a cage match between a toddler with particularly large ears and a hungry Mike Tyson. Take Carl Romanelli of Pennsylvania. He wanted to run for a congressional seat as a member of the Green Party. Under the rules enforced by the major parties, Republicans and Democrats needed 2,000 signatures to attain ballot access and be allowed into the election. Romanelli, on the other hand, was cheerfully informed he would need slightly more. How slightly? Try 67,000. Shockingly, he didn’t make it.
#3. The Government Can Kill Any Court Case by Claiming It’s a State Secret
The privilege’s high profile recognition hails from a McCarthy-era lawsuit in 1953, when a B-29 crashed and killed the crew on board. Three widows tried to sue the government over their deaths, but the case was thrown out when the government stated that revealing some of the evidence would be damaging to national security and invoked the privilege. Fifty years later, researchers uncovered said “dangerous” evidence and found out that the only thing it would have damaged was the government’s own ass. They were just covering up for their own negligence that ultimately caused the crash.
#2. Who Decides if the Supreme Court Has a Conflict of Interest? They Do
#1. The Minority Party Can Keep Anything from Getting Done