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With the US elections coming up I thought I’d comment on why I believe the US is not a democracy.

• Voting is not compulsory. How can people have their say if they’re not require to?
• Suffrage is not universal. There’s a lot of contraversy over this but essentially not everyone over 18 is allowed to vote
  
• People of the lower socio-economic groups are discouraged from voting. Elections on a Tuesday (hard to get time off work), polling booths in poorer areas not having enough capacity and a lack of booths in poorer areas all contribute to active discouragement of voting
• Issues over voting machines “rigging” and losing votes
• Lack of independent observers. With all of the above going on you’d think that the US would allow observers but it seems not

If you’re wondering why I see all of this as an issue well you don’t have to look much further than Zimbabwe where Mugabi has been rigging the elections for as long as people can remember. Using many of the same tacticts.

How would I fix things? Well the best way to do it would be to update the archaic version of democracy that the US employs with something newer. However, that’s a big ask. The quickest fixes would be:

• Allow the observers in and take on reccomendations. This is the quickest and best fix I can think of. I don’t see it happening, Australia offered last presidential elections and was refused
• Make voting compulsory, suffrage universal and hold the elections on the weekend. That’s right. People will actually be able to have their say.  It’s a big ask though to enact these changes so quickly

If you’re from the US and find any of this offensive. Please don’t. The rest of the world depends on you as the biggest nation to lead the way.  We worry more for your elections than for our own. Please make sure we don’t have to.