In the modern era, America is FAR from a democracy...

This is probably one of the hardest things to actually write. I have to rely on information from the Mises Institute to make a point. Anyone reading my past work kind of realize that I probably read WAAAAY too much even when it's with people I disagree with.

Anyway, the point is simple: America was never a democracy. America was founded on the principle of apartheid and slavery and never let go of these two issues. Sure, it evolved and changed into the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex, but at its core, America enslaved the poor to create a rich.

In regards to voting, this became a problem. What happens when you have a voting system that only caters to the rich as we do? Magically, people vote less. And America's voting system being so rigged, it's only gotten worse. What runs through my mind is the fact that authors in the past have discussed this dynamic.

“Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.”

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole

-Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production

As Ryan put at Zerohedge the myth of the will of the public is a lie we have trained ourselves to believe for the past 40+ years.

A mere cast vote tells us very little. Nor does the "will of the people" assertion take into account the fact that extremely few voters are involved in choosing the candidates that compete in the general election. As The New York Times pointed out this year, only 9 percent of Americans (14 percent of eligible voters) voted for either Clinton or Trump in the primary process.

In fact, if we look at the history of American presidential elections, we find that, not only does the victor fail to achieve a majority, but he or she often can't even get a majority of votes from those who cast a vote.

For instance, the 1984 election was the largest supposed blowout of the past 40 years. In that case, the victor — Ronald Reagan — won 58 percent of the votes cast (in the popular vote). That is, among those who chose a candidate, 58 percent of them voted for Reagan.

Really look at the numbers on the graph here folks... 82 million people did NOT vote for Reagan or Mondale.

However, if we look at Reagan's 54 million votes in context of the full voting-age population, we find that Reagan only obtained the approval of 31 percent of eligible voters. A plurality of eligible voters — 47 percent — did not note for either Reagan or Mondale in that contest, while 69 percent of eligible voters declined to vote for Reagan at all.

In 2016, 88 million Americans did not vote. So Clinton got a blowback worse than Mondale in the 1980 election.

The numbers are even less impressive when we look at the behavior of all voting-age Americans. In 1992, for example, Clinton won votes from only 24 percent of the voting-age population. 76 percent opted to not vote for Clinton.

In other elections, the numbers were lower:

Other presidential contests show even less support for the victor. Indeed, for the 1992, 1996, and 2000 presidential races, the eventual victor did not even win a majority of votes cast. In 1992, Bill Clinton was declared president with only 43 percent of votes cast. In 1996, Clinton won re-election with only 49 percent of votes cast. In 2000, George W. Bush won with slightly under 48 percent of votes cast. Although he lost the election, Al Gore won the most votes with slightly over 48 percent of votes.

And to be fair to Obama, he won with a high margin as a progressive candidate:

In 2012, the winner, Barack Obama, managed to win a majority of votes cast with a nearly 53 percent margin. However, Obama won votes from only 28 percent of the voting age population, meaning 72 percent of voting-age Americans did not vote for him.

Read the article and watch the graphs. Our will was taken by the corporate coup a long time ago and our demands for healthcare, education, and better paying jobs is being heard on deaf ears.

The minute that millions become engaged to uproot this undemocratic system, we can begin to see change. But we've allowed these roots or over 400 years. By destroying precolonial socialism and working on enslaving Africans we've only lived with the products of these choices in our past.

At the root, we need a democracy. What we have is an oligarchy.