Stupidity Watch 1

Why American Democracy Lasted 250 Years ​By Robert Korczynski ​Between odd-year voting for local municipal elections, even-year voting for the House and Senate, and the Electoral College for the presidency, the United States operates with three distinct governing models inherited directly from ancient Greece and Rome. Depending on which office is on the ballot, power is allocated through an ancient property-owner direct assembly, an aristocratic Roman-style representative republic, or a mechanical lottery system that ancient Athenians would instantly recognize as sortition. ​The first tier operates quietly at the local level. Research from the Sightline Institute and the MIT Election Data and Science Lab analyzing more than 25,000 local governments nationwide shows that roughly 60% to 75% of municipalities hold their elections off-cycle, either in odd-numbered years or on separate spring and summer dates. By scheduling municipal, school board, and mayoral elections away from the...

Odd-Year Voting is Classic Greek Democracy By Robert Korczynski In ancient Sparta and Athens democracy only included land-owning male veterans that were citizens of the state, and never included people passing by or temporarily living there, and no women, and no slaves. The amount of the population that fit this criteria was about 13%, and they were the only ones that were allowed to vote. Up until 1820 in the United States and everywhere on the planet, the definition of democracy had always been some version of Greek democracy. America was set up with classic Greek democracy, but in 1820 three American states extended voting rights to poor white men, participating in the slippery slope into universal suffrage on the planet started by the French and the Haitians, but without killing the ruling class. Over the next 100 years the suffragist movement finally achieved universal suffrage in the United States, first with "all persons" to reverse Dred Scott and to include freed blac...