How Democratic is America

If one is talking about a “true” democracy than America is not one. True democracies are hard to achieve and in my opinion even the Athenians never achieved one. America though it is not a “true” democracy does have a working democratic system.  This working democratic system succeeds in fulfilling some democratic beliefs and fails in fulfilling others. Some of the failures in fulfilling those beliefs cannot be fixed because of practicality. Other can and should be fixed.  Our government for the most part is voted upon which is a part of democracy. Our government also allows all legal aged citizens to vote which is democratic. What is not democratic about that is that non legal citizens are not allowed to vote. That is undemocratic because those people are affected by the decisions of our government too.  This I feel should be changed. Our government also allows freedoms like freedom of speech, press and religion which is a democratic principle. America also has a balance of powers within its government which is democratic because no one person has all the power. Another democratic principle America expresses to a degree is equality. America is equal in the sense that people cannot be discriminated against because of social status, race or religion. People by law all have an equal opportunity to do everything. This in principle is democratic. In practice it has failed. Equality in this country is practically nonexistent. This can be seen by the fact that to be a political figure, one has to be wealthy. Also to get in certain colleges or to get certain jobs one must have a high social status. Also education for those less well off is sub par to those wealthy which creates a never ending cycle of inequality. Poor education also creates the problem of uneducated and uninformed people voting for offices which leads to skewed votes which is not democratic at all. This needs to be changed by improving education drastically. Another form of discrimination which contradicts with democracy is the fact that voting days are on work days. This fact discriminates against the working class people who cannot take off work to go vote. This is a huge injustice and a huge sign of inequality. It also skews the vote because not all people who may want to vote can vote.  This is undemocratic and should be changed. Another undemocratic part of our country is the electoral system. This system takes the vote away from the people and makes our country extremely less democratic. The definition of democracy favors direct democracy and the electoral system is the opposite of that. Another undemocratic part of this country which can be solved is the two party system.  The fact that we only have two major problems does not allow for anybody but those who fit with the beliefs of those parties have a chance of being elected. For instance, only the Republican and Democratic candidate participate in the presidential debates.  Having two parties is not part of the definition of democracy and in fact is undemocratic because it restricts the people in participating in government. There are much other ways America is undemocratic and much more why it is. No democracy is perfect and ours definitely can be changed to be more democratic. No democratic can be a perfect “true” democracy so if we are to have a democracy I am fine with a practical one. I believe our practical one just needs to be doctored