[AzRaeL StoRmBlaDe]

the real reason I made this thread is to show everyone's distrust of the american political system. Yes politicians lie to us and yes they look out only for their own interests. In 1996 only 54% of americans voted. Now how can we have equal representation when just over 1/2 of the population votes. and look at the percentages by age of people that vote 18-24 year old average a turnout of 28%, where as citizens 65 and up averaged a 67% tunrout. americans 25-64 averaged about a 55% percent turnout. Also its a proven fact that the more education you have the more likely you are to vote. Could this be viewed from the perspective that the more education you have the more likely you are to protect your interests by voting for constituents that support you? This could be backed up by another statistic that the higher your income the more likely you are to vote. Yet another statistic to back this up is the percentages of the unemployed that voted which was 37% The percentage of people presently employed that voted was 55%. what do all these statistics mean? Basically they mean that America promotes voter apathy. People with less care less about politics. In general they feel that next year will be more of the same no matter who is president. voter America alienates its citizens and voters so much so that only about 1/2 of the people registered even bother to vote for the president, and only about 1/3 of registered voters will bother to vote for the senate. Most people don't even know who the senators or governors are in thier state. I will leave you with one final example to help prove my point. there is an old saying about politicians in that "their first duty is to get elected, and their second duty is to get reelected" As a newly elected senator to get reelected you need to make on average $2,300 a day for your entire 6 year term, just to finance your reelection campaign enough to get reelected. granted they dont really have to spend much time themselves raising their money, they do have to sell out for large donators during their current policy term in order to get more money for their reelection campaign. If you donated money to a senator who said he was going to back you and he didn't who would get your donation come reelection time. One way of thinking about it is, he who has the money influences the decisions of the people in power. Its not exactly buying a senators vote, but you can;t tell me the senator doesn't know who his big donators are and isn't going to keep them in mind if an issue pertaining to them comes up. Besides the gov't straight up lying to us about things, you have so many other things to consider why people don't trust the gov't. really there is no reason to trust the gov't or our reps to the gov't (ie politicians). The real thing I am wondering is, is our system like this because of our capitalist economy, or are all gov'ts just like that? Even if you look at our voting system, its a winner take all system which completely discourages new parties. I may be mistaken but in some of Europe, dont they have a proportional representation, where however many votes the party gets, they get that proportion of seats. Now that sounds like the most democratic system to me. I understand our political system isnt perfect and that we do what we can, but these are reasons why people dont trust the gov't. Now I will ask what all we can do to change this? ( sorry for being so long-winded, but I am bored at work)