That's a legitimately run _election_, which is necessary for but not the same as a legitimate democracy. For a democracy to be legitimate you need an impartial judiciary, an enforced constitution, fundamental civil liberties, and an accountable government.

Thank you for serving as a poll worker. (Seriously: thank you)

We have a legitimate democracy in terms of vote-counting, and you personally contribute to that.

It looks a lot less legitimate to me when I think about factors like votes having vastly varying weights because of gerrymandering and the Electoral College.

It gets even less legitimate when I think about how severely restricted our choice of candidates are, and how they are more or less chosen by party leaders and the oligarchy via billions of dollars of lobbying etc.

Well, in the same vein I could tell you to re-take your primary school civics classes and write me an essay on the key components of a modern democracy.

The mechanism by which we choose leaders isn’t even in the top three most important prerequisites for a functioning democracy. If you didn’t pay attention in history and civics classes this may come as a surprise.

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I'd say that as corporate lobbying succeeds with its lobotomization of public institutions, it fundamentally raises the bar for what constitutes legitimate democracy - for example ranked choice voting rather than raced-to-the-bottom plurality.

This should be doubly apparent in this thread, where this specific invasion would likely still be happening even if the fascists had lost in 2024. Admit it, this has military industrial complex's manufacturing consent and nation building all over it, regardless of it benefiting Trump to distract from the childrape files and whatever other corruption/stealing he can wedge in.