The Song Remains the Same

Democracy.  Seems so simple, but when you think about it, what does democracy really mean?  Is the United States' system truly democratic today?  Has it ever been? According to Merriam Webster's online dictionary, here is the definition of democracy:

-a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting
-an organisation or situation in which everyone is treated equally and has equal rights

According to the first definition, the United States is a democracy.  But according to the second, it has never been.  In the 1800s, when the US was a new country, even the voting process was sometimes questionable.

Votes were recorded orally with no secrecy, candidates were allowed to try and influence people's votes just before the election, and votes were sometimes bought with money or alcohol.  Many elections were won under rather suspicious circumstances.  Very few people could vote at that time.  Only white men were allowed to vote, and many states had restrictions that voters had to own property or pay taxes.  When a man named Thomas Dorr tried to get a new constitution in Rhode Island, which still operated under a royal charter in the 1830s, he provoked an incident known as the Dorr War.  This was the only violent instance in the United States' transition to universal white manhood suffrage (which still isn't anywhere near universal, but it was a step).  Most people didn't have human rights in the US in the 1800s, whereas the ideal democracy grants rights and suffrage to all.  By this right, the United States in the 1800s was not very democratic.  Slavery still existed, and women were oppressed, and anyone who was not white and male was very much at a disadvantage.  While the United States is not truly a place of equality and universal rights even today, we have come a long way from the 1800s.