We’ve never really had an “honest” election process. The US has never been a democracy, because it was born of bourgeois revolution[1], and its laws & institutions were crafted by and for the bourgeoisie. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote.

[Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 hours ago

Haha I know, but like to pretend. I literally made the same point to my wife after reading like 10 pages of the Soviet Democracy book I was linked earlier.

We did eventually move further toward more democracy and socialist practices up until the red scare imo, but the foundations were definitely not as rosy as they paint it to be and many people lost their lives to push for progress.