What to do when your country is supposed to be a democracy but it feels rigged

You always have some lever of power available to you, the trick is to identify it and then get to work.

To change the system of voting, and therefore the type of democracy you have, there is always some level that you can start working at today. You simply have to identify that level.

In most democracies, that level is with the parties themselves. As the internal politics of parties are a speciality that few get involved in, this is an area where a militant few can make a large difference. I keep raising the point, how is it that the CDU, in Germany, was founded by pro-life Catholics, and dominated by pro-life Catholics, yet they took the lead in legalizing abortion in Germany? That's because the CDU has a women's committee that was taken over, in 1973, by some determined women, and they made the pro-abortion position the official position of the CDU even though most members of the CDU were opposed to it. Thanks to the determined effort by the women on the women’s committee, the laws legalizing abortion were passed as soon as the CDU regained power. See Control Of A Political Party Entails Engagement With The Guts Of Its Committee System.

In the USA, things are different. The political parties were, in some practical sense, abolished in the 1970s with the spread of the primary system, leaving the parties too weak to function as sites of citizen mobilization. The political parties (the Democrats and the Republicans) evolved into brands, like Kellogs and Mercedes and WalMart, to be advertised on television, rather than being a gathering of citizens that you go to in the evening. Without the power to decide who their own candidates were, the political parties in the USA became the weakest political parties that exist in any of the world’s democracies.

And yet, there are still many places where a person can start to influence the political system. In the USA, the local and state governments offer sites of mobilization. In particular, the style of voting, even in national elections, is decided on the state level, so getting involved there can have a big impact. In particular, changing the voting in a state to Ranked Choice Voting makes it much easier for 3rd parties to compete, and thus break the duopoly of the Democrats and the Republicans. Although the transformation is slow, Ranked Choice Voting is spreading in the USA:

At the federal and state level, RCV is used for congressional and presidential elections in Maine; state, congressional, and presidential general elections in Alaska; and special congressional elections in Hawaii.

As of February 2024, RCV is used for local elections in 45 US cities including Salt Lake City and Seattle. It has also been used by some state political parties in party-run primaries and nominating conventions. As a contingency in the case of a runoff election, RCV ballots are used by overseas voters in six states.

In authoritarian regimes, such as what we saw in South Korea or Taiwan or Singapore 30 or 40 years ago, you have to first build large organizations outside of the government, and in particular you have to build labor unions. The labor unions can then go on strike and cripple the economy to force the government to become more democratic. It’s a slow process, but at this point South Korea and Taiwan are vibrant democracies, and even Singapore is very close to being a real democracy.

Politics is downstream of institutions and organizations. Progressive change in the USA has occurred when progressive organizations were strong enough to demand to progressive change. We had a long stretch, from about 1890 to 1970, when a coalition of liberal churches and labor unions and society organizations was able to push through multiple democratic revolutions, expanding the franchise, giving women the vote, expanding civil rights enforcements, and ending widespread corruption, and mafia involvement, in local governments.

Since the 1960s, Americans have been withdrawing from organizations in which the citizen would be a participant. Americans (over the age of 18) have withdrawn from the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, bowling, soccer, baseball, football, the Elk’s Lodge, the Rotary Club, the Chamber Of Commerce, SCORE (retired businessmen advising younger businessmen), labor unions, churches, art clubs, all formally known “society” organizations, DAR, and so on. Americans still participate in large events, such as sports games, as spectators, but Americans are now less likely to organize their own sports leagues. American adults now have a strong preference for organizations where their attendance is strictly optional, and rare, which has lead to weak organizations.

Adjusting to this reality, several progressive non-profits have launched that operate mostly as marketing operations: they pitch some cause, such as the environment, using standard marketing techniques, raise money, and then donate the money to progressive politicians. And Americans can send money and thus participate, as consumers, in this kind of politics. But we’ve seen less and less of the type of non-profit where the American adult citizen goes and sits in a room, every week, and discusses some issue relevant to some group of Americans who are united by some common interest (as in a labor union) or some common belief (as in a church).

In most ways, this decline in participation is bad for democracy, but it does mean that the American citizens who chose to get involved can have a much bigger impact than before. Nowadays it is relatively easy to get elected to your town government, because there is less competition that there would have been 50 or 60 years ago.

The point is, there is always something you can do. There is always some level where you can begin to participate, right now, and where you can begin to have an impact, right now. You personally have the power to get involved and to bring about positive change.

Whatever nation you are in (maybe aside from the worst totalitarian regimes), you always have some lever of power available to you, you only need to identify it and then get to work.