While the British franchise was then highly restricted, it was no less so in the early United States. It is estimated that maybe 1 percent of the population could vote in early Virginia with all the restrictions of age, sex, race, and ownership of property. That's actually roughly comparable to the percentage of people making decisions in contemporary Communist China where about 60 million party members hold sway over about 1.2 billion people.
The American Revolution did not produce anything resembling a democracy. Nor did the later Constitutional Convention. It took about two hundred years of growth and change in the United States for that to happen. The powerful Senate, able to block the elected President's appointments and treaties, only changed from being an appointed body to an elected one in 1913. The Senate to this day uses undemocratic operating rules and bizarre election patterns to shield it against public opinion.
The popular vote for President did not matter originally. Apart from the fact that only a small number of males meeting property requirements could vote, the members of the Electoral College, drawn from political elites, were the ones whose votes actually counted. This absurdly out-of-date and anti-democratic institution still exists, and it can cause serious problems as we saw in the election of 2000.
The American Revolution did not produce anything resembling a democracy. Nor did the later Constitutional Convention. It took about two hundred years of growth and change in the United States for that to happen. The powerful Senate, able to block the elected President's appointments and treaties, only changed from being an appointed body to an elected one in 1913. The Senate to this day uses undemocratic operating rules and bizarre election patterns to shield it against public opinion.
The popular vote for President did not matter originally. Apart from the fact that only a small number of males meeting property requirements could vote, the members of the Electoral College, drawn from political elites, were the ones whose votes actually counted. This absurdly out-of-date and anti-democratic institution still exists, and it can cause serious problems as we saw in the election of 2000.