What makes our government a democracy?

In order to understand what makes our government democratic, let us look at what characteristics a democracy has.

The first characteristic of a democracy is that it has to have popular sovereignty.  That is, the people have to have the ultimate power in the government. Our government has this because we have competitive elections for positions of real power. We participate in real elections to select people for offices like the president.  The government does not control who gets to run in the elections, allowing candidates like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders to run even though their beliefs do not fit entirely into the platform of the Republican or Democrat parties.  Once we elect people, they have real power.  The members of Congress that we elect go and actually make laws that govern us. We are not just electing a sham government that has no real power.  We have popular sovereignty, which is one characteristic of democracy.

A second aspect of democracy is political equality. In a true democracy, everyone must potentially have the same amount of say in government. In our government, everyone has the same ability to vote.  No one's vote counts for more than anyone else’s.  Everyone has the same right to run for office once he or she reaches the age specified in the Constitution. In this way, we have political liberty, which helps make us a democracy.

Another characteristic of democracy is that people have political liberty, meaning people have the right to express themselves on political issues. In the United States, we have this because people can say or write whatever they want about political issues. People are free to criticize the government and individual political leaders as harshly as they want. This shows that we have political liberty, which is another aspect of democracy.

In addition to political liberty, people in a democracy must also have personal liberty.  The people have to be able to do more or less whatever they want in their personal lives.  In the United States, we have this type of liberty.  The government cannot tell us what race of person we may or may not marry.  It cannot tell us where we may or may not live. It does not tell us what religion we may or may not belong to.  In these ways, the government respects our personal liberties.

Because our government meets all of these criteria, we have a democracy.  It is true the United States government is not perfect in all of these areas; however, it is still a democracy because it generally meets the criteria listed above.