The US is ranked as a 'Flawed Democracy', what needs to change?

[Zkuq]

Eagle367 said:

Zkuq said:

I don't think that's how it works. Banning people from being elected is a great chance for abuse: if at some point you do end up with someone undemocratic in power anyway, there won't be a democratic way to remove them from power anymore, since they can just decide that their opponents are undemocratic and thus unable to be elected. And even if you don't get that far, you can still be subtle enough to not be anti-democratic enough to get banned from elections. I don't think there's simply a way to effectively ban anti-democratic people from elections and positions of power without opening huge gaps for abuse of power, which is even worse than allowing those people to be elected. The way I see it is that there's two bad options, and the one that's common in democracies is the less bad one (just like democracy is compared to other forms of government).

Except I never said the PM or President or ruling party gets to decide on this shit now did I? A neutral election commission decides on candidate eligibility and judges not beholden to political parties decide whether someone is not fit for office or not. The point is to create roadblocks from dismantling democracy. Countries already decide whether someone is fit for running or not. A lot of countries have differing criteria.

But then there's the issue of ensuring neutrality. How do you choose the people that uphold neutrality? How do you ensure the people will continue to be chosen in a neutral manner? At the moment, I can't see a way to ensure it. In my eyes, it's just another potential hole in the system, one that will seemingly work as long as everything's fine but is the first thing to go once someone anti-democratic comes to power. The people voting the anti-democratic people from power is the best roadblock, as far as I can see, because it keeps the power in the hands of many instead of few.