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I have to disagree with posters who think that a criticism of the American Democracy is only an implied bash on the country, or that a debate on it somehow isn't a worthy subject.
American elections *are* heavily based on advertising and such. I'm willing to bet that less than 50% of the sub 50% of the voting age population that actually bothers to head to the polls has never actually set down with even a newspaper article on each of the candidates, proposals, and what-not, thought it through, and *then* went out to vote.
And, IMHO, an uninformed democracy is hardly a democracy at all.
An example from my life for instance, and a refutation to people who'd say that ignorance is all right, because you can pretty much tell what people think based on their party affiliation:
I live in a conservative district in SW Michigan, and as such, I was horrified to read the stances of both our House of Representative candidates, one a Democrat, and other a Republican, and found that both were ardently pro-life, and both were against further taxation for programs.
Similarities continued in their stances on education financing, war, and a whole host of other things.
An uninformed voter probably would have just gone party lines, I did the right thing for my views, and declined to vote for either of the rat bastards.
Too many people just blindly assume that each party has certain views as "givens", and that there's no need to actually look at the individual candidates.
Too many people just go along with whatever the television ads say, and never actually look into things beyond that.
And I think too many people think both parties suck, but decline to go out and vote Green, or a third party in line with *their* way of thinking, like I consistently do.
If more of the dissatisfied voters would just get off their keisters and voted for a third party, it'd *at least* keep the majors on their toes, and partially honest to their supposed principals.
That or add the "None of the Above" line to every race, as Michael Moore (or was it Jello Biafra?) has suggested, and bar people from running for that office again in the re-vote if they lose to it 
Additionally, I think we'd do well to enact some sort of rules against mud slinging in campaigns, like they have in many, many other democracies, many of them fledgling in comparison to the States. I think it's ridiculous, and base, that candidates can be elected on making a scandal out of God knows what that happened x number of years ago.
It reflects poorly on the country IMHO.
I think criticism on the States elections are well-founded, because, unlike a screwed up system in a small sub-saharan Afrikan country, the results of elections in the States usually have global implications.
Other people don't have a right to vote in our elections, but I definitely think they have a right to comment, criticise, and consider what we're doing wrong.
It's not as though the US is some island in the middle of the pacific with no weapons or standing army you know...
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