The United States, often hailed as the world's leading democracy, is a complex tapestry of liberty, equality, and popular rule. However, this narrative has always concealed a deeper truth. Since its inception, the United States has functioned not as a democracy but as a stratified, exclusionary regime where power has been dictated by race, wealth, and gender. The system was not designed to mirror the will of the people but to safeguard the privileges of a select few. While America likes to claim the title of democracy, it has never truly embodied its essence.
The Anti-Democratic Design of the Founding
The U.S. Constitution, far from being a document that empowers the masses, was crafted to contain them. Penned by elites, many of whom were enslavers, it enshrined protections for property and privilege rather than political equality. The Electoral College subverts the popular vote. The Senate bestows disproportionate power on smaller, whiter states. The Supreme Court, unelected and serving for life, has historically been used to thwart progressive reforms and uphold elite interests. These institutions were not accidental byproducts of history but intentional barriers against democracy.
At the time of the nation's founding, voting rights were confined to white, land-owning men. Everyone else — including the vast majority of the population — was excluded. From the outset, the republic was structured to restrict, not expand, political participation.
A History of Exclusion and Suppression
The foundation of the U.S. was built on the dispossession of Native land and the enslavement of African people. Enslaved individuals were legally subhuman, denied all political rights yet counted in the census to boost the political power of slaveholders. After the Civil War, amendments promised citizenship and voting rights to Black men. Still, Reconstruction was violently dismantled through racial terror and legal manipulation.
Jim Crow laws supplanted overt slavery with a subtler form of racial subjugation. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence barred Black Americans from the ballot box for nearly a century. Women were excluded from voting until 1920 — and even then, women of color remained disenfranchised. Native Americans were not recognized as citizens until 1924. Asian immigrants were legally prohibited from becoming citizens until 1952. Every stride toward political inclusion has been met with resistance, subversion, or delay.
The Ever-Increasing Burden on the Right to Vote
Voting in America has never been easy for the marginalized. Today, it remains a contested right, burdened by tactics that disproportionately affect communities of color, low-income voters, the elderly, students, and those with disabilities.
After the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, states with histories of discrimination were freed from federal oversight. Within hours, they began closing polling sites, purging voter rolls, and enacting strict voter ID laws. In some states, it became illegal to hand out water to people waiting in line to vote — lines that are often longest in Black and Brown neighborhoods.
Felony disenfranchisement laws, relics of the post-Reconstruction backlash, continue to strip millions of their voting rights — often indefinitely. These laws overwhelmingly affect Black and Brown citizens, particularly in the South, creating a modern caste system where punishment becomes political erasure.
Voting — the most fundamental citizenship act — has become an obstacle course for millions. This is not democracy. It is legalized exclusion.
The Constitutional Limits: A Narrow Protection
The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee the right to vote. It only restricts how voting rights can be denied — prohibiting discrimination based on race (15th Amendment), sex (19th), failure to pay a poll tax (24th), or age over 18 (26th). These are not affirmative rights; they are reactive limits. The Constitution tells states who they cannot exclude in certain ways — but it does not compel them to include anyone.
This gap has been exploited repeatedly. Facially neutral laws—like ID requirements or felony bans—can still produce devastatingly unequal outcomes. The courts rarely intervene because as long as race isn't explicitly mentioned, discriminatory impact is insufficient to prove a constitutional violation.
Until the Constitution enshrines an explicit, affirmative right to vote that protects against direct and indirect disenfranchisement, the system will remain vulnerable to manipulation, exclusion, and regression. This is not just a theoretical issue but a call to action for all those who believe in democracy and social justice.
Gerrymandering: Drawing Democracy Out of Reach
Even where voting is allowed, its power is often neutralized. Gerrymandering—the strategic manipulation of electoral district boundaries—enables political parties to choose their voters instead of vice versa.
Through "packing" and "cracking," minority communities are either clustered into a few districts to limit their influence elsewhere or split across many to dilute their voting strength. This is particularly devastating to Black, Latino, and Indigenous voters, whose communities are targeted for manipulation.
Partisan gerrymandering further entrenches power by ensuring that even a minority of votes can yield a majority of seats. Lawmakers, safely insulated from competition, become unaccountable to the people. Voters lose faith — not out of apathy, but because the system has proven itself rigged.
Gerrymandering turns democracy into performance. The rituals of voting remain, but the outcomes are predetermined by maps drawn behind closed doors.
Global Democratic Rankings: How the World Sees the U.S.
The world sees what many Americans refuse to: that the United States is a flawed democracy in decline. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2024, the U.S. ranks 28th in the world — with a score of 7.85 out of 10 — and is classified as a "flawed democracy." The report highlights deepening political polarization, threats to electoral integrity, and the erosion of public trust in institutions.
The V-Dem Institute's 2025 Democracy Report places the United States on its "Autocratizers Watchlist," citing mounting concerns over restrictions on freedom of expression, attacks on electoral legitimacy, and democratic backsliding.
Freedom House, long a promoter of U.S. democratic values, continues to raise alarms over voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the disproportionate influence of money in politics — although its most recent score for the United States has not been formally released at the time of writing.
These are not partisan accusations — they are independent global assessments. While U.S. leaders lecture other nations on democracy, the world watches as millions of Americans face disenfranchisement, manipulated districts, and a political system that prioritizes elite influence over public input. This not only undermines the U.S.'s claim to be a leading democracy but also sets a dangerous precedent for global democratic norms.
Conclusion: A Democracy in Name Only
To call the United States a democracy is to ignore its history, overlook its present, and excuse its failures. True democracy requires equal access to power. It demands that every voice be heard and every vote carry weight. That is not — and has never been — the American reality.
From slavery to voter suppression, from Jim Crow to mass incarceration, from the Electoral College to partisan gerrymandering, the U.S. system has been structured to exclude, control, and silence. The struggle for democracy in America has always been uphill — carried not by the powerful but by the oppressed.
It is time to confront the lie. America was not born a democracy. It has fought democracy at every turn. And until we dismantle the systems of racial, gendered, and economic control, the United States will remain what it has always been: a republic of the powerful, governing in the name of the people while suppressing the many.
Vernellia R. Randall, Professor Emerita of Law, University of Dayton School of Law.
