Introduction
Suffrage is one of the fundamental rights of a democratic citizen and the major claim of the first feminists, who are therefore also referred to as suffragists. Most governments, including that of America, satisfied the claim during the 20th century. Nevertheless, the voting right remains a sensitive issue in the United States even after several decades, mostly due to the so-called indirect, or two-stage, election system.
American Election System
The system involves choosing the president by the electoral college whose members are pre-elected by the population. As a result, the candidate who the majority of the regular citizens would prefer does not necessarily win (BBC). Due to such an approach, people may have fewer chances to exercise their voting right than a direct election would give them, which does not meet the definition of democracy.
The two parties of the USA, the Republicans, and the Democrats keep arguing on whether the electoral system needs reforming or not. In one concern, as said above, a two-stage election is not always sufficiently transparent. By contrast, it is essential to avoid violating the Constitution in an attempt to overhaul the voting law; meanwhile, certain initiatives are anti-constitutional (Heath, 2021). Therefore, although all groups of the population in the United States have the right to vote, the struggle for exercising that right seems to be never-ending.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the American voting system is ambiguous, as it involves two stages. In the first one, the citizens vote for the electors who then choose the president in the second stage. This means that a candidate whom the population finds less appealing may still win, for that reason some politicians try to overhaul the system. However, this is impossible, as the two-stage scheme is presupposed by the Constitution.
References
BBC. US election 2020: What is the electoral college? BBC News, 2020. Web.
Heath, Ryan. Will Election Reform Make America Mainstream, or an Outlier? Politico, 2021. Web.