H. What is the result of not casting your ballot on election day?
I. It is a fact that from election to election there is an increasing percentage of the qualified voters who do not vote. What is the danger of this? What is it likely to lead to?
Why We Fought to Make the World Safe for Democracy
A Representative Form Of Government Under The Constitution
As I stated to you in our last discourse, America is a democracy, but it is also a republic. It is a democracy in its spirit and the power of its people, but in the mode of exercise of the power of the people it is a republic. We often hear America referred to as a "representative democracy". If America were merely a democracy there would be no fixed method for expressing the wishes or the power of the people. In a pure democracy, people having full power would naturally assemble from time to time to decide by the vote of all those present what should be done for the public good.
You will hear of the "town meeting" which even to-day in some parts of New England is held from time to time, where the people assemble, and by vote decide matters of public concern.
But this is now a Nation of more than one hundred and five million people. We have forty-eight States, many of them very populous. When the Constitution was adopted, there were only about 3,900,000 people in all the States; but those who framed the Constitution looked into the future and could see something of the wonderful growth of the Nation which they were planning. Of course it is easy for anyone to see that in a large country like this, with a large population or a population as large as it was at the time when the Constitution was adopted, it would be impossible for all the people to assemble in a meeting to vote directly upon the passage of necessary laws, or to provide for taxation, or to conduct the general business of the State or the Nation. You can see how absolutely impossible it would be in these days to have the people of the United States assemble at the National capital to vote on any law, or to make any appropriation, or to provide rules for exercise of governmental power.
Therefore you can readily see that the founders of this country very wisely realized that the only government possible would be what is known as a representative government, a democracy where the people would have all the power, but a republic wherein the people would express that power, not directly, but through representatives or agents chosen by them.(17)