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Originally Posted by hipster duck
Let's disregard - if we can - the notion that there are certain interests who would rather not see certain groups vote.
Beyond that, the United States hasn't seemed to figure out:
1) How to use the Federal government to coordinate coherent, equivalent services across states;
2) How to divorce politics from public service through independent, third-party but publicly-financed agencies.
With regards to elections, these are organized by the states rather than by an organization that is fully independent and national like Elections Canada. Similarly, the Americans are spectacularly bad at organizing a large scale, coordinated government response. Remember how after Katrina they gave out those useless debit cards, and housed them in hotels or the Superdome? Every other country would move people en masse to shelters that provide the same basic services - food, clothing and shelter.
The sclerotic mess of confusing services that cost way more than they should and provide little to their users is a big part of the reason why Americans hate government. When Reagan said that the scariest words anybody could hear were "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" he wasn't exactly wrong.
The big exception to this is the US Armed Forces. I think the reason why Americans are ardent supporters of their military is because it is a very efficient social welfare program for its service members.
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Not to repeat myself too much, but Congress is the problem with virtually everything wrong with the United States' political system. It's a dysfunctional composition of 535 "free voting" representatives who are all taking money from a myriad of different special interests.
It's a recipe for hand outs over public service, perpetuated by both parties, while they pretend to fight battles over things like "voter id" (or guns, or abortion, or healthcare) because that is what they think will inspire people to vote for them. Democrats could solve voter id issues by putting forth a free national voter id program. They don't, because firstly that doesn't align with their donors, and secondly they think by using voter id as a perpetual wedge issue they can inspire historically disenfranchised demographics to continue voting. The end effect is not much different than what Republicans are doing - intentionally standing in the way of progress in the name of political opportunism.
That attitude sums up Congress' approach to everything from health care to immigration. Don't actually solve any problems, while in the open fighting over "core Democratic principles versus core Republican principles" while companies continue to lobby for special favors and crony capitalism.
By contrast, Canada has been very much aided by an overarching drive of provinces to retain control of their services and put checks and balances on Federal overreach. Provinces control their education, health care, and most public services.
In contrast, the United States playbook for large corporations is to orchestrate a federal takeover of some public service, bribe states with funding to get them dependant on the Federal program, and then threaten to withdraw funding unless they bend to your corporation-friendly legislation. Bingo, you now have an easy one way avenue to national laws in your interest.
The previous example of welfare funding was used in this thread, where states used to regulate what things like food stamps could be used for. The Federal government moved in, provided Federal funding for these programs, and all of a sudden the regulations became friendly to all sorts of things, and things that were previously disallowed like junk food, became acceptable under the Federal law, and now food stamps can be used for junk food nation wide.
The same pattern repeats itself with education, health care, and everything else. Is it any wonder how insurance companies stock has skyrocketed since the introduction of "Obama care"? Is it any wonder how Congress is hopelessly lost at proposing a replacement? How is Canada's Federal minister of education doing by the way? There is a good argument to be made that legislation has not been passed at the Federal level in the best interests of the public since the New Deal.
I believe the elections of both Obama and Trump represent a bit of a boiling point with the United States public being absolutely fed up with the status quo, and they vainly hope by electing an "outsider" as President will help. It doesn't, because the President is not and has never been the problem. The executive administration is usually the most well intentioned branch of government, but they can't possibly fix anything with the dysfunctional Congress.
Thankfully, there is one last avenue the United States can pursue to fix the problem - and that is the Convention of States, a mechanism whereby state legislatures can agree to amend the constitution, and finally potentially put a stop of Congress' bad behaviour. It is in all likelihood the last avenue left to save what is happening down there.