1. Fixing Democracy POLS 125: Political Parties & Elections

2. One word

3. ? What ONE WORD best describes your impression of the presidential candidates?

5. Word Cloud constructed from the responses people gave to a Pew Research Center poll, January 2012: What ONE WORD best describes your impression of... Barack Obama

6. Word Cloud constructed from the responses people gave to a Pew Research Center poll, March 2012: What ONE WORD best describes your impression of... Mitt Romney

7. ? What ONE WORD best describes your impression of the Democratic and Republican parties?

8. Words that Democrats use to describe Republicans Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, August 2012

9. Words that Republicans use to describe Democrats Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, August 2012

10. What ONE WORD best describes your impression of Congress? ?

11. Word Cloud constructed from the responses people gave to a Pew Research Center poll in March 2010: “One word that best describes your impression of Congress"

12. So we don’t like POLITICAL CANDIDATES, or the PARTIES they represent, or the INSTITITUIONS they manage, How then do we feel about the democratic ELECTIONS that seek to change those things?

13. What one word describes your current state of mind? Throughout Election Day in 2008, NYTimes.com readers submitted the words that best described their moods.

14. One year later…

15. What’s Wrong with U.S. Elections? Can we take these words and combine them into sentences that identify the weaknesses of the U.S. electoral system? Candidates Parties Institutions Process

16. What’s Wrong with U.S. Elections? Inefficient, unfair election procedures System corrupted by the wealth and greed of special interests Polarized political parties Out-of-touch candidates Uninformed and apathetic voters A sensationalist media intent on uncovering scandal But is any of this new?

17. William McKinley, 1896

18. 1876 Samuel Tilden

19. 1896

20. James Blaine, 1884

21. 1860

22. William Henry Harrison, 1888

23. Adlai Stevenson, 1892

25. 1868

26. 1876

27. What’s the message here? Whatever is wrong with U.S. elections, it is nothing new. Is this a comforting conclusion? Why or why not?