What US election was the first you consider democratic?

[The Mikado]

Should be self-explanatory. I think there's a strong case for 1920 outside of the South and 1968 inside Dixie. (Those 98% Democratic returns in South Carolina don't exactly inspire confidence even without widespread voter suppression).

1972 is for those of you that feel that 18 voting age is critical to the democratic label, I don't.

[The Mikado]

"Democratic" doesn't imply "complete enfranchisement," otherwise Athenian democracy wouldn't have even been democratic. "Democratic" also doesn't imply "direct democracy," much less whether electors are chosen by popular vote or the (democratically elected) state legislature. American Presidential elections have always been indirect. So I don't see a problem with choosing 1789 as the first democratic election, even though enfranchisement has seen many improvements.

I don't accept Athenian democracy as democratic so much as a very broad oligarchy. Even universal manhood suffrage is oligarchic rather than democratic as the majority of the population, women, couldn't vote.

[The Mikado]

I don't accept Athenian democracy as democratic so much as a very broad oligarchy. Even universal manhood suffrage is oligarchic rather than democratic as the majority of the population, women, couldn't vote.

It's always odd to me when people say that a word doesn't apply to the very thing it was invented to describe.

Mussolini coined the word totalitarian to describe his regime, with the expression "all within the state, nothing without the state, nothing against the state." Mussolini's Italy completely failed to match his criteria and the word totalitarian is still quite popular yet is seldom used to describe his regime.

For democracy I lean towards Rousseau's phrasing that a society in which fewer than half the people have a say is an oligarchy and more than half have a say is a democracy, and women are more than half the population, so...

[The Mikado]

How do the Federalists relinquish power in 1800 if the country is not "democratic" by then?

The Federalists lose because South+Middle outweighs North. I don't see what that has to do with whether the government is popularly elected or not.

[The Mikado]

We've never really had one, given the amount of people that have been disenfranchised at one point or another (especially today, with mass incarceration effectively disenfranchising most of the poor), plus we have an electoral college that effectively quashes any notion of real democracy.

If we want a truly democratic election, we have to (1) abolish the electoral college; (2) get rid of archaic ballot access laws that ensure the Democratic-Republican duopoly; (3) restore voting rights to the disenfranchised, especially felons and those in prison; (4) end residency requirements on voting, voter registration, and extend the vote to all persons who work. There's no legitimate reason not to have the vote at 16, given that plenty of 16 year olds work and have their labor taxed as part of that process, which you might remember we fought a revolution over back in the day. No taxation without representation and all that jazz.

In what universe are "most" of the poor disenfranchised by felonies? The highest guesses I've seen are ~2% of the electorate.

[The Mikado]

What's the reasoning behind each of the poll options? (Besides 1789, 1920, and 1968)

1824 had popular elections in the majority of states to pick the Electoral College rather than state legislatures selecting them, 1868 had universal male suffrage and every single state picked by popular votes (South Carolina held out until the Civil War), 1880 was the first election after Reconstruction and the end of the military occupation of parts of the South, 1972 was the first election with 18 year olds, I forget the logic for the others.