It doesn't matter if the end result was different, the United States fit the definition of a Democratic Republic, where all houses, senates, and heads of state are elected by the people. Just because it didn't work doesn't mean the definition didn't fit.
This is dissimilar from the Roman Republic, which is closer to what we know as Parliamentary Democracy - the House(s) are elected, but the senate and possibly the head of state are appointed by intermediaries or consulates.
Further. For EXAMPLE. If a state were so inclined, due to the 10th. A STATE could make 100% of guns illegal within itself. The federal government couldn't stop them. The 10 explicitly restricts the federal government's power with the constitution. Not the states.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
HOWEVER: the (((14th))) changes that.
The United States of America, as a whole, is a Democratic Republic. The House of Representatives, the Senate, and the President are elected by democratic poll, i.e. The Federal Elections. It's a pure definition of how the country's federal government is supposed to work.
That's the point here, it's in toto. That the member states have rights granted to them doesn't change the fact that the above mentioned offices are elected by the people, and none of the offices are appointed by an intermediate authority. That the president is elected by proxy doesn't change that, because it's still supposedly the votes of the people that determine the proxy elector's vote.
... The United States are each democratic. The United States of America, the federal whole of the states is in no way democratic. It is fully a republic by way of the states.
I'm being explicitly pedantic because it matters. The USA is NOT democratic. At all. It is a republic. The States of the USA ARE representative democracies - vote for reps, they vote for laws.
It's democratic within each state - the STATES are democracies. The US is a strict republic - in no way is it a democratic entity. This is why federal elections are controlled entirely; from start to finish, top to bottom, by each individual state for it's residents.
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