Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and wealthiest Americans. The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security. Elections have become heavily subsidized non-events that typically attract at best merely half of an electorate whose information about foreign and domestic politics is filtered through corporate-dominated media. Citizens are manipulated into a nervous state by the media’s reports of rampant crime and terrorist networks, by thinly veiled threats of the Attorney General and by their own fears about unemployment. What is crucially important here is not only the expansion of governmental power but the inevitable discrediting of constitutional limitations and institutional processes that discourages the citizenry and leaves them politically apathetic

This passage explains how society's changes are effecting the substantial qualities of elections. The media plays a direct role in the way people analyzes themselves and others, therefore, politics can now turn to the media to help gain an audience that would otherwise follow the norm.Also, while the media is generalizing the issues Americans face daily, its allows for people to worry less about voting and focus on the issues the state deems necessary. While everyone is distracted the government gains more power and authority to make changes where they see fit.