American elections

[Das Bruce]

Ok I hope I'm not the only one here who is confused about how they operate (I'm loath to say work ), I get that the main elections are state by state and each state sends 2(?) representatives from the winning party to one of your houses but I don't know which. And I REALLY don't get this voting for the leader of the party thing, is it binding? Or is it just so they can pick the most popular leader? And are there any other parties? And why are Republicans red and Democrats blue?

[tombom]

The current bit is the primaries, where the people vote on which candidate they want to be the candidate for their party. Each state does it at different times over the course of 4-5 months. These primaries elect delegates to send to the national convention of the party, which is where the candidate is elected. Usually one guy has the majority of delegates by the time of the convention but if not the candidates do deals with each other to get votes and stuff.

There are two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives. A third of the senate is elected every two years for 6 year terms; there are two senators for each state. The House is elected every two years for two year terms. Each state sends a different number of people based on population EG wyoming has 1 whereas California has 50 something. These elections aren't really related to the presidential election except sometimes the dates correspond IIRC.

There are other parties but I don't think any third party has got into the house in the past 50 years or more. The few independents usually side with one of the parties.

In the presidential election each state has a number of electoral votes which is senators+house members, with Washington DC having 3 despite not being a state, because it's got a lot of people. The guy who gets the most of the popular vote in a state gains all that state's electoral votes. Whoever has the most electoral votes wins the nomination. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by ~500,000 but lost the electoral vote. It's kind of a strange system.

The red/blue thing comes from the 2000 elections because each party used a different colour widely. It generally changes every few elections.

Wikipedia is generally a good source of explanations.

[Relative]

The red and blue thing is related to the American Flag, and are not official party colors. Red states represent one party (today, the Republicans), blue another (Democrats), and white undecided (the result isn't predictable). The red state blue state thing came about in the 2000 elections, which as you know was highly contested with a highly divided electorate. The 'red' states occupy the most of the south and mid-west. The 'blue' states occupy the northeast and the west coast. White states include places like Florida and Ohio where the electorate is evenly split. This is important because the president is nominated on the Electoral College. Each state has a certain number of votes (eg:California has 55, Texas 34, etc...). Whoever wins that state get all of the electoral college votes, even if they won by only one real vote in that state.

The party selection for candidates is separate from the official system. In the presidential elections, for both parties, members select their party nominee by querying party members in each state by electing delegates to the national convention to select a candidate for party nomination. Most parties in the world have an internal selection process in some way, but as the two parties have such a monopoly over politics in America the party selections is essentially part of the official system. In other words, one of winners from the two parties are almost guaranteed to win the election.

Also, the winner is not the leader of the party. The party leadership a separate thing altogether. For example Hilary or Obama are likely to get the presidential nomination from their party, but Howard Dean is still the party leader for the democrats.

The legislative branch of government at the federal level has two houses - the House and the Senate - the equivalent of a lower and upper house in many parliamentary systems. Party selection is similar to the presidential selection, but the selection stays at the individual state level or regional level. The number of representatives for each state varies by population size for the House (435 in total), whereas for the senate each state is guaranteed two members (100 in total). Meaning there are 535 members of Congress (no including delegates from places such as Puerto Rico which isn't a state yet, thus has to voting powers).

[Gota]

having only 2 parties for such a long time is dangerous in the least.
I wish people couldnt advertise themsleves during elections.
instead there should be places where you can find all the information about any candidate and read about his life.than you choose.Instead of the charisma contest on tv and presidentail campaign funds.
time to seperate economy from government :).
Parties is spure evil.Why do we need them.Just another beurocratic mess with money being spent on nonsense.should abolish all parties..
u got ur president or prime minister u got ur senate and proffesionals chosen to accomodate roles in the different ministries.

[Caydr]

Let's see...

Ah, yes

Basically the entire system makes no sense and ensures that only rich boys or people who take "grants" from oil companies can possibly get enough money to have a chance at getting elected. The rich kids are only interested in benefiting the rich and are entirely disconnected from the common man, while the others can only serve the public as long as its in the interests of their sponsors.

Also if 49% of every state votes for one party, and 51% votes for the other, the "other" gets 100% of the vote across the entire country. Also some states are "worth" more than others based on some arbitrary system that is no longer relevant. So you can have 30 "lesser" states give their 100% behind one guy, and 20 "important" states give their 100% behind the "other" guy and "other" guy gets elected.

Also, only two candidates will ever have a hope in hell of even getting more than 1% of the vote, because the american populace has been socially engineered into believing that there can only be two possibilities. Arbitrary penis-envy war or admit surrender forever, that kind of thing.

Every candidate promises to eliminate taxes while increasing healthcare, education, and public safety funding. Ultimately the winner is decided by who makes the first slip-up in a speech accidentally says "tomoto" instead of "tomato", thereby proving he's unpatriotic and probably a muslim - aka, a terrorist. Because anyone who's not white is probably a terrorist. Be on the lookout for terrorist -like activity. Report your neighbors' suspicious activity for additional food rations and sessions at the pleasure dome.

Also you'll notice, candidates are only allowed to actually speak freely very rarely, because when they don't have a speechwriter handy they actually have no charisma and no actual goals.

Hmm... hmm... If you say the war is a failure, that means you're not "supporting the troops" and loses you 30% of the vote who thinks Iraq really had nukes or something. If you say you're pro-life, that loses you 80% of the populace, the ones who believe women should have control of their own body. If you say you're pro-choice, that loses you 80% of the populace, the ones who believe god will smite you if you don't live in constant fear of eternal torment. Also if you say you're pro-religion, that loses you 80% of the populace, the ones who doesn't believe in god. If you say you're not religious, that loses you 80% of the populace, the ones who believe in god. Essentially you must be adept at never actually committing to any one opinion or idea.

Can you say, fraud? Gooood.

[Lindir The Green]

Also, only two candidates will ever have a hope in hell of even getting more than 1% of the vote, because the american populace has been socially engineered into believing that there can only be two possibilities.

That's been proven to reliably happen when voting is done by plurality instead of run-off as it's done almost everywhere else.

People don't want to change it though because they're afraid that old and/or stupid people will be confused, and because they don't want to change the Constitution for anything other than banning gay marriage.

[Caydr]

Don't talk politics at me, I don't even know what plurality or run-off are. I just know a fraud when I see it.

Let me tell you a story. The other day I read in the paper that ontario's "premiere" (ie, guy who runs the province) had been re-elected. Ask anyone a month previous and they would tell you, there's no way that scumball could ever be re-elected. He screwed everyone over. (And he did, too.)

But then my dear premiere found his key talking point: his strongest opponent was in favor of faith-based schools. And then, never mind any other issues, that's what the election became about. And since nobody in their right mind actually wants that system, our dear premiere got re-elected. That's despite the other guy having hundreds of other significant points and being willing to compromise on the faith based schools thing if it was so unpopular. So now we've got the same dip in office as we had for the last few years, because he managed to con the public into believing that the one single issue was important. The other guy tried many times to redirect the issue, and every time he got the upper hand, there goes the magic word from our incumbent, "faith based schools", and bam, he's down in the charts again.

Now, that's a disaster. But that's only me establishing the story. The real part is this: I read further down in the article that this was only the second time in [high number, like 70?] years that the Liberal party would re-elected.

Significant?

Well let me put it this way:

We have never been happy with the Liberal party after 4 years of having them in office. We kicked them out on their ass at the first opportunity, every damn time, for all of recent history. But wait, they'd also been elected quite a few times. So what does this actually mean... well, nobody has ever been happy with the person in office, ever. They flip-flop between parties every 4 years and are never happy, but are kept under the illusion of free choice. Fraud.

[Lindir The Green]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_runoff

[Das Bruce]

Hmm, I think I'll stick with MMP.

[Caydr]

I'm not interested in learning either. I'm just content with complaining. I'm a model citizen! :)

Sorry to any americans and/or political enthusiasts I may have offended, I'm just awed by some of the stuff that goes on.

[Dragon45]

Caydr: It's said that people get the government they deserve. America is full of people like you, so I guess that statement is true.

[Scikar]

Whoever wins that state get all of the electoral college votes, even if they won by only one real vote in that state.

I'm from the UK as well so I'm not entirely familiar with the system, but my understanding is that this is only the case in certain states. If memory serves California splits the electoral college votes in line with the popular vote in the state.

[SwiftSpear]

Caydr: It's said that people get the government they deserve. America is full of people like you, so I guess that statement is true.

The problem being that, shamefully, Caydr is Canadian.

[aegis]

a problem easily remedied

[Dragon45]

Caydr: It's said that people get the government they deserve. America is full of people like you, so I guess that statement is true.

The problem being that, shamefully, Caydr is Canadian.

k

well youd still be surprised at the number of idiots here that do nothing else than bitch. its kinda annoying. anyway.

[Relative]

Whoever wins that state get all of the electoral college votes, even if they won by only one real vote in that state.

I'm from the UK as well so I'm not entirely familiar with the system, but my understanding is that this is only the case in certain states. If memory serves California splits the electoral college votes in line with the popular vote in the state.

Only two states don't do that - Maine and Nebraska. California has considered doing a proportional system, but it was dismissed due to the negtive impact that it might have on results if California did it on its own without nation wide support.

[Snipawolf]

I thought you said American Electrons >_>

[CarRepairer]

You can give me any two election systems and I can easily give you one or more scenarios in which one has advantages over the other and vice versa. That includes electoral college, parliamentary, or the great and mighty plurality. Even the run-off system which sounds great to my ears CAN have downsides to it.

[KDR_11k]

Yeah but in this case the downsides are summing up so much there's only crap to vote for.

[Gota]

Best way to pick a leader would be having no campagins to anyone..
No slogans no nothing.People who want to be elected pay a symbolic fee and are registered as candidates.all Candidates deliver written answeres to many selevted questions and it is all filed in a data base that is available to everyone(on the net).Every detail in that candidates life is also written together with his picture.
There is only one problem,a prime minister must be charismatic or just very capable at negotiations and fast reasoning.
That's why a system should be built where everyone can hear every single candidate answer and debate on randomly picked questions to which he did not have a chance to actually prepared and he is quastioned live and muist answer as he wishes.
All the data about everyone must be organized in a way that a citizen can search a certain candidate that will fit hes desires of a prime minister the most.There must be no money invovled and the public should be strongly encouraged to research candidates..no advertising of them on tv or radio or anything.
The system must force people to elect candidates based on logical information and not slogans.