American Election

[lizziec]

In case some of you have been living in a sensory deprivation tank for the last year and a half, there is the US presidential election today and some of the things I have read about it have led me to consider a few things, which I should like to state here (and hope I don't offend any Americans that read this).

From doing A Level Government and Politics at the time of the last American Election (and we all know how that one ended) I am aware of the system that the Presidential Election hinges on - that of the Electoral College. Now I am also aware that any democratic system has its issues, however this seems to be the least democratic of all the systems I have studied. It doesn't even mean that the overall winner of the popular vote wins the election (as it is in the UK and I'm well aware that our system sucks). It just seems bizzare to me that the Country often held up as the example of democracy and are fighting wars for (at least partially) democracy to flourish in other countries should have such an undemocratic system of electing their president. Surely at the very least *all* electorial college representatives should be chosen by their state proportionally so that it reflects the popular vote in that state more? Last time around Bush won Florida by less than a thousand votes but had all 25 of the electoral college votes. This doesn't sit well with me. We can only lecture others on what they should do if we ourselves are beyond reproach, and we aren't. It scares me that in the US people need to be advised on their voting rights (warning PDF), and that the same people need to be warned about not giving into intimidation. This is not what an election should be about, and surely no civilisation in the free world should need to deploy observers to ensure that voters rights are respected.

The whole thing disturbs me.

(P.S. I'm rooting for the Kerry/Edwards camp, and the thought of another four years for Bush/Cheney terrifies me.)

(P.P.S I'm for a proportional represenational system for the UK and a fully elected second chamber ;))

Comments

[reggitsti.livejournal.com]

I suppose there's a line to tred between democratic government and viable government. Proportional representation seems like a good idea in theory, and indeed seems the most democratic option, but I'm not convinced that it could work everywhere in practice.

Allowing so many minority parties to get in on the action at a parliamentary level is certainly democratic, but it could cause all kinds of problems in actually allowing government to function. Even within parties that are broadly aligned along the same axis there are power struggles, differences of opinon and imperfect compromises. Proportional representation just seems to create the potential for even more of this, by making coalitions more likely, and by weekening whichever party has a majority if it manages and overall one, all meaning that difficult disions are even more difficult and politics becomes even more tricky and confsuing, and half measured.

The idealist in me asks why we need parties at all, wouldn't it be so much more democratic if they didn't exist and we just voted on an individual we liked the look of? Instead we have a situation where we vote for one or the other party and the individual is of no real consequence. The result is that in this part of the world we'd return a trained monkey to parliament if it happened to be a labour candidate.

[lizziebeth-c.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about proportional representation. I also know it will never come in because the government will always be there with a huge majority because of the current system. The main body of the rant was against the American electoral system which is really really bad for representation. The winner of the election should at least be the person who got the largest share of the popular vote...