For me it is the concept of registering to vote. I am citizen so I have the right to vote automatically and only thing I need to provide is some accepted ID.
That we allow one party to use disenfranchising legitimate voters as a election strategy. It’s always one party.
Some things come to mind:
- Each state could theoretically name a different candidate (all that primaries bullshit)
- No unified federal law for voting for the fucking president; each state has different voting laws
- Parties have to be registered at a state level and ONLY Rep and Dem exist on all 50. What the fucking fuck
- Unlimited money spending
- The fucking electoral college. Winner takes the whole state.
- Election on tuesday (if i recall, that’s a leftover of ye olde times because it’s when rural people were more likely to be around cities)
'muricans somehow insist they are a democracy despite all the hurdles, weird laws and obvious gatekeeping that make it a very shitty republic where votes are NOT equal.
For comparison, Brazil’s elections for president and state governors happen on the same year/day (also for some senators and federal deputies, but let’s focus on president). It’s direct vote counting, majority (50% + 1) wins. If no candidate gets more than half total votes, the 2 better voted candidates go to a 2nd turn, which happens 4 weeks after the 1st. Election happens on a sunday and there’s an electoral tribunal that handles all the logistics across all 27 states.
Regarding expenditure, it took us a while to stop allowing corporations to finance candidates’ campaigns (thanks in no small part to a supreme judge who wanted to keep that legal), the downside is that candidates with rich “friends”/families still have a significant advantage, since direct individual donations are still allowed.
Some states actually split the electoral college vote. Us elections are truly bonkers
https://electoralvotemap.com/which-states-split-their-electoral-votes/
The PACs. I think this practice should be considered blatant corruption in any democratic system as it enables large corporations and wealthy individuals to predetermine which candidate or party has even the slightest chance in elections. In my home country, of course, there are private political funds as well but those are not nearly as important in our system as there is solid public funding for political parties based on past election results. I might be wrong but I always thought that the insane amount of private money that fuels US elections boils down to the US being a plutocracy rather than a democracy.
The weirdest thing, the thing that I have the hardest time understanding, is how many people vote for Trump. There was just a survey here in Denmark asking how many would vote for Trump. It was 8%. That number I still find a bit high but I can understand it a little bit. 8% of people voting for something very harmful seems almost inevitable I guess. Some people just aren’t educated or informed enough.
But the fact that close to 50% of americans choose to vote for Trump, and that in some states, it is even more than 50% - that I don’t think I will ever understand. That is madness.
I think his main “selling point” that’s a bit unique to the US is his hard stance on the southern border. Too many white people are afraid of us becoming another Latino/Hispanic country.
Ikr? Feels like they are aggressively breeding sociopaths over there.
They are. The Republican playbook in every state is to slash education funding, make abortion and birth control as hard to access as possible and then wait 20-30y for a big poorly educated population to grow that they can control easily with media and the Jesus
It’s much less than 50%. 2020 had the highest percentage of eligible voters actually vote in US history, it was about 67%. About 70% of Americans are eligible to vote and of that 70% about a third voted for Biden, about a third for Trump, and about a third didn’t vote. So a little over 20% of Americans chose to vote for Trump last time. That number is still too damn high but it’s not as bad as half.
That just makes me think, how can those people not voting just sit idly by and watch? I don’t understand that either.
Some people are genuinely apathetic or feel like it doesn’t directly impact their life, but a lot of people fall for the propaganda of “both sides are the same” and that it makes no difference either way, and a lot of people are intentionally disenfranchised by various voter suppression efforts by Republicans. Then there’s the electoral college nonsense which leaves the populace of 43 states with essentially no say in who the president is, leading some to wonder why they should bother, not being mindful that their vote may carry weight for the federal legislature and state/local elections. And many people are just too busy surviving to worry about anything else.
For my part, voting straight Democrat in a heavily Republican-leaning state, my vote literally means nothing at all because my state will inevitably give all of its electoral college votes to Trump, and will elect nothing but Republicans to the federal legislature and for almost all state/local offices. But I voted on the first day of early voting, and I will vote in every election, because we have to show support for change if we ever want there to be change. There are enough left-leaning people in my state for it to be a swing state (hell, we had a Democrat for governor 2003-2011, and he was popular), but so many see their votes as meaningless simply because their fellow left-leaners also aren’t voting…
Some people just aren’t educated or informed enough.
There’s a lot in your guess. Look at a map of the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states: the Atlantic and Pacific coasts are not red, but the ‘inner’ states. These people hardly know that the countries outside really exist.
If nobody reaches 270 electoral votes, rather than having a second round, the congress decides who wins. FPTP in general. And that most states would give all electoral votes to a candidate with 51% of the vote.
51%? 50% + 1 vote!
Afaik just a plurality can be enough
Yeah, technically the person with the most votes wins but I was just saying that 50% + 1 voice guarantees a win.
Everything being voted on at once even if it means that the States have control over the federal elections, that’s weird as fuck to me… In Canada provinces handle their elections, cities handle their elections (although they might all have to hold them on the same day depending on provincial laws), the federal government handles its own elections.
Numbers starting coming out before all polling stations are closed is also stupid.
The first one makes more sense when you realize that America was originally supposed to be somewhere between one large state and X independent states in an EU-style union. Presidential elections are the federal government asking the states who they want to be president and the states then asking the people (technically they don’t have to do that part AFAIK). It’s weird but internally consistent at least.
Indirect voting? Why would I trust my vote to someone else claiming they will honour my choice.
Edit: also gerrymandering, registering to vote, not having the election on a holiday so everyone has a chance to vote, candidates for presidents being voted for before the vote??
The electrical college was, as I understand it, originally installed in the event the population voted really, really stupidly - to avoid the “tyranny of the majority.” If course that’s not actually how it works. It’s a dead theory and the whole process should be kicked off a cliff and replace with some kind of ranked choice system. At the federal level, if nothing else.
Ah, so it’s a ‘you voted wrong’ safeguard. :|
If the electoral college had worked as intended, Trump would not have won in 2016*.
So, yeah, get rid of it. It’s not working anyway.
- You could, of course, consider the attitudes and biases of the founding fathers and come to the conclusion that they would have preferred to see a man win instead of a woman. However, I don’t think that’s fair. Even in their lifetimes they were shifting their views based on their experiences. If you are going to ask them what they would do today, then you have to give them the benefit of having experienced the events of the last 248 years. You have to assume they would have continued to grow.
the money!
The fucking shows your politicians put on. Like going places and then having some monologue in front of a bunch of people. Not even a debate or something… Weird as fuck to me.
Being registered “as a republican/democrat” is weird.
Electoral college is weird AF
One party trying to stop people voting is weird.
Queuing for hours to vote is weird.
Purging voter rolls is weird.
Rallies are weird.
Townhalls are weird.
Flags everywhere is weird.
The orange one is super weird.
FYI registering with a party affiliation is so you can vote in their closed primary election (where they pick candidates to run in the general election)
Anyone can register with any party, or none, and change their affiliation at will.
Electoral college is weird AF
I think it’s less unique than people think. In France, there is an electoral college specifically for the Sénat, which is a secondary legislative chamber compared to the Assemblée Nationale. They can amend law proposals after they are submitted by the Assemblée, but in case of conflicts, it’s the Assemblée that decides.
The college is made of people locally elected in various types of previous local elections. I think part of the reasons for this system is to have a representation of every locations that is not only proportional to the population. For example to prevent populated areas from dictating laws to unpopulated areas that don’t make sense for their local circumstances (typically around urbanism and transportation).
It may make sense for specific services which are naturally bias and unfair (can’t think of any that would warrant it), but for general governance weighting citizens votes differently for any reason is entirely anti-democratic.
Also the UK’s House of Lords is no better. Giving a bunch of historically elite landowners authority based on wealth and birthright is fucking disgusting.
Electoral college is weird AF
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
It was just added because it was the only way to launder slave votes for slave states, if you did it 1 vote per person then who got to choose who the slaves voted for?
We need to fix it, but there’s no way in hell they’ll give up their most precious possession, no matter how wrong it is.
That might have been revolutionary in 1776, and cut it in 1950, but its the 21st C — as long as the electoral college exists the US should not be viewed as more than a pseudo-democracy at best.
Good summary
Townhalls are weird.
Town halls? As in the building or does this mean something else? Aren’t town halls quite common and normal elsewhere?
Flags everywhere is weird.
We kinda do this in Denmark too tbh. I personally don’t find it that weird due to that.
I think they’re talking about town hall meetings.
I’m not sure about the format but I know that towns in Denmark also occasionally calls for meetings. This doesn’t sound that weird to me
Townhalls are a type of political event. They are typically small forum events held in places like town halls or school gyms and involve the politician giving a short speech typically limited to a single issue or current event followed by a longer period where the audience asks the politician questions. It’s not limited to campaigning, legislators often hold these events outside of elections. Theoretically they give the politician the opportunity to hear issues and concerns that their constituents most care about but mostly they are used to drum up support for legislation that the politician already supports.
Hmm okay. I do think we have something similar here where there might be meetings that we call “citizen meetings” where anyone is invited to come and hear about a current political topic. It’s mostly informative and people can ask questions and stuff, not related to campaigning or elections mostly I would say. So yea I don’t think that is too weird honestly.
Having only 2 realistic choices
That’s very common though.
Only in FPTP systems
No, in systems where there is a dictator, corruption and no realistic opportunity for other parties to get a foothold.
Not at all.
No, not really. Only some parts of the english-speaking world use FPTP and it’s not that common to have only 2 choices unless you have that system.
FPTP is not the only form of being limited to two (or fewer) choices. Look at Georgia, Cambodia and Thailand as a few examples. Vietnam, Russia and China for other limited-choice countries. Not sure what the “english-speaking” part is relevant for.
Well the map includes Canada, US, UK and India, and some african territories that I imagine may have been UK colonies at one point (I could be wrong), hence english-speaking world.
I think those are particular examples but if you look at most of the EU, I think there are more political choices than just 2. Here in Denmark there’s sometimes a discussion that there are too many political parties. We currently have like 12?
Europe and the EU are a very small part of the world as a whole, 60% of the world lives in Asia, with the biggest countries in the world having two or zero choices.
There can be plenty of political parties (a la the UK), it doesn’t mean there is the possibility of electing them all.
That they’re held on a work-day, to disenfranchise those that can’t take the day off.
I mean yes, but the real disenfranchisement comes from making sure the lines are hours long for the only polling station in your county (while every suburban school is a polling station in rich neighborhoods).
We had laws against that (not that they were followed), but the Supreme Court struck them down because “they weren’t needed anymore”.
Isn’t that quite normal even in other countries? I believe we do it quite commonly in Denmark.
Yes. In the UK, our elections are always on Thursdays. No one has ever complained about it because it’s literally not an issue.
The idea that it’s an attempt at disenfranchising people because you have to vote either before or after work is laughable.
The difference I suspect is in the ease of which we have access to local polling stations within walking distance of our homes, and how short the queues are, if there are queues at all.
In the US these problems can be magnified, especially if everybody is trying to pile in to the stations (or just reach them) within the one hour they have before their 12 hour shift, etc.
The rallies, with celebrities and stuff. Bizarre.
Everything in America is a circus.
AskLemmy is not the right community for US politics. Locking.
The fact that there is a chance that the fascist will lose. Unimaginable in Russia.
