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.
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.
That they’re held on a work-day, to disenfranchise those that can’t take the day off.
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.
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”.
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We can vote without ID in Canada, we need to swear that we are who we are.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Good summary
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.
Having only 2 realistic choices
That’s very common though.
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.
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No, in systems where there is a dictator, corruption and no realistic opportunity for other parties to get a foothold.
Not at all.
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FPTP voting system
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Voting isn’t compulsory so a lot depends upon on riling up your base
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Voting is on a Tuesday instead of a weekend (or a public holiday)
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Political parties draw up the electoral boundaries instead of an independent body
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The absurdly long leadup to an election
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The amount of money thrown around
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That campaigning starts over a year in advance… then you don’t even have a switchover for two months.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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the money!
The fact that there is a chance that the fascist will lose. Unimaginable in Russia.
I wouldn’t know where to start. Maybe the electoral college and that nobody updated this in centuries. Makes it borderline undemocratic IMO. Especially the winner-takes-it-all formula that makes you have exactly 2 parties, with none of them really incentivised to do what the citizens want. At least on a national level. And the people can choose to either vote for one of them, whether they like them or not, or throw away their vote.
And the next thing are maybe the people themselves. I can’t imagine how half a population would like a convicted criminal, who’d like to make everything more expensive for them and doesn’t like democracy (which is kinda something the USA is proud of, historically) and would like to get rid of it. Which is completely detrimental to how and why the entire country was founded. And I mean you kind of have to be a racist yourself to like other fascists/racists?
I can imagine like 20-30% of racists around, or people who’ve been fooled by some charismatic character. But not half.
You have too much faith in humanity. A smart-sounding Greek guy or another said that democracy is only possible with a homogenous population, otherwise the country will tear itself apart I don’t agree with that conclusion, but the process they described is true, in both Europe and America. The way I see it, America has been ethnically diverse for a lot longer so they’re closer to or at the peak of the allergy-like reaction you witness in an ethnically diverse democracy. Meanwhile Europe only started feeling it recently because of Middle Eastern immigration, and it’s looking like that. Europe will in all likelihood go down a worse version of the same trajectory we’ve seen unfold in America.
I don’t think this has anything to do with diversity and ethnicity. I’ve watched people from very different cultures who also look different to me. Studied together with them or shared a flat. I live in a region that’s been a melting pot for quite some time now. And while we certainly cook different dishes and occasionally go grocery shopping at different places… Or go to a different hair salon… It seems to me we value exactly the same things in life. Struggle with the same things at work or in our every day lives. And generally have very similar goals. I think there is basically no difference. It’s mainly made up and made to believe. Certainly not the true reason for anything but some pretend argument for something else.
I live in a region that’s been a melting pot for quite some time now
If you’re in Europe, I’d wager that your country has a thriving right wing movement that has seen increased support over the last 10 years, and that they gained that support at least partially by promising to stop immigration or deport immigrants. Otherwise, well, there’s too little information here for me to say anything.
That’s not rooted in objective reality or facts.
It’s objective truth that a significant fraction of any population is deeply xenophobic and doesn’t view these things as you do. I’m making a claim about the human psyche, not ethnic differences, so you’re not really refuting my point.
If you’re in Europe […]
Germany, Ruhrgebiet. So a region that has been shaped by coal and steel industry. Though it’s one of the examples where the change from heavy industry to modern economy worked out relatively well. But that means we’ve had lots of immigrants come here to work since the nineteenth century. I always like to think hating on immigrants is like taking a crap in your own backyard. Because that’s my heritage and part of what constitutes this region.
Of course it’s way more complicated than that. Sometimes we forget where we come from. And it comes with different implications when it’s been Polish immigrants who are catholic as well, or Turkish people who grew up with a different prophet. (And they do weird things like go to sunday school on friday, or take off their outdoor shoes before prayer.) And after that (in recent times) it’s been other countries like Syria where people came from due to war etc.
I suppose there is a parallel to the USA. US history is a lot about migrants, let alone a few Native American people. But that was a long time ago.
your country has a thriving right wing movement
Yes. That’s something we all struggle with. And it worry about that. I think there is a multitude of factors. Society should put in some effort to fix this. We have stupid people, people who aren’t stupid but easy to manipulate, we have people in precarious situations and it’s not healthy to leave them behind. Especially without any perspective but with access to Telegram to radicalize themselves and each other. I’m not surprised this turns into hatred against random things. Immigrants, the establishment, … I suppose that’s a big reason why we have some 20-30% of people voting for some complete nutjobs. But: It’s a minority here. And that’s (still) a big difference to the situation in the USA. But we also have a lot of the same problems. And I suppose another thing is the world getting more complicated and people having to deal with it. They’re looking for answers. And if we don’t have any, someone else will make up some simple answers and hand those out to everyone.
I’m making a claim about the human psyche, not ethnic differences […]
You’re right. I’m reasoning about things and none of that is about thinking. It’s about emotions and feelings, wanting to be heard or a lack of (felt) perspective genuinely turning into hatred. It’s all about human psyche and manifesting in a very, very unhealthy dynamic. I wish us all the best. And I really hope there is a way to reconvene and steer towards a future that’s not dominated by hate and small-mindedness.
(Edit: And btw, my perspective doesn’t translate to other parts of Germany. It’s a whole different story there. And people might not even have any immigrants as neighbors if they live in other parts of the country.)
Only two parties.
The electoral college nonsense (only thing that should matter is the number of votes).
Voting restrictions (if you are a citizen, you should be able to vote).
Not making election day a national holiday
