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.
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.
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.
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
Good summary
Electoral college is fucking weird
That you disallow prisoners to vote, but a felon can run as a candidate
That you end up in situation where there are hours long lines and you don’t have one station per, say, 1000 people at most
Registering to vote is weird, but that is i understand mostly a consequence of not having countrywide ID standard. In my country you’re automatically registered where you live, and IDs are free of charge and mandatory to have (not driving license or passport. there are fees for these)
Election isn’t on weekend, there’s zero reason why it couldn’t be or it could be made national holiday. There was even free public transit for election day in my city, but that one was paid by the city
That some of people (republicans) seem to be into politics in the same way ultras seem to be into football, it’s still fucked up but i’ve seen it in other places so it’s not that weird by now
That you end up in situation where there are hours long lines and you don’t have one station per, say, 1000 people at most
If you make it hard for the people you don’t like to vote, then they won’t vote. You never hear about rich white districts running low on election machines do you. Since the machines are provided by the state I wonder why that would be. 🤔
I am not American, but I believe the reason a felon can run is that the founding fathers didn’t want peoples political rivals to be able to bring charges to stop someone being president.
And how does that handle a candidate who is in prison, and how is it different?
but a felon can run as a candidate
No no this one is one of the good ideas in the American system. In dictatorships this sort of restriction can be and is used as a way to prevent political rivers from running for office.
Yeah, and for the same reason prisoners should be allowed to vote too
The rivers must run, lest they be dammed.
Oh shit I didn’t notice. As a proud grammar Nazi, I must now commit keppusu.
Non US citizens, what’s the weirdest thing about USA elections, compared to elections in your country?
I will probably get downvoted to oblivion for that but here it is: that one of your candidate was not put in jail already and is still legally able to run for presidency (note that I did not name said candidate, I would not want to influence US voters ;)
I like your optimism that by naming said candidate you would influence anyone!
Maybe I was a little bit sarcastic?
Why would you get down voted for that on a leftist forum?
There’s a downvote bot, sometimes people click the wrong button by accident, and this community is not leftist
When I see how some of our politicians can run away from justice, it isn’t that weird.
But our justice system is truly independent from the political one.
True your two remarks.
And we also have a few very questionable representatives/candidate to whatever elections around here, but so far none that has managed to get away from a failed coup at the previous election — sorry, it was unintentional but I may have hinted at the candidate I was surprised was still able to run tor presidency ;)
In my home country of Finland, you can be elected from prison.
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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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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.
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.
First past the post. Electorate college. Overrepresentation of smaller States. Gerrymandering. PACs.
And thats just the ones that pop up immediately. For calling yourself a democracy, your system is quite rigged.
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.
Only in FPTP systems
No, in systems where there is a dictator, corruption and no realistic opportunity for other parties to get a foothold.
Well, obviously. :P
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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.
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.
This but also that in some US states you don’t need a valid ID to vote
Needing an ID is fine in theory, but in practice many older folks who do not drive do not have one. In order to get one you need a certified birth certificate. In order to get one of those you usually need to deal with a lot of red tape, especially if you were born at home in a rural area.
People often forget how rural the US is. Sometimes it’s hard to document exactly who you are. Especially if you were born poor and black in the South.
Literally everything.
Maybe I’m just used to my comfortable parliamentary democracy.
You vote for your representative. Whichever party gets the most representatives gets power. It’s either a majority (meaning that they can do whatever they want because they got more representatives than all the other parties combined) or it’s a minority (meaning that to pursue their agenda they’ll need to cooperate and negotiate with the other parties because they don’t have enough representatives to do it themselves)
The leader of that ruling party becomes Prime Minister. He holds less power than a president because in reality he’s just the Prime Minister (First Minister among many) but he has more authority than the leaders of the other parties who didn’t win.
It just seems so simple compared to the lunacy to my south.
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? Or have some pretty severe issues in your life. I can imagine like 20-30% of racists around, or people who’ve been fooled by some charismatic character. But not half.
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.
Sure, it’s not 100% like that. We do face different challenges at times. But generally, if you’re working class, you could sympathize with a working class person from a different ethnicity. They’re pretty much the same as you. While this doesn’t apply to your fellow white guy nextdoor who is an architect. But somehow you take it out on the person who is way more alike you? That’s not rooted in objective reality or facts.
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.)
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.
That campaigning starts over a year in advance… then you don’t even have a switchover for two months.
