A Pride Regained
 

As most of you probably have guessed,I have been a liberal,progressive Democrat all of my life.I stand quite a few metres left of center in most of what I believe is right and true in what it takes to practice Democracy. Well,I just finished watching the Democratic National Convention and let me say:I am so impressed with John Kerry's acceptence speech.The first three nights of the convention,I was at work.So I had to listen to some of the most magnificent speeches from former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton,Threasa Heinz Kerry,Barack Obamo and John Edwards on a radio through a small set of ear plugs.Tonight it all came together with the accetence of the nomination of John Kerry to be our next President. This man is a uniter.I feel he is totally honest with a new and much needed direction.I am impressed with his determination to send the message that this country can still be a becon of hope and promise to our people and to the rest of the world.The Democratic Party has never been the left leaning party of "tax and spend" liberals but it has been the party that has been inclusive to all. Tonight the entire Democratic party in many of the diverse people who over the past three nights spoke so elequently to the dreams we have for a brighter future and the steps toward a pride regained.

I'm glad to hear you're happy with things, that is good .... just have to say though, that I don't think I ever lost my pride in this country. I love the diversity and the opportunities.

The Daily Show just said Sharpton's speech galvanized the party, too.

A good convention, definitely.

As a registered Democrat, I've been keeping close tabs on the Convention as well, and I've been so impressed with all of the speakers. I'm also not ashamed to admit that the September 11th memorial had me sobbing in my living room. The speeches by Clinton, Gore, and Carter just had me amazed. I've read the text of each of these several times, and they still leave me stunned. I am so happy with the way that the whole Party is rallying behind Kerry and Edwards in this election. I think that we've gained a unity that was lacking in 2000, and that lack prevented the win, but this year... :)

I shall stop my political pandering now and just enjoy this time.

Gentlefolk,

Good Luck!

As an outsider I must admit I am impressed with John Kerry.

This man will not jump into war without good reason I am sure, he knows for real what it is all about and he knows how to lead under exteme pressure.

To hear that he wants to bring in a health care system available and affordable for all Americans is something that I think is sorely needed in the worlds most prosperous country.

Wonder if social change like 4 weeks annual holiday for employees could be considered too.

I just hope that the election is not brought to a farcical result like the last one. I reckon the electoral college is a crock of shit, let the candidate getting the majority of the votes cast by the voters be the president.

Can't wait to see the last of George W.

i gotta say that i luv being an american and being able to vote and be able to pick who i want as pres. and as unpopular(in this thread) as this sounds im NOT democrat. repblicans generally are more military oriented and since im very pro military ive always voted republican. ya bush has his down falls (mian one being the against gay marraige thing) but i feel all have thier downfalls and i will stand behind our military.

nikki

lakritze~ I also caught the speeches, I will with the Republican convention too. I must say Obama was magnificent. And John Edwards does this cute little nervous thing with his tongue :slurp:

Grumble

Many people think that there is a single election for the US president. This is not so. The US has 50 statewide ones. The winner of each state gets all of that state's votes in the Electoral College except in Maine and Nebraska, where the votes may be split. The Electoral College has 538 votes, which is the number of seats in the House of Representatives, plus 100 for the Senate plus three for the District of Columbia. All these elections occur on the same date, and so appear to be part of a single whole.

Well as an outsider, the thing I noticed was when Edwards said that they will go after the terrorists and destroy them. That is the first time I have heard the word destroy used.

Loved Mrs. Kerry - sexy lady!!

I wouldn't let her loose on the global diplomatic stage too much though. Maybe just Europe.

I kinda think that Theresa Heinz Kerry has an Ingrid Bergman thing going for her. She is anamazing lady. It's about time we have a smart,hot,sexy first lady. Obama's speech was fantastic.He is a rising new star who will go far......

It's nice to know that SOMEONE knows,how the election process works!I have
made a vow to myself,not to post anything political.I only tell my close friends,how I feel!Otherwise there is just a BIG argument! Irish
P.S.Besides,I'm not mature enough,to discuss politics,without losing my temper! :rolleyes:

lakritze,

Keep in mind that this is the end of the beginning. There is a lot of hard work that must be done over the next 3 months to turn it into the beginning of the end. I doubt that the Republicans will let Mr. Kerry and the Democrats enjoy the traditional “bounce” in the polls given by the convention. They have already set up a website, DemsExtremeMakeover.com. I got the message there that the Democrats are so ideologically bankrupt they need political plastic surgery to make them look like Republicans to ordinary Americans. Some polls suggest that the Republicans’ charges of “flip-flopper” against Mr. Kerry have stuck.

Don’t ease up now – incumbents are difficult to beat.

www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19406/ If this is the worst thing that the conservatives can come up with,then is it enough? There are many gullable people in this land who will take this dreck as gospel but I think most of the country is waking up to the truth. What can the Republicans campagin on? Bush's 4 year record? Not if the want him reelected for another 4 years.So I guess they will have to resort to the only thing they do well. Slander,lies,tampering with the voting system in November like they did in 2000 and appealing to the lowest of the base feeling of fear and of course their grossly missguided view of patritism so expoused on in the publishings of their ilk such as Ann Coulter and David Horowitz.I wonder how a guy who has a spotty record at the very least in the Texas National Guard could even think of standing tall alongside somebody who saved the lives more than once of his fellow service men while on tour in Viet Nam?

Jseal,

Thanks for explaining the process to me. It seems apparrent to me that it has a glaring flaw. The people who vote for the losing candidate in each state get completely disenfranchised. In my opinion, the will of the people would be fully implemented if the states put in their votes on a proportional basis according to the votes received by the candidates. A narrow win in a state with a lot of electoral votes could sway the election and a candidate with less than a majority of the total vote could win, a la George W.

The Australian senate is elected on proportional representation as it is made up of 12 senators from each state plus 1 from the Australian Capital Territory (our Washington DC equivalent) and the Northern Territory.

Our house of reps are elected using a preference system till one candidate gets over 50% of the votes cast.

lakritze,

Interesting. You assert that the Republicans were guilty of tampering with the voting system in 2000.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

jseal---If I remember correctly,Lilith said once,that unless,you give examples,
things are only opinions.I have seen MANY ideas,but never an"in my opinion"!
Irish
P.S. my $.02.
P.P.S.jseal---I don't mean you!

Irish,

Indeed so sir. I have learned over time that people say the darndest things.

Grumble,

There are several voting systems which attempt to address the point you raise.

The upper house of our federal legislature, the Senate, is composed of two senators from each of the states - regardless of the state's population. This was implemented to prevent the heavily populated states from running roughshod over the preferences of the smaller states. This is an issue the EU must soon come to terms with. The proposed EU constitution is a reasonable, if bulky, attempt to do so.

The lower house, the House of Representatives, is proportionally representative of the population at large. A mandatory national census is taken every 10 years, and is used to determine the number of representatives a state may send to Congress. Needless to say, the census figures have on occasion been hotly contested. This proportional representation is made even more important as spending bills must originate from this body.

The executive, the President, here in the States comes to power in a way that is almost identical to that practiced by parliamentarian democracies such as those of Australia and the UK. The major difference is that here in the States we hold a special election to do so.

Consider the way that Tony Blair or John Howard came to hold their current positions. Having been elected as their party’s leaders, they campaigned for or against a set of policies. The electorate cast their ballots, and more candidates from Mr. Howard’s and Mr. Blair’s parties were elected to represent the people. Messrs. Howard and Blair then presented their credentials to their respective heads of state, who prudently entrusted the governance of the countries to the parties whose policies most closely matched those of the citizens

The way the Presidential game is played in the States is to appeal to the party to become the candidate, and to the electorate to become the President.

In the last presidential election, Senator Gore and Governor Bush each campaigned for or against a set of policies. The electorate cast their ballots, and the votes were counted in each state. If you now refer back to the composition of the Electoral College, you can see that it is vital to win the vote in the populous states. Governor Bush won the famous Florida count by some 530 odd votes, and thus was awarded all those votes for the Electoral College. He succeeded in winning the right mix of states.

Now for the entertaining part. Once this Great American Democracy has been saved from perdition for the nth time, and the votes are (eventually) in, the College of Electors meets. With much solemnity, they cast their votes for the forgone conclusion, and then they go home. That’s it. They have served their country well and faithfully, and having done so, return to the lives they led before the circus came to town. I always thought it somewhat anticlimactic, but there you are.

This part is true jseal




This is utter Frogshit

So the summery of that filibuster is that Grumbles is right in that a presidential candidate could win the popular vote and still lose the election?

Politics schmolitics....BRING ON THE BUSH TWINS!!!!!

& sadly, this was not the first time the system broke down, & probably won't be the last...it's an over-designed, anachronistic, Rube Goldberg contraption that was never right, & it's even more wrong as time goes by...

The Electorial College
Has no knowledge

Scotzoid

The electoral college was an attempt at rendering some sort of reliable reporting when communication and transportation WASN’T. It belongs in the shit-can with the thousand other governmental processes that didn’t work in the first place, so they were modified to what is a complete abomination and set in stone.

We are not the same as the UK. While the Queen is the Head of State here she is so only on paper. Also with the Party system here the Party can replace the leader. A Clinton would not happen here. The Party would replace him. Also we all HAVE to vote.

Catch22---Do you mean that voting is mandatory?Just asking,I REALLY don't
know! Irish

Very interesting.

Same is true in Brasil. Because many people are illiterate and/or uneducated, theperson who bribes the most (typically they stand just outside the voting booths) generally gets this segment of the popular vote.

And...if you don't vote...you can't register your car, get social services, and several other important things.

Seems to me that most elections in mature democracies are decided by the 5 - 10% of swing voters who sit on the fence for whatever reason. The politicians therefore spend all their time fighting for this non-partisan middle ground. The result of this is that they all end up sounding the same and taking the support of their ideological membership for granted and becoming uninteresting to a growing number of people, hence reducing turn out figures. I don't think forcing people to vote would make this situation any better as the whims of people would become even more influential.

The UK three party system nearly always means that the winning party and leader never has either a majority support of the population, nor even of those who bothered to vote.

I think it very advisable to restrict the powers of these people who are voted in on a whim by a minority of people.

Yes Irish. I wonder how things would go over there if everyone over 18 HAD to vote. It tends to bring out more parties and more issues. Shows up more in State voting. You get large swings from voters. If people are unhappy and becasue they have to vote they let the Govt know it.

Jseal,

The president is not only an elected official he is the head of state and can only be removed by resignation, death or after he has been impeached.

In Australia and the UK (Canda too I suspect), the prime minister who is the head of government is an elected member of the lower house (ie in US the house of Reps). A Prime Minister can be removed by his own party by electing another leader.

The President is not a member of either legislature to my knowledge.

There is a quite a different system in the US than in Australia or the UK.

The first past the post system, ie the person who get the most primary votes wins, is not a very good system if you have more than 2 candidates. if you had 6 or 7 candidates a person with 20% of the votes cast could win.

When Australia set up their constitution (adopted in 1900 or 1901) it was lucky to have different models to work from (especially the USA and Great Britain). It is how the Aussie houses of Parliament are the House of Reps and the Senate, it was adopted from the US Constitution. A preferntial system of voting was also adopted because to win a seat you have to get more than 50% of the vote. This is done by voting for candidates on the voting slip in order of your preference. after counting, the candidate with the lowest amount of votes is excluded and his preferences allocated to the other candidates, then the second lowest till one person has reached more than 50% of the votes. Any close results are automatically recounted.

I think that Australia was well served by the gentlemen who drafted the constitution. Very few amendments have been made.

To add to what Grumble has said. We will in time change from the Queen as head of State. What sort of republic we become only time will tell. I would hope people do not think we are like a Brazil or some other banana democracy. *hides his coffee & bananas*

Indeed. Nothing is a given. I recall when Clinton came out here and made a toast to our head of state Queen Liz and not a toast to Australia. The room went silent and even Howard didn't look to pleased.

Bilbo, I may be incorrect, but permit me to reference the relevant document:

The Constitution of Australia defines the Parliament as "the Queen, a Senate, and a House of Representatives" and vests the Federal legislative (law-making) power in the Parliament (section 1, Constitution).

The executive power (the governing and administrative power) of the Commonwealth of Australia is vested in the Queen (section 61, Constitution).

The Queen has the power to disallow any law within one year of it being made even after the Governor-General has given his assent (section 59, Constitution).

The Governor-General only holds office "during the Queen's pleasure" which means that the he can be dismissed by the Queen at any time (section 2, Constitution).

Sharni,

I may be incorrect, but a response to Bilbo’s response seemed to be in order. It follows the pattern of the thread, I thought.

I had posted what I thought accurately described the process of forming an Australian national government. His post, indicating that he was unpersuaded by my line of thought, justified my presenting the source document which I used to develop my idea.