863
And Americans only have to pick one out of two opposing parties. How hard can it be?
The problem is two-fold. The majority of Americans are passively informed, and the majority of our news publications are compromised by wealthy owners.
Also, it’s two months, not three. Early voting ballots go out in the end of September.
and the majority of our news publications are compromised by wealthy owners
This is true in the vast majority of European countries too. If anything, you usually find an exception in a public broadcasting channel, which may or may not be influenced by political officials.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Passively informed is an understatement, also we're supposed to be available to work at a moments call, with limited time off availability. Am I gonna just tell my boss I'm leaving early to go vote?
I mean.... Yes?!??... If it's normal for a boss to chew you out for voting, then they're being more transparent about voter suppression than I thought.
load more comments
(1 replies)
People making a choice isn't the hard part. All 51 different territories having different rules for their elections is the hard part.
skill issue
Most of the problem States purposely fuck things up.
load more comments
(3 replies)
After enough elections, you get tired of picking the party that aligns with you on 4% of issues because it's ever so slightly higher than the other party which aligns with you on 0.5%.
You can get rid of your prime ministers pretty easily if they suck. We’re electing what is now essentially a king for at least the next 4 years.
Or hopefully, this time around, a Queen
lol I get what you're going for here but this is the most vote-blue-no-matter-who Democrat thing I've ever seen.
#girlboss #notenoughfemaledictators #lickheelsnotboots
load more comments
(1 replies)
my favorite UK shitpost was liz truss, very funny.
More education, please. I'm American.
How does this process function?
How does it change the ratchet right effect seen in the US?
In a parliamentary system, Prime Ministers aren't elected by popular vote, but instead chosen by Parliament. It's basically like if the Speaker of the House were also the President.
Fun fact: the US system was originally designed to work sort of that way, except they wanted the President to be chosen by all the state legislatures instead of Congress, for extra Federalist separation of powers. That's what the Electoral College is for: they couldn't do "one state rep = one vote" because each state has different numbers of constituents per rep and such, so they needed a "compatibility layer."
Then states immediately fucked up the plan by holding popular votes for Electors instead of having the legislature appoint them, and the rest is history.
Also, in most European states (France is similar to the US in that point), the head of state (president, king) is not the head of government (prime minister, chancellor). The former may be elected by popular vote, and has mainly representative tasks, the latter usually is elected by the parlament and drives the political decisions.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This makes sense. I'd add that the system of government in the US didn't function as intended in many facets and almost immediately. In respect to the electoral college today, American exceptionalism prevents us accepting that a direct democracy in choosing our President would sentence us to the mediocrity we fear most. We don't understand why we've an electoral college because we broke it before railroads and the cotton gin.
I appreciate the parliamentary system so far for its simplicity relative the US system. But, the good and bad consequences really depends on the nuance.
What compromise must be reached to prevent another election?
What offices are reelected? The entirety of parliament?
So the UK is probably the simplest to discuss because it doesn't have a constitution, and this means parliament is sovereign and decides everything by a simple majority vote.
They can pass laws saying that certain things need a super majority, but then they can just turn round and unpass them as well
This means that what you think of as the executive, i.e. the prime minister and all his helpers, can be changed by a simple majority, and an election can be called by one. They don't need to happen at the same time. The last parliament had three different prime ministers without an election, and it's common to switch prime ministers well before an election in order to create an incumbent advantage.
load more comments
(4 replies)
In parliamentary systems, the government needs to maintain the confidence of the majority. Any elected official can request a vote of confidence be held and, at least in Canada, certain votes are always considered votes of confidence (ex. the government's budget). If a confidence vote fails, parliament dissolves and can't do anything until a new parliament is formed. All seats are up for re-election. Since the government can't do anything until an election is held, they tend to happen very quickly.
The government can prevent a no confidence vote by swaying enough members. It's a bit of a non-issue if the current government already holds the majority of seats. If they don't hold a majority, they'll often make deals with a smaller party in exchange for their confidence. This can be as little as modifying a bill to as much as forming an official coalition and granting members of another party cabinet positions.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
There are also semi-presidential republics, which function differently. In those systems, the US-style president role is split into two different roles, president & prime minister. President handles foreign policy, the army and selects the prime minister with the approval of parliament, and the prime minister handles everything domestic. This separation of roles means the amount of damage an individual can do is much more limited.
Edit: Oh, I missed somebody already talked about the French system, which is a semi-presidential system. Oh well, leaving this up for posterity.
It's not the time that's the issue. It's the eye-watering sums of money you cunts donate to let a politician run a campaign.
What the fuck does someone need $450m for?! Use that to provide support for the homeless, feed the poor, and protect children that need a stable home. You could do so much with that money.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The US also has 5 times as many people as France.
Europe can have snap elections, but we don't try and have elections for every European country at once, with two leaders trying desperately to visit each one to win support.
You can have 5 times more people counting votes and organizing things. I dont understand this excuse. Democracy can scale, especially nowadays with technology.
European Parliament elections were like a couple of months ago.
They wouldn't need to visit each country, they don't even bother caring about more than 4 states in the US!
That presumes the EU would be dumb enough to try the electoral college on for size again
That's right we know where that shit came from you HRE and PLC descended fuckers!
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
It is kinda trolling how you can just call an election when you think your party will do best
But it can also go horribly wrong. For example, Cameron called the Brexit referendum without wanting Brexit, which did not go as planned
load more comments
(1 replies)
Some countries end up with a great PM because everyone else was made inelligible. Looking at you, New Zealand.
load more comments
(1 replies)
France is not the EU. This doesn't happen in other European countries because there are rules and proper times to make proper campaigns. I don't even think this is a good thing to joke about Americans because what was done in France was just plain stupid
load more comments
(5 replies)
Sounds unstable and scary.
edit: calm down, I'm sure 90% of the time it's a much better system than the US, but the way it is described in the title does not sound stable.
Usually we just vote, they find a coalition and it stays that way for a few years
About coalitions: they mean that the parties in power need at least 50%, so if there's not a single party with over 50% ("absolute majority") they need a partner. The big parties in my country usually get 20-30%.
Usually we just vote, they find a coalition and it stays that way for a few years
laughs in Italian
load more comments
(5 replies)
And then there's Belgium, which apparently holds the world record for longest time without a government. At least introduce time limits for negotiations, guys…
load more comments
(3 replies)
Some European countries have lower populations than a single US city.
Some European countries are small enough that you can drive the entire length in a single day.
Must be nice to have prime ministers who represent fewer people than the mayor of LA
Don’t be so American aka uneducated. They still have to have a full government and local governments. Just because they’re smaller than Texas doesn’t mean two guys can run the whole society. You guys really deserve Trump.
The United states has federal, state and local governments. And often county governments as well in the more populated states.
Just because i don't know if Serbia is a representative or parliamentary democracy doesn't make me uneducated. It means your backwater country is completely unimportant to the global community
Having three levels of government is standard. It's not a special American thing. Most countries have this outside of the really small ones. Even Serbia does, to a limited extent.
Excluding the de-facto independent province of Kosovo, The country has one autonomous province with its own government, namely Vojvodina in the North. Central Serbia however is not a province and doesn't have its own government.
The country is further divided into 117 municipalities and 28 cities, all of which have a local government. Six of the largest cities are additionally divided into city municipalities, which also have a local government. This means that depending on where you live in the country, you'll be subject to somewhere between two and four levels of government.
Just because i don't know if Serbia is a representative or parliamentary democracy
Hell, I don't even know if you say or repeat words!
Parlamentary democracy is one kind of representative democracy AKA republic.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Every European country is small enough that you can drive through it in a day.
Do you mean the electoral collage still travels by house to Washington? What is your point?
load more comments
(12 replies)
Let the Americans have their fun. They love plot twists, a bit of pageantry and pizazz. While they certainly don’t NEED a year-long election cycle, most Americans actively seem to enjoy it.
It creates opportunities to vigorously debate the opposition, run some nice smear campaigns, do a bit of backstabbing, schmooze the big donors, kiss a few babies and add in the odd assassination attempt. You just can’t fit all that drama in a one month cycle like we Europeans like to do.
load more comments
(1 replies)
If american democracy was good, other countries would be using it.
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
863 points (100.0% liked)
Political Memes
5426 readers
1523 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS