Oh, it sure is heating up!

Last night I watched a BBC Four debate from 1.15am to 3.00am ('twas a late night), which was entirely enthralling, and even featured that annoying man from Fox News (Bill) having a go at the BBC because they said that the poor weren't being treated very nicely (although, they did have rather good evidence for this statement).

The BBC's own website is, as usual, brilliant for this kind of thing. It has just managed to bring me up-to-date with all the clauses and terms of election.

Now that I know the rules (and the 0.01% margin by which Bush won last election), I realise how flawed, in my opinion, the US elections are. They just aren't representative, and remind me of the Jerryrigging that occurred in Northern Ireland last century. Perhaps the US should try to be more, truly democratic, is they advocate it so. If they did, Gore would have one last time round, and there wouldn't have been even a nibble of dispute about that.

Blimey, even I'm excited about this one.

Pictures:
[top] That's right: you had better make friends with those black people!
[bottom] Our one looks better. :P

Posted by Fin at 10/31/2004 10:30:00 pm

6 Comments ~ Post a Comment

 Anonymous: Actually, George Bush lost the popular vote.
According to Elbridge Gerry, one of the Framers (although not signers) of the US Constitution: "The people are uninformed and would be misled by a few designing men..."
Read this article courtesy of MSNBC.com.
Here's some excerpts:
"Regardless of whether a candidate wins 52 percent of the votes in a state, or, in a multi-candidate race, say, 40 percent of the votes in a state, why does he get 100 percent of that state’s electoral votes?
Forty-eight states have laws that mandate a winner-take-all system for electoral votes: The person with the statewide plurality (even if it isn’t a majority) gets all the electoral votes.

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In the 1968 election, for example, Richard Nixon, competing with two other candidates, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace, won only 38 percent of the vote in Tennessee, but he got all of Tennessee’s electoral votes.

Maine and Nebraska do not use the winner-take-all system. In those two states, one elector is awarded to the candidate receiving the most votes in each of the congressional districts, and the remaining two electoral votes are awarded to whoever gets the most votes statewide."

and also

"...it is undemocratic. But the Framers of the Constitution did not want a system in which the president was chosen directly by the voters. “The people are uninformed and would be misled by a few designing men,� said Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry during the debate at the constitutional convention. (Gerry ended up not signing the Constitution.)

Since 1789, no majority in Congress and in the state legislatures has been able to muster enough support to change the system. "

 Fin: Brilliant information (especially Dooey).

The whole idea of the public being uninformed may have stood ages back when the constitution was made, but not really any longer. Perhaps now they're just more likely to be swayed by the media (like this!). For peace's sake I won't talk about where the true battle for electoral votes lies, but I will say that no election is truly democratic unless it is a person-by-person, vote-by-vote system. Otherwise, some people's votes matter more than others: an unfair and unwise system.

The more I consider the margin by which GWB won, the more I feel that there may be a serious need for a third party in the US. It doesn't really work like that, but over here it does provide a viable alternative (in the form of the Liberal Democrats).

The corpo-government scandal that Dooey speaks off appears to be rife in the US, from what I gather. Those kinds of things really do degrade the US as far as international opinion goes, and perhaps you should consider electing someone else solely on this issue.

I think that should GWB be re-elected, there will be more trouble for the US and the rest of the world simple for what he stands for to many people all over earth. At least with JK, you have some kind of hope that with a change in leader might come sensible and conscientious international policies that move the world towards happier times.

The US really does have the power to change the world, but to do so its public must first look to within the country. What is going wrong? Why do people think of us like this? How can we change this for the better? How can I change this for the better?

It's a bit of a cliché, but with great power comes great responsibility.

 Anonymous: look here.

 Fin: Ooh it really is getting exciting! I't like the Big Brother but... real! I think I'll stay up (late!) to find out who wins it.

You make like:
http://electoral-vote.com/
http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/graph.html
http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/state-graphs.html

 Anonymous: And Bush wins...

 Fin: Yeah - and you can't really argue with that.