Having just come back from a wee holiday, and some digital detox, I find this book up for review. As I live in Scotland, U.K. ( I make the distinction as we have slightly different voting systems for different elections in Scotland as in England), reading the book has informed me a bit more about an alien democracy. I was intrigued to note Unca Sam's mention of "major political parties" and I wonder, apart from Democrats and Republicans, what they are, or were. Do these other parties still exist, or has the U.S.A coalesced into a 2 party state? If they do still exist, what is their power base and do they influence which Dem or Rep candidate gets elected?
All the points about voting and finding out what the parties and their candidates stand for, or advocate, is so important. Problem is trusting them to go through with what they promise, as, often, the promise becomes an aspiration, then something that can't be done for many and varied reasons. By that time that candidate is in parliament, or whatever the American equivalent is.
To explain the voting system here in Scotland, we have a vote every 5 years for the Scottish parliament which is by a form of proportional representation - deliberately imposed to try to ensure the SNP did not gain power in Scotland. Fortunately that backfired as a big majority of voters voted for them. We also have a vote, supposedly every 5 years nowadays, for the Westminster parliament where non-devolved matters are proposed and voted on. Obviously, there are local council elections, and here as in the other elections, there are a number of candidates from various parties standing.
The problem of the Westminster elections as a first-past-the-post system with highly unequal voter numbers in the different costituencies is that there can be a govt. elected with a majority of M.P.s but a minority share of the vote. Some forms of PR can lessen this problem. It used to be the case that in the U.K. we had a 2 party system, with some interference run by the Liberal Party, who were often a minor 3rd. party, often not gathering many M.P.s on a reasonably big vote. Now though, there are other parties trying to get reps elected, again gaining sizeable votes but little or no representation in Westminster. First-past-the-post doesn't work well with more than 2 parties. In Scotland we have a choice of candidates from 5 parties who can be described as popular, plus others such as UKIP; SLP and of course, independents. A p.r. system allows more voters to have the chance of someone they fancy putting their views forward at Holyrood.
I was also interested to find it was a private company who issued this book. It seems to me that this sort of publication would have been a govt. issue as voter interest and participation is vital for any democracy.
But don't you think that the different voting methods shown in the book, and nowadays problems with hanging chads, miscounting and the increasing bile projected by different side to their opponents, could put "the man in the street" off? Also. I remember a few years ago here, there was an uproar as voters said they didn't know how to fill out a voting form - it was too complicated! I tend to agree with narfstar and his opinions, something I thought I'd never find myself saying
Coming back to the U.K. it seems that fewer people are voting, especially in Westminster and local council elections, where the % is well below 50% in most cases. Perhaps we need more of this sort of publication to encourage "the man on the Clapham omnibus" to get out and vote - or perhaps our politicians should be a bit more open and honest with the electorate.
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Topic: Week 173 - Your Vote Is Vital! (Read 6534 times)
