How Democratic are election?

[Kez]

aight

im currently writing an article entitiled "How Democratic are election?" obviously not, but i needd to show clearly why they are not.

First off i need statistics on how their results dont convey the publics demands.
First i need statistics on different countries and how they were opposed to the war.

then again if each on of you could bring good examples of your own country, where the government has made a deecision which is deeply hated (e.g. foundation hospitals, rail privatisation, for England). I need statistics not broad statements. im gonna draft its often so all of u can add your points then upload it. It should be brilliant, if we all work at it, regardless of ideology, were still unnited in our goal. And in this article im not going to state what should be done, as this would bring about divisions which i cant be fucked argue about...

anyway, the more international examples i have the better.

[Marxist in Nebraska]

A nifty example:

United States, nation with elections that does not serve the people...

Howard Zinn cites polls showing majority support for a massive reduction in the Pentagon's budget in the early 1990s. Neither party supported such a thing, despite the Cold War's end and the elimination of the only theoretical threat to the U.S. I believe Clinton made a tiny cut while the polls revealed support for cutting military dollars in half, I believe.

Or, more recently, George Bush losing the 2000 election and still being awarded the presidency by the Supreme Court.

EDIT: In general, polls may be a useful way to reflect public opinion, and contrast the polls with the actions of elected representatives.

[Pete]

Look at this:

Overall Election Results
Party Elected Leading Total Pop. Vote %
LIB 72 0 72 46.45%
PC 24 0 24 34.64%
NDP 7 0 7 14.70%
OTH 0 0 0 4.21%
Tot 103 103 100%
Last Update Fri Oct 3 12:45:18 EDT 2003 103 seats


These are from the Ontario Election 2003 which happened on Thursday October 2nd. Taken from CBC - Ontario. (http://www.cbc.ca/ontariovotes2003/)

A point of interest, the liberals, with 46% of the vote won 69 % of the seats. The PC with 34% of the vote won 23% of the seats. The NDP with 14% of the vote (up from the last election) won 6% of the seats (down from last election). The other parties (Green, CPC, Freedom, Family-Alliance, ProvincalConfederation, ect) had 4 % of the vote but no seats.

Obviously the way the election turned out had nothing to do with how people voted.


Edit: This is effect is not isolated to Ontario, but happens all across Canada. The system is commonlly called "First Past the Post." I know it doesn't directly fit into your questoin, but as you can see a majority of the voters in my province do not support the government which holds over 2/3 of the seats, and thus can do as they please.

[BuyOurEverything]

I seem to remember asking this before but I don't remeber what the answer was. There's no Alliance (Reform) Party in Ontario?

[praxis1966]

MiN's right about our last presidential election, but I personally feel that this was not our real problem. In the United States we have this funny little thing called the electoral college. Basically, this means that the general populus does not actually elect a candidate. Instead, we vote for someone who will later on go to a convention and vote for a candidate.

The people who vote at this convention are called delegates. They are the ones who really elect the president. The number of delgates a particular state has is determined according to its population. In other words, the larger the population of a given state, the more delegates it receives. While this idea may not seem inherintly bad at the outset, you must understand that the method by which delagates are sent to the convention is left up to each individual state.

The fact is, that in 48 of the 50 states, there is a winner take all policy in effect. In other words in Florida (my home state), if a Republican presidential candidate wins 49% of the popular vote, a Democratic canditate wins 48% of the popular vote, and a third party candidate wins the remaining 3%, the Republican candidate wins all of Florida's electoral college votes. This is extremely significant since Florida represents the 3rd most populus state in the union (California and New York are first and second, respectively).

This is the real reason that Bush won the last election. If the electoral college did not exist, there would be no need for the Supreme Court intervention. Al Gore would have won the election by more than 500,000 votes, if in fact the election had been based on the popular vote.

[Pete]

Originally posted by BuyOurEveryth[email protected] 24 2003, 09:57 PM
I seem to remember asking this before but I don't remeber what the answer was. There's no Alliance (Reform) Party in Ontario?
We have no need for the Canadian Alliance, since our PC's where lead up until early last year by the infamous Mike Harris, who led his party so far right that there was no need for the CA to even come in, the PC's where doing their job.

[crazy comie]

Elections are also deeply affected by media byais

[Marxist in Nebraska]

praxis is right about the electoral college. My home state of Nebraska is rare in that we will actually divide the votes for a divided election. Of course, this state is so strongly Republican that the GOP always gets all five electoral votes, and usually only visits the state once during the campaign (the Dems do not even bother). This is a flaw in the electoral college--if we went by popular vote, you would probably see liberal candidates coming to Lincoln to speak to the teachers' union. There would have to be a greater effort to speak to us all... in theory. Of course, candidates that high in government can only be counted on to serve their corporate masters.

crazy comie is also right to bring up media bias, in how it subverts democracy. Chomsky and Herman, in their fantastic book Manufacturing Consent, document the decline and then move to the right of the British Labor Party. They note that the growing power and influence of the Tories coincided with the decline of the left-wing press in Britain after World War II. If the press is right-wing, then reality is molded into right-wing terms. Left-wingers are always going to lose when reality is defined in right-wing terms.

[kingbee]

fidel has said before (i will try and look it up when i have more time), than in western countries,

say 50% vote

usually its not a huge majority, say 60/30,

thus 60% of those who voted decide whos in power, and so only about 30% of the population vote this person in. which is 'democracy'

[Marxist in Nebraska]

Low voter turnout is a good point to be raised. Actually, voter turnout in the U.S. is usually 35-40%

On top of that, we only have two strong political parties. Most Americans are not represented by either one.

So we have two out of five people voting for a lesser of two evils... pathetic, really...

[Pete]

thus 60% of those who voted decide whos in power, and so only about 30% of the population vote this person in. which is 'democracy'


If you look at my example above, it is worse in canada. 60% of those who can vote, do. Of them, since we have many parties but still a system made for 2 parties, the one that wins often gets less than 50% of the votes but over 60% of the seats. It is hardly reflective of how people vote.

[Don't Change Your Name]

I want to add something related to what crazy commie said. The media only shows those candidates that put money. They are capitalists who can pay their campaigns and all their propaganda with false promises. So there isnt real democracy because as most people dont really care too much about voting the best option, and people is surrounded by 3 or 4 candidates at most, there isnt a chance to see what the small parties propose, so if you dont know the options you cant say you are democratically voting.

And do not forget to mention how fascist parties use free speech and elections to try winning and they, if they win by a miracle, then eliminate what brang them to power.

And do not forget about fraudulent elections, and that democracy is not only elections, and how anarchists like me do not get representation in this "democracy".

And do not forget (and here you have one of the most important historical facts to deny the pro-yanqui democracy) when in Chile, the fascist yanqui-supported Pinochet did a coup and killed the DEMOCRATICALLY elected socialist president Allende, and Kissinger said that they couldnt let a country go communist because of the irresponsible people. And that same date when that coup happened, but 28 years later, the yanquis felt their democracy attacked by the same people they once supported, who were never democratic at all.

[crazy comie]

On the media point you can see that the most popular pappers are also the right wing ones.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

I agree on most what El Infiltr(A)do say.

The proletariat has very little time and almost no room for individual development. In Capitalism, life seems to be designed to gain (material) wealth. Almost everything in our daily ritual is at one way or another related with making money. This absorbs a lot of time and makes the people focus on matters from which they can get money out. It's an uphill struggle in which most people fail. This results in desperate masses, which doesn't blame the system, but rather themselves or "accidents". While leftist politicians speak words which require some knowledge and understandment. The Right wing politicians speak populistic words based on these so-called "accidents" in the system.

[crazy comie]

pepole are being persuaded to become even more incentivised by t.v as well.

[SgtPepper369]

I think the past ten presidents were all richer than their opponent. This of course only includes republicans and democrats. Third parties definently get less advertisement out there. Equal oporotunity my ass. I think the only way america can have a fair vote is just have the cantidates put out their voice. Not their Face or history. That way there will be no prejudice among the voters. Honestly... do you really care if you're president is a jew or a christian, male or female, black or white. As long as they do a good job I could care less.

[profound]

it's so true, the american media sways the election a rediculous amount (as do all medias) but the difference is that some of the networks can be bought.... e.g. Murdoch's Fox News network told the public that bush had won, long before the votes had been properly counted, thus swaying the other networks to do the same (as they were trying not to look slow on the uptake) so in a matter of hours it was common knowledge on the news networks that Bush had won


i think thats how the story goes, alot of that comes out of stupid white men....... if anyone would like to make any changes to that, please do so.....

its the same in italy where Berluscconi (is that how you spell it?) owns about half the media..... i bit of a conflict of interest there don&#39;t you think?????? there HAS to be laws against that <_<

[crazy comie]

Berlasconie is a twat and the richest man in italy