American Democracy

[Xanthor]

just wondering what peoples opinions are on if america is really a democracy or is it an oligarchy?

i personally think it to be an oligarchy because i only see people who are: 1) very rich 2)semi-rich and have very rich friewnds or 3)running against a poorer person; in office.

[bolshevik butcher]

I don't think capitalism is democratic, particularly in America you need a lot of campaign money to have a chance, so I suppose in that sense you could argue that it was much less democratic than some of the European systems. There is also the way the results are decided, based on who won n which state. I think that the only real democratic election system is Proportional Representation.

[NovelGentry]

There is also the way the results are decided, based on who won n which state.

Since you're not from America you may not understand this completely. Thus you may not be aware of how fare the illegitimacy grows.

The original goal of splitting electoral votes by state was to ensure that the most popular states would not always sway an election. The way it works, however, is not that a state's popular vote determines it's electoral votes. In fact, that's little more than a show. The only votes that matter EVER are the votes of the electoral college itself. If all of a particular state's people voted for the democratic candidate, the electoral college members of that state could STILL vote republican and the people's votes wouldn't mean didly. It's sorta "accepted" that this probably wouldn't happen. Such a blatant display of how purely undemocratic the system is would surely quirk Americans.

Growing up in a middle class school, one that at least had a decent enough resources to supply us with books at least every 15 years, I can assure you that we are not taught about the way our system works. At least not the reality of it. We are told about the "Electoral College' but it maintains some abstract term which most kids just assume means the system of electoral voting. We then believe as many do (because we aren't really explained at all) that when we vote, our votes determine the electoral votes. They may very well in certain cases... the point is, they don't have to, nor do they ENSURE that the electoral votes go the way the popular state vote went. Legally speaking, all bets are off once the electoral college starts actually voting.

If I'm not mistaken the members of the electoral college are picked by the house of representatives (I could be wrong on this).

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by NovelGentry
If I'm not mistaken the members of the electoral college are picked by the house of representatives (I could be wrong on this).

You are.

What actually takes place is rather arcane.

The poor sucker who votes for Joe Prettyface for president and Sam Southerner for vice-president is actually voting for a slate of people that he's never heard of. If his state has 10 Electoral Votes, then there are 10 people on the slate; if 20 Electoral Votes, then there are 20 people on the slate, etc.

These people are chosen by Joe Prettyface's party as "utterly reliable"; they are "pledged" to vote for Joe Prettyface in the Electoral College should Joe carry the state.

Some time in middle or late November (after the "election"), the winning party's slate gathers at the state capital and ceremonially votes for its party's candidate for president. These votes are then sent to the House of Representatives and counted -- another ceremony...usually sometime in December.

In the "old days", it didn't always work this smoothly...occasionally members of the Electoral College voted for someone other than they were pledged to. But I don't think this ever made an actual difference in the outcome. By now, I would imagine there are legal constraints in force that compel each member of the Electoral College to vote in accordance with the outcome in his/her state.

The original purpose of the Electoral College mechanism was the peculiar American institution of slavery.

You see, if electoral college votes had been allocated strictly according to eligible voters, the slave states would quickly have found themselves at a drastic disadvantage in presidential elections (and in their number of representatives in the House).

But counting each slave as, in the words of the constitution, "3/5ths of a man", this permitted the slave states a disproportionate and even dominant role in American politics up until 1860. Essentially, each white southern vote was worth a good deal more than each white northern vote.

Eventually, of course, enough Europeans emigrated to the U.S. and either stayed in the north or moved to the midwestern states as to overcome the advantages of the electoral college for the slave states. When Lincoln was elected, the slave-owners knew that the ballgame was over as far as dominating the U.S. and that independence was "their last hope".

Which indeed it was.

The electoral college is still "imbalanced" today, as is the U.S. Senate -- California has two senators as does Vermont or Delaware or any state...even though far more people live in California.

That's why you can carry a whole lot of small and medium sized states while losing the big states (and the total national vote) and still win the White House.

The Electoral Votes of any given state are equal to the number of representatives plus the number of senators.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[NovelGentry]

Well cheers to that then. Even after I'd read what I thought was proper documenation of the process, it was wrong. Like I said, it's strange that it's really not explained in school, we always had fake elections in school, and those resembled nothing of what the elections in the US were like, despite that they were supposed to make us aware of how our "democracy" works. I wish I could find the work I read about the House of Reps choosing them, cause it'd be interesting to see exactly what else was wrong. Basically what I'd gathered before from that was that they were selected (undemocratically) but the members of the house for the state, instead of going along with the president's ticket. Either way I suppose the outcome isn't changed. What you get is a single body of people really deciding the election in the end.


The Electoral Votes of any given state are equal to the number of representatives plus the number of senators.

I was aware of this, although I didn't think it was really relevant to the original question, which is partly why I think when I read that the house of reps chooses them it would seemed to have made sense.


By now, I would imagine there are legal constraints in force that compel each member of the Electoral College to vote in accordance with the outcome in his/her state.

This is the only thing I'm left really wondering about. Cause I was and very much am still under the impression that the way it falls is the way it falls. There were two cases recently in screwed up electoral votes in which both had to be voided before they were received. One of the problems was a misprint on the ballot if I recall in NY which had John L. Kerry (I think that's what it was), another one was where they don't print the names on the ballots (I forget which state) but the guy wrote in John Edwards under the President thing (obviously confused at the time). To my understanding legally speaking they had to take immediate action to void the improper results. Which is why I'm wondering if such a mechanism does exist.

Do you know for sure if there is such a mechanism?

[redstar2000]

The House of Representatives comes into the picture if no candidate has won a majority in the Electoral College. This did happen a couple of times in the early 19th century.

I am rather hazy on the details, but I think it works like this:

Each member of a state's delegation to the House of Representatives votes for a candidate; whichever candidate wins a majority of that vote effectively wins all the votes of that state's delegation. So if Joe Prettyface wins 27 of California's 52 representatives, then California's 52 votes go to him.

Then the speaker of the House calls the role and when they get to California, someone gets up and says "California casts 52 votes for Joe Prettyface".

A candidate that wins a majority of those votes is declared elected.

The interesting "ringer" here is that there is, as far as I know, no "law" or "regulation" that says a given representative must vote for his/her party's candidate. If you are a "liberal Republican", you're not required to vote for the conservative Republican candidate. You can vote for the "liberal Democrat" or any candidate that was on the presidential ballot in your state (perhaps any state).

And of course, a representative is not required to vote for the candidate that carried his/her state.

So it could be a rather "wild" affair, with deals and counter-deals being made and unmade and remade like crazy in the days leading up to the vote. (And there can be more than one vote if no candidate wins a majority on the first ballot.)

It is a statistically unlikely affair; what has to happen is that two mainstream candidates must come very close to evenly splitting the Electoral College vote while a third-party candidate carries one or two states. Under "normal" circumstances, one candidate will always win a majority of the electoral vote (since it's an odd number...535).

As I indicated, I do not know if there is now a law that compels the electoral college slate in each state to vote for the candidate that it's pledged to vote for...but I would imagine that there probably is.

It's not the sort of thing that I think they would leave to chance.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas