Subject: United States: Election Time

how us elections work

Obama should be shot soon and it should not be by mad people....

please do not state in a public forum that you support the assassination of a world leader, thanks.

Huge victory for Barrack Obama, but when looking at the amount of votes he got and the amount of votes McCain got it's a much less significant win. 59 million against 53 million, so far.

It was actually one of the biggest wins for a long long time. Biggest one by a democrat in over 40 years.

Now let's see if he can fulfill the hopes placed in him.
People are awaiting real miracles from him but it can't really get much worse so let's see! :)

In Switzerland we have the "best" democraty in the whole world :)
In the last 20 years more then 1/2 from all votings about law were in Switzerland. And we are proud about this fact :)

I know that the democracy is working very well in Switzerland. In Switzerland people can easily create a national political debate and a majority of votes can stop politicians from pushing certain decisions.

In that way America is not a very democratic country. You can only choose between A and B (okay, you can also vote for C, but that doesn't matter as C won't get a significant amount of votes anyway). In the Netherlands such a system is socially totally unacceptable.
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There are also problems in Switzerland, its somethimes too much democraty. Because its really hard for the gouvernment to make a desicion (the people can always stop everything). So it goes sometimes really long until something happens :)
But most of the European countries are well working democracies...

We have the same problem in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands we use the so-called 'poldermodel'. In the Netherlands, our ancestors always have struggled against and with water. There are big rivers in the middle and eastern part of the country (the Rhine, the Meuse, the Waal, the Scheldt and the IJssel) and other parts of the country because they are below sea-level, the official lowest part is -6.76 m NAP (Normaal Amsterdams Peil, Normal Level of Amsterdam). Because of this battle against and with water people had to cooperate and the first local governmental bodies (they still exist) were found in the 13th century, the so called 'Waterschappen' and 'Hoogheemraadschappen' ('Wetterskippen' in Frisian, 'Water Control Boards' in English). Because the water problem was everyone's problem all people, indifferent from social class or family line, had to cooperate. This idea leads to a situation where the majority of votes doesn't count like it works in the United States, but that all minorities get what they want where majorities get more what they want. An example of this is for example an poll for what people want to do with a unused terrain of 100m^2 near a town. 60% of the people want to plant a forest, 20% of the people want a lake, 15% want and industrial area and 5% want a playground. In a lot of countries this would mean that a forest would be planted, but in the Netherlands it means that a forest of 60m^2 would be planted, a lake of 20m^2, an industrial area of 15m^2 and a playground of 5m^2 would be created (all numbers are imaginary). This makes that governmental decisions take a very long time and creates a lot of 'bureaucratic 'rompslomp''.

What happens with Obama's and Biden's seats in the senate?

they're burned

please do not state in a public forum that you support the assassination of a world leader, thanks.

world leader? lol

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what's so lol about that? A world leader is the leader of a country.

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I like the system of the US. For example in Argentina, the one that gets most of the votes wins. So basically, the one that gets Buenos Aires State wins (Pop of Buenos Aires 20M, Pop of total Argentina 38M). Right now the influence of other states are minimal in the decision. With the US election style, even if Bs As should be the one that gets more EV (kind of California in the US) still the candidates would need to make campaign in the rest of the states.

Right now, most of Bs As goes for 1 political group, so half of the population goes for that group, meaning they have great chances of winning. With the US system, even if 100% of Bs As votes for that group, still won´t win the election, since the other states can influence in the final decision.

But, what do you prefer?
The representation of the people or of the cities?

(I don't live in the main city)