For me it is the concept of registering to vote. I am citizen so I have the right to vote automatically and only thing I need to provide is some accepted ID.
Being registered “as a republican/democrat” is weird.
Electoral college is weird AF
One party trying to stop people voting is weird.
Queuing for hours to vote is weird.
Purging voter rolls is weird.
Rallies are weird.
Townhalls are weird.
Flags everywhere is weird.
The orange one is super weird.
Electoral college is weird AF
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
It was just added because it was the only way to launder slave votes for slave states, if you did it 1 vote per person then who got to choose who the slaves voted for?
We need to fix it, but there’s no way in hell they’ll give up their most precious possession, no matter how wrong it is.
That might have been revolutionary in 1776, and cut it in 1950, but its the 21st C — as long as the electoral college exists the US should not be viewed as more than a pseudo-democracy at best.
FYI registering with a party affiliation is so you can vote in their closed primary election (where they pick candidates to run in the general election)
Anyone can register with any party, or none, and change their affiliation at will.
Electoral college is fucking weird
That you disallow prisoners to vote, but a felon can run as a candidate
That you end up in situation where there are hours long lines and you don’t have one station per, say, 1000 people at most
Registering to vote is weird, but that is i understand mostly a consequence of not having countrywide ID standard. In my country you’re automatically registered where you live, and IDs are free of charge and mandatory to have (not driving license or passport. there are fees for these)
Election isn’t on weekend, there’s zero reason why it couldn’t be or it could be made national holiday. There was even free public transit for election day in my city, but that one was paid by the city
That some of people (republicans) seem to be into politics in the same way ultras seem to be into football, it’s still fucked up but i’ve seen it in other places so it’s not that weird by now
I am not American, but I believe the reason a felon can run is that the founding fathers didn’t want peoples political rivals to be able to bring charges to stop someone being president.
And how does that handle a candidate who is in prison, and how is it different?
Eugene Debs, the must successful American socialist candidate for president, was at one point running for office while in prison. Of course he lost so I can’t imagine it helped
I imagine if such a candidate won, the would forfeit their win by not attending the inauguration and not getting sworn in.
Nothing states WHERE the President has to be sworn in. LBJ was sworn in on Air Force One. I believe Andrew Johnson was sworn in at the house where Lincoln lay dying.
Well I don’t really expect someone in prison to win, but I don’t believe there’s any law about the location where the president gets sworn in. If a majority of voters chose that person, they could get sworn in in jail, immediately pardon themselves and off they go.
but a felon can run as a candidate
No no this one is one of the good ideas in the American system. In dictatorships this sort of restriction can be and is used as a way to prevent political rivers from running for office.
The rivers must run, lest they be dammed.
Oh shit I didn’t notice. As a proud grammar Nazi, I must now commit keppusu.
Yeah, and for the same reason prisoners should be allowed to vote too
Well to be honest we don’t have a justice system - we have a punishment system pretending to be a justice system.
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FPTP voting system
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Voting isn’t compulsory so a lot depends upon on riling up your base
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Voting is on a Tuesday instead of a weekend (or a public holiday)
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Political parties draw up the electoral boundaries instead of an independent body
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The absurdly long leadup to an election
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The amount of money thrown around
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That they’re held on a work-day, to disenfranchise those that can’t take the day off.
I mean yes, but the real disenfranchisement comes from making sure the lines are hours long for the only polling station in your county (while every suburban school is a polling station in rich neighborhoods).
We had laws against that (not that they were followed), but the Supreme Court struck them down because “they weren’t needed anymore”.
The fucking shows your politicians put on. Like going places and then having some monologue in front of a bunch of people. Not even a debate or something… Weird as fuck to me.
Gerrymandering. i dont know a second democracy where such a blatant version of voter suppression is allowed.
The PACs. I think this practice should be considered blatant corruption in any democratic system as it enables large corporations and wealthy individuals to predetermine which candidate or party has even the slightest chance in elections. In my home country, of course, there are private political funds as well but those are not nearly as important in our system as there is solid public funding for political parties based on past election results. I might be wrong but I always thought that the insane amount of private money that fuels US elections boils down to the US being a plutocracy rather than a democracy.
The entire process of the electoral college makes no sense at all. The only thing it accomplishes is making some peoples votes better than others. Which is so fucked up if you think about it.
That one party (the Republicans, just to be clear about that) tries to invalidate votes and tries to make voting as hard as possible AND THEN gets away with it.
That for the last 8 years one party keeps nominating a criminal who keeps admitting that he wants to fuck the country into the dirt. And people still vote for him. Every country has its idiots, but they usually are in the 5%-10% range. In the US it’s almost 50% of the voters. That is remarkable.
Oh, and the two party system sucks, too. They are not the same, fuck everyone who says they are. But it still does suck.
for republicans, if you don’t toe the line, you’re out. no longer part of the club. only 100% unwavering loyalty and fealty to dear great leader will allow you a seat at the table. it’s a cult.
Having only 2 realistic choices
That’s very common though.
First past the post. Electorate college. Overrepresentation of smaller States. Gerrymandering. PACs.
And thats just the ones that pop up immediately. For calling yourself a democracy, your system is quite rigged.
That we allow one party to use disenfranchising legitimate voters as a election strategy. It’s always one party.
Some things come to mind:
- Each state could theoretically name a different candidate (all that primaries bullshit)
- No unified federal law for voting for the fucking president; each state has different voting laws
- Parties have to be registered at a state level and ONLY Rep and Dem exist on all 50. What the fucking fuck
- Unlimited money spending
- The fucking electoral college. Winner takes the whole state.
- Election on tuesday (if i recall, that’s a leftover of ye olde times because it’s when rural people were more likely to be around cities)
'muricans somehow insist they are a democracy despite all the hurdles, weird laws and obvious gatekeeping that make it a very shitty republic where votes are NOT equal.
For comparison, Brazil’s elections for president and state governors happen on the same year/day (also for some senators and federal deputies, but let’s focus on president). It’s direct vote counting, majority (50% + 1) wins. If no candidate gets more than half total votes, the 2 better voted candidates go to a 2nd turn, which happens 4 weeks after the 1st. Election happens on a sunday and there’s an electoral tribunal that handles all the logistics across all 27 states.
Regarding expenditure, it took us a while to stop allowing corporations to finance candidates’ campaigns (thanks in no small part to a supreme judge who wanted to keep that legal), the downside is that candidates with rich “friends”/families still have a significant advantage, since direct individual donations are still allowed.
Some states actually split the electoral college vote. Us elections are truly bonkers
https://electoralvotemap.com/which-states-split-their-electoral-votes/
The fact that there is a chance that the fascist will lose. Unimaginable in Russia.
For me it is the concept of registering to vote. I am citizen so I have the right to vote automatically and only thing I need to provide is some accepted ID.
This but also that in some US states you don’t need a valid ID to vote
Your signature is your ID.
When you register to vote, your signature is placed on file.
When you go to vote, you sign in and your signature is compared to the registration.
If it matches, you can vote. If it doesn’t match, you can prove who you are or cast a provisional ballot pending identification.
The system seems to work - voting fraud doesn’t seem to be a huge issue in the US.
It’s just that it’s so counterintuitive to me, making sure that everyone voted only once and only in their own name is essential. But somehow you managed to do it without requiring a formal ID document.
I’d think the signature would be way harder to fake than an ID. Nobody signs my name like I do, but I bet there are plenty of bad ID photos that kinda/sorta look like me.
