Re: Election Question
 

Re: Election Question
 

Just to make sure, anyone claiming that Republicans have never participated in any kind of voter sabotage in the last decade is factually incorrect. In fact, one of those who did just that even wrote a book about it called 'How to rig an election', after he got out of prison.

"After ten full years inside the GOP, ninety days amongst honest criminals wasn't any great ordeal."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Raymond

Plus an interview with the guy regarding his book:
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=LnH8i1rQHdo

Re: Election Question
 

When do we get confirmation Mr Clegg has won?

Re: Election Question
 

Completely wrong Lav. The equivalent of American states in the UK are England, Scotland, Wales etc in the United Kingdom. Or even France Germany and Belgium in the E.U.

The American states are sovereign. Each state has it's own counties (or boroughs or parishes depending on where you are) themselves, just like England does.

I live in Kings county for example, which is in the State of New York.

The Union involved in the USA is similar to what's happening with your European Union.

Infringements on states rights are not what the founding fathers envisioned, just as no-one wants to see Germany running all over Czech rights for example.

Re: Election Question
 

Yes, I remember this guy. He was the one asked to jam the phonelines.

Re: Election Question
 

Apologies to all if I get a little off-subject, but I may have to break your heart on this one, Lav. We may all get a vote in the UK but that ain't how it works.

Our current system for electing MPs to the House of Commons is First-Past-The-Post. There are 646 separate constituencies across the UK each electing one single Member of Parliament. In order to vote you simply put an 'X' next to the name of the candidate you support. The candidate who gets the most votes wins, regardless of the actual percentage of support. Once members have been individually elected, the party with the most seats in Parliament, regardless of whether or not it has a majority across the country, normally becomes the next government.

To put some numbers around this and give a clearer idea of how this actually works these are some of the numbers for the General Election in 2005:

The average number of votes per MP elected was 26,906 for Labour, 44,373 for Conservative and 96,539 for Liberal Democrats

Labour won 35.2% of the total vote cast, but got 55.1% of the seats in Parliament, giving them power to form a government.

The reality of this is that they did get the highest number of votes for any individual party, but 35.2% of voters hardly counts as popular government, even less so by taking into account the low turnout (61%) of eligible voters who actually voted for them, thus giving a rather pathetic 21.5% popularity. At best that means 33% didn't want them and the other 39% either felt that their vote wouldn't make any difference (hey, wake up out there, you should have an Apathy party and then you'd have the majority) or apparently don't care enough to vote.

And this doesn't account for strategic voting e.g. those who may have voted Labour to prevent yet another Conservative government, and vice versa, further distorting the poularity stakes.

So, if we base this on popularity i.e. number of votes cast per party gets % of seats in government we would have the following:

<table x:str="" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 250pt;" width="333" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><col style="width: 75pt;" width="100"> <col style="width: 70pt;" width="93"> <col style="width: 105pt;" width="140"> <tbody><tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl22" style="height: 12.75pt; width: 75pt;" headers="party" width="100" height="17"></td> <td class="xl22" style="width: 70pt;" headers="seats" width="93">Actual Seats</td> <td class="xl22" style="width: 105pt;" headers="gain" width="140">Seats by popular %</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl22" style="height: 12.75pt;" x:str="Labour " headers="loss" height="17">Labour </td> <td class="xl22" x:num="">356</td> <td class="xl22" x:num="">228</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl22" style="height: 12.75pt;" x:str="Conservative " height="17">Conservative </td> <td class="xl22" x:num="">198</td> <td class="xl22" x:num="">209</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl22" style="height: 12.75pt;" x:str="Lib Dem " height="17">Lib Dem </td> <td class="xl22" x:num="">62</td> <td class="xl22" x:num="">142</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl22" style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17">Other</td> <td class="xl22" x:num="">30</td> <td class="xl22" x:num="">67</td> </tr> </tbody></table>
So, the Labour party would still have the most seats, but not enough to form a Government, this could only have been done by an alliance of parties.

Re: Election Question
 

Really? So the Tory party and the Labour Party and the Liberal Dems don't all vote on who their leader is before they go to a public election? Wow? So how is the leader chosen? A boxing match?

The preselections are the internal votes of each party. The party memberships are just so large and publicly monitored. Not as many "back room deals" like you might find in the Westminster system.

Re: Election Question
 

Well done mate. Autralia has a Westminster system of Govt. too.

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Is this a remnant of the "rotten borough" problem that plagued UK elections in the past?

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<font color="cyan">Firstly it's insulting to compare your states to our country.

So Don't.

We are countries, part of a bigger group of countries called Great Britain. We are not comparable to the State of Florida.

They leaders are picked internally, by the partys themselves. That was my point. I beleived the American people voted on each partys leader.

We dont, AFAIK.

But im not very knowledagble on policitcs, im a bit out of my depth.</font>