As a Westminster style parliament, our Head of State (the Queen and her representative the Governor General) and our Head of Government (the Prime Minister) are separate. The President is kind of both roles, except where the Speaker and Senate Majority have some of the Head of Government duties.
By convention in Westminster style, the person that commands a majority of votes in the House of Commons is the Prime Minister. If no party has a majority, as is currently the case, support is needed from other parties to get a working majority. If the members of caucus lose confidence in the leader, they get booted out and replaced temporarily until the members of the party can choose a permanent leader. This is our system of checks and balances - no impeachments, no recall initiatives.
Julie Payette, the GG, delivered Justin Trudeau’s Throne Speech laying out plans for the session of Parliament that started Wednesday. Given the priorities presented, the Liberals will likely be supported by the NDP.
In your system when the parties can’t compromise, the government shuts down through lack of funding. In ours, either someone else gets a kick at the can or an election is called. Our system (generally) prevents a stale-mate, although consecutive minorities like are common in Italy, Israel, and other countries are possible.
Even in the states with official party affiliation, it’s generally easy to change your affiliation. I think that, in every state that has partisan primaries, it’s possible to vote in a different party’s primary for every primary election.
And yeah, ballot access rules are complicated. You want to allow third parties to run, but you also don’t want every two-bit crank in the state cluttering up the ballot (there are a lot of two-bit cranks out there). Usually, there are two or three ways for a party to get on the ballot: The two largest parties (which are never referred to by name) get on automatically, as well as any party that got more than 5% in the last election, plus any party that can collect some number of petition signatures.
Some states have party affiliation, but it’s optional, and if you choose to register as ‘unaffiliated’ you actually pick which primary ballot you want at each election.
Here are links with detailed state requirements - the first one is specifically for presidential candidates, the second is for all other elections.
Indeed; up until the 1960s, white voters in the Southeast were predominantly Democratic, even though many of them were segregationists – a view which is anathema to the Democratic party today. For example, infamous segregationist politician George Wallace, who was governor of Alabama, was a Democrat.
However, the combination of the Democratic Party’s support of desegregation, and the Civil Rights Act, in the 1950s and 1960s, in combination with the GOP’s “Southern Strategy” (wooing white Southern politicians and voters who felt that they had been left behind by the Democratic Party), largely flipped the Southeast into the GOP column by the 1970s.
Does registering to vote for either party make you a member of that party or its purely for that election [I assume you need to be a member to directly influence policy and decide who your election candidates are]?
I have often wondered about many of the questions answered here. In the UK candidates are chosen in any way their party chooses. Both main parties run an election by members to choose their leader from a short list, but individual candidates are chosen by the local party.
Pretty much anyone, apart from peers and convicts can stand for election as an MP, if they can collect 10 signatures on their application and pay a £500 deposit which they lose if they fail to get at least one eighth of the vote.
Representative democracy in Canada rests on people electing candidates to represent their interests in the House of Commons. The Members of Parliament (MPs) in aggregate make up the legislature - Congress for puzzled Americans.
In the Legislature MPs group by political affiliation into parties. Typically MPs run as a representative of a party but nothing prevents them crossing the floor and sitting with a different one - like Independents joining with the Democratic Party for puzzled Americans.
Since laws get passed by majority vote in the House of Commons, votes tend to align to political groups. Groups of humans tend to have leaders and so the MP able to lead the largest block of votes is asked by the Head of State (The Queen of Canada) through her representative (The Governor General) to lead her government. This MP assembles a cabinet of ministers and as the first among equals take the title of Prime Minister. You now have an executive sitting in the legislature.
In the event there is no clear majority, typically the leader of the largest block of votes (MPs) is asked to lead, unless another leader makes the case that they can consistently assemble a majoroty voting block through a coalition of parties.
Regardless, the government governs until it loses the confidence of the House - meaning they can not win a vote of confidence (budget bill for example). Once that happens a general election is called and 4-6 weeks later a new House of Commons sits and it starts over again.
No this is not to say that the leader of each party isn’t key but the point isn’t to elect a leader but to elect a representative.
Should also add, that since the leadership of a party depends entirely on the party caucus, leaders can be deposed of outside of an election. And since being PM means commanding a majority of votes in the house, the replacement becomes PM.
So questions around legitimacy at that point but as we vote for MPs it’s not critical. Tradition holds that the new PM should call an election for a new mandate.
A little additional info, just because I have it and want to share: in Texas, when you vote in a primary, you are considered “affiliated” with that party for the duration of that election cycle. A side effect of the affiliation is that, for example, if you vote in a Democratic primary, you cannot be a candidate in that election cycle as a Republican.
Yes, this has happened in the past, when a Republican running unopposed decided to help a friend of his by voting for him in the Democratic primary. He disqualified himself from appearing on the ballot as a Republican, and it was too late to change parties or even run as a write-in candidate. SOL.
Note that when fully open “just choose whichever ballot you want to vote” primaries started to appear, a lot of criticism of them was based on the possibility of tactical manipulation of one party’s primary by members of the other party signing up to vote in it and screwing with the outcome. Didn’t seem to happen much - for the most part, voters registered as Republicans chose to vote the Republican ballot in the primary, and registered Democrats chose to vote the Democrat ballot. It just led to a lot people dropping their party affiliations, becoming independents, and deciding on a per-election basis which ballot they would like to vote. Healthy, IMO. It meant that if one party had a primary that was basically a forgone conclusion, while a fight was going in the other party, independents would mostly choose the ballot that mattered. The “blanket primaries” in a few states can be considered the next logical step - just put all the Democrat and Republican contenders, plus Green. Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, Natural Law, independent, etc all on one ballot, and let the voters sort them out.
As I said before, I would prefer doing away with primaries, just putting the whole “shopping list” on the general ballot, and implementing rank choice voting.
This is exactly what I did under open primaries. Your vote has more punch if you use it to cause as much damage, or advantage, as possible.
I simply cannot imagine why the parties did not like this behavior.
If you cross party lines to vote in the primaries, you should vote for the candidate that you think is the most acceptable or at least the least bad from among the picks.
If you cross to sabotage, picking the worst candidate, then you have to worry about them actually winning the general, then you are stuck with the worst candidate.
No, it does not make you a member of the party. “Party membership” isn’t really a thing for ordinary citizens. The way you get involved in party activities is to start volunteering in local and state party committees. But that doesn’t really make you a “member” either. In fact, the only time you clearly become a “member” of a party is by winning the party’s nomination and running for office.
In a parliamentary system like Canada, the public effects its will by electing members of parliament. The prime minister is merely the leader of the majority party in parliament. It’s not about electing an individual leader; it’s about putting the party you prefer in charge. In my view, it actually works better than our system in terms of representing the public will, especially if it is combined with proportional representation.
I’m surprised. So the Republican or Democratic Party consists of the elected representatives, and unsuccessful election candidates? They are not just the elected segment of a larger entity. How I read this is that these parties are all tip and no ice-berg*.
I’d contrast that with Westminster system parties (and European ones), which have broad membership that pays dues, decides on policy and picks candidates to represent them. At election time family members and kindred spirits volunteer to help out, but there is a party structure that exists even between elections with no one holding an elected office.
*A beautiful line of contempt used by former Australian prime minister Paul Keating against an opponent he thought lacked depth
Yes it does make you a member of the party. You may not be more involved with the party than that, but the vast majority of political party membership consists of nothing more than registering under that party. However, that membership conveys the ability to take party leadership positions, sign petitions for candidates, and run for office under that party.
That’s probably pretty accurate, so far as metaphors go. American parties are very weak parties. There’s no “party discipline” in any official sense. You can’t be kicked out of the party for going against party policy. Indeed, it’s pretty hard to determine whether an American political party qua party has any “policy” as such, so much as whatever policy its most powerful members can push it towards.
Even in the states without official party registration, most Americans (at least, among the subset who vote) will say “I’m a Democrat”, or “I’m a Republican”, even though there’s no official documentation of that whatsoever. When someone says that, really all it means is that the person typically votes for members of that party. And sometimes not even that: You’ll sometimes hear “I’m a Democrat” from someone who’s voted straight-ticket Republican in every election for the past 30 years (or vice-versa).
It’s all about where you show up to and what you do in American politics. It’s not about being a “member” and being on some official roll and paying dues. Very, very few people in the country would be members under that standard.
Do you volunteer? Do you go door-to-door or staff phone banks? Do you do fund raising? Do you get chosen for a leadership position on the local committee? Do you apply for a staff job on a campaign? Have other party activists gotten to know you and rely on your skill and expertise? Nobody is going to look up a membership roll to see if you’ve paid dues. Most party and campaign organizations aren’t even going to have access to such a roll.
Even then, as Chronos says, people say “I’m a Democrat,” not “I’m a member of the Democratic Party.”
