Two reasons:
A long time friend and lifelong Brit said to me that while he hopes Trump loses, it will mean that the UK will take the lead for the worst fucking leader in the free world.
The closest we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College was in 1969. The Bayh-Celler Amendment was passed by the House (339 to 70) and made it out of committee in the Senate but was filibustered and died on the Senate floor. It would have given the presidency to the winner of the popular vote as long as they got at least 40% of the vote (otherwise there would be a runoff between the top two).
The amendment was driven by the fact that Nixon had defeated Humphrey by only about 500,000 votes. Also George Wallace, running as a third party on a segregationist platform, was able to get 46 Electoral Votes (13.5% of the popular vote). Wallace’s goal was to get enough EVs to prevent either Nixon or Humphrey from winning outright, and then negotiating (with whichever candidate(s) could benefit from his EVs) to get support for the segregationist cause.
The craziest thing about the US system is how long it will take from the vote to firstly find out the result, then secondly to appoint the new Government. In the UK we will almost always know the result by the early hours of the morning, and the new PM will be appointed the next day - Parliament disolves before the election.
That it can take over a week to count the votes, and that the old Government can stay in place for over two months after losing, is hard to understand.
The lame-duck period is a remnant from the early days. It was necessary for this to occur, because they needed time for the votes to be counted, the electors to cast their votes on the appointed date, and the winning candidate to travel to Washington. The inauguration date actually used to be March 4th; it was only moved up to January 20th beginning in 1937.
Getting rid of the extended lame-duck period is something we may want to have a serious talk about next year, given the chicanery Trump is likely to get up to if he loses (along with curtailing the pardon power).
Hearing from our non-USAian Dopers always gets me riled up (even more than I normally am) about how poor our election systems are. It seems to be another one of those American issues where the powers that be are lagging terribly behind public sentiment, too. The not-so-nice side of me believes that true election support most beneficial to the electorate is not as beneficial to those who run for office, hence the unwillingness to hardly acknowledge it as an issue. The largest entities in the national media are equally guilty here, imho.
We essentially know this is the case. As Ezra Klein pointed out, we have a long history of toppling foreign governments and installing democracies and we never template them based on our own system.
I’ve made it to 46, and have never yet heard about the political affiliation of our judges / supreme court.
This Dem vs R thing for people that are supposed to impartial is totally nuts.
Was talking politics with my teen the other day - the drama in US politics is off the wall - its better than daytime soap operas by orders of magnitude.
What we really really can’t understand is the impunity with which the “bad actors” behave. Threatening violence, condoning racism, the bribery and the sheer wrongdoing would sink any politician here
Before I let a child watch a summary of recent US political shenanigans, I feel I would want to explain that lying, cheating, being unprincipled, insulting your opponent etc etc is no way for people to behave, let alone people elected into a position of public service.
And I just mean republican politicians in general (it’s largely not “both sides”), Trump obviously takes it to a whole new level.
Seconded. The kind of things that some US politicians routinely do out in the open would be instantly disqualifying most everywhere.
The constant whining to get people to vote at the same time of constant machinations to prevent people from voting.
The US system electing a leader, then waiting many weeks before they can take charge seems very strange. In the UK, the whole process of replacing an administration takes a day. It is done with a very quick ceremony. Why is the US so different?
The UK government has ministries run by a permanant civil service. So a minister inherits a ship to steer. In the US, the executive President makes a great many appointments, all of which have to be approved in a long winded process before they get political direction. It is a system of poltical patronage, that relies very heavily on the integrity of the President and his party. It is a recipe of regulatory capture by business interests who finance and lobby politicians. There is little wonder that people become disillusioned with such a system that has resulted in such dire HealthCare provision and the Opiod crisis.,
The voter registration system is very strange. This is the franchise, who gets to vote. In the US it is still a politicised and subjects to local rules down to county level. Why should the rules be different in different areas? Most democratic countries have a couple of simple rules to determin who can vote in an election for a whole country. In the US it is a bone of contention every time there is an election. Moreover, the procedures for voting in the US vary from place to place with a wide range of manual and semi automated systems. There are regular legal challenges. The lines of people waiting to vote and the talk of voter supression seem quite strange in such an advanced economy. So, too, are the reports of the protests that are expected from groups who do not accept the result of an election. That is a clear of indication that reform is needed.
I appreciate that the US is a Republic and therefore quite a different system of government. But there are plenty of other Republics that have exective Presidents. When I look over the channel to France, their system seems similar to the US, but they usually get a President who is a smart political operator, not some reality TV star posing as a big shot businessman.
US Presidents seem to be highly variable in their competence. Sometimes the US gets a true statesman, but often a guy who just minds the shop and sometimes a it gets a crook and con-man, which seems to be the case at the moment.
The US is a fascinating country, it has the best and worst in so many areas and it is such an open book. Its strengths and weaknesses are there for all to see. Sad to say, at the moment, the weaknesses in its electoral system and the quality of its President are very evident to its overseas rivals. The US has lost a lot of influence around the world during the past few years as it has turned towards isolationism and withdrawn for treaties and alliances in preference to ‘The Art of the Deal’ as a foreign policy. That has allowed the Russia and China to expand their influence and emboldened many other autocratic regimes who are clearly much better at making deals than the current incumbent of the White House.
When this election craziness is over, maybe we will see the US recover its mojo and deal with some of its structural and political weaknesses. It is painful to see such an great country so poorly led and seemingly at war with itself
I will be watching the US election with trepidation because what goes on in US politics has consequences across the world.
Bigger questions for the non-Americans: Do you wish your countries media would quit covering the USA so much?
I mean here in the USA we might get a little blurb in the news about an election in say India, Japan, or France or maybe slightly bigger if its in Canada but it seems to me the world news covers the USA way to much.
It’s like a slow-moving car crash. I can’t not watch even though it’s horrifying to witness.
The choice is that or COVID. I think COVID has been getting much higher billing for quite a while.
Only if they’re elected with a clear majority. In parliamentary systems like the UK, a hung parliament can take much longer to negotiate a ruling coalition. It took David Cameron’s minority Conservative party almost a week after the 2010 election, and after the last Austrian election in 2019, coalition negotiations took over three months. Following its 2010 election, Belgium took over a year to form a government.
Sadness. I’m not being even slightly (intentionally) melodramatic when I say that I think the US is on the same trajectory as those African or Eastern European or South American nations that are democratic and then disintegrate gradually into faux-democracies or worse.
I get the impression that - from the inside - it’s harder for Americans to see, which is understandable. But from the outside it’s obvious. You’ve gone from a system where both sides believed in democracy and the rule of law, to a situation where one doesn’t really believe in those things at all and sees them as merely hurdles to be avoided on the way to getting power by any means available.
Once you’ve hit that point, I think it’s very hard to go back. That’s my view in my more pessimistic (realistic?) moments. In my more optimistic moments I think that if Biden wins and if the Dems get control of both houses (both are necessary) they may be able to get the genie back in the bottle. But frankly I doubt it.
Yes, this, from my UK perspective too. It’s been a nice escape from our other awful news recently, but US elections have always seemed nuts to us. The relentless campaign that seems to start as soon as a new president takes office, the attack ads, the ridiculous campaign spending, the maniacical crowds, the branding (who can have the biggest/most nationalistic interpretation of US flags - god forbid someone might have a campaign brand which was yellow or purple), the arguments about who can vote and how, and what votes can be contested. You seem to make that part, in particular, really fucking complicated and disenfranchising.
Here, our general elections last about 4 weeks, campaign spending is capped, each party has a different brand with few signs of union jacks (maybe a few Tories), we all go vote on one day (generally no queues), what postal votes there are are uncontroversial, the votes get counted - there may be the odd recount on the night if it’s close - and that’s it.
I think the problem that Biden or any Democrat who wants to go back to the international stage and dress us up as a “normal” version of ourselves again, is that we’ve been exposed. It’s all out there now. It was sorta known and understood that the US sometimes talks about being a global leader but is prone to being a lone wolf, but now the mask is off. The US cannot be counted on to ‘lead’ anything. The only US the rest of the world is looking forward to working with is a more humbled and realistic one.
It’s great entertainment, to be fair, and a nice break from a generally depressing news cycle. I love it. Not sure I would love it as much if I was there - my SIL lives in Michigan and can’t stand it.
There is a recently released Pew Research Centre study that quantifies just how badly the United States’s reputation has tanked.
Percentage of people who have a favourable opinion of the US has generally halved since 2000, off an Obama high.
Australians I know, across most of politics, except a few of Margaret Thatcher’s love-children, have a very strong degree of unanimity that your electoral system is complete garbage.
Not only did we invent the pre-printed secret ballot, the independently compiled electoral list and the pre-printed ballot and the little squares on it to tick your preference, we generally relish that we have compulsory voting [technically attending and getting your name crossed-off at a polling place is compulsory], it happens on a Saturday and is a big social occasion. It is all run by an independent Electoral Commission which makes a single uniform set of rules for election day across all Australia. Postal votes are required to be counted as part of the official tally.
Schools are often used as polling places, so the parent groups will arrange a cake stall and a sausage sizzle, which has led to the rise of the democracy sausage as a beacon of civic responsibility.
I look at the US and an just sad at how your system has failed its citizens. Trump is a pathetic unfunny clown who should not in any effective system been allowed to run a bath. its a sign of the deeper malaise in the country that he has an audience and can channel their hates and fears. I hope he loses by enough that he just has to shut up and go away so that you can get on top of covid and recover as a nation.
Yeah, this is really strange too. In the UK system, when an election is called, the government and parliament is dissolved - we essentially have no elected government for a few weeks (the civil servants behind the scenes keep the show on the road). No politician gets to make any real decisions until they have re-won their seat. The PM is still PM until they resign to the Queen, but they can’t DO anything to affect laws while they’re in election limbo.