A question for United Statians who vote.

[den]

re this by Tom Tomorrow

How can you be a registered voter and not be allowed to vote for who you want? How does your system work?

Comments

Re: Election fun

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

As a Poll Inspector, you shouldn't really write subversive things like that. 8)

Our system is a lot different. Each state is broken up into electorates which each represent 1 seat in Parliament. Each party contests each seat with their local members. The winner gets that seat in Parliament. The party with the most seats is The Government, and the rest are The Opposition. The leader of the winning party becomes the Prime Minister. Should the current Prime Minister lose his seat, then he is OUT even if he is the leader of the party and The Government have to elect a new leader, who becomes Prime Minister. This can also happen if the party loses confidence in their leader, and they can elect a new leader who then becomes the new PM. (This has happened a few times!)

The Electoral College does my head in, but our system of Preferential Voting isn't much better.

After the first round of counting, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated. He nominated who his votes are to be given to, and so his votes are then given to that candidate. Repeat until you have just 2 candidates, and the one with the most votes wins. Candidates don't have to assign a preference, and so their votes are not counted in the final tally. It also means their voter's votes haven't gone to someone else. A tally of "Informal ballots" (ie spoiled) is kept, and you can tell how little the voters liked the candidates by a high percentage of informals.

Re: Election fun

[ursuscal.livejournal.com]

Heehee. I can say anything I want (as long as it is *not* in the polling place while it's open). During the last election, we were cautioned to not even discuss the weather, as there was a Native American named "Raincloud," and they feared that any discussion of the weather might include comments about "clouds" and "rain." *Sigh*

I once worked with an engineer from Queensland. He told me that unless you could trace your ancestry to an original convict from England that you didn't stand a chance in any election. Is there any truth to that? }:xD

Re: Election fun

[charles.livejournal.com]

Candidates don't assign preferences. Preferences are decided by what numbers the voter puts on their card. If you vote '2' for a candidate, it doesn't matter what the person you voted '1' for wants, that's where your second preference will go.

This doesn't stop parties making "preference deals" with each other, but those deals are solely to determine what order the numbers go on the "How to vote" cards that are handed out in front of the polling booths: the assumption being that enough of the party faithful will follow these cards to make a difference in the preference run-off.