7 Other Nations That Prove Just How Absurd U.S. Elections Really Are

[Old Crow]

This isn't a new article (first published May 19, 2015), but it's worth reading now as the U.S. election cycle goes into high gear. Using seven examples from abroad, the author shows that, when it comes to elections, the United States has a lot of room for improvement. --Old Crow

By Zeeshan Aleem
May 19, 2015

Is there a greater example of American excess than the presidential campaign process?

From the formation of exploratory committees until the inauguration of the next president, the American election frenzy lasts about two years, a vast majority of which is spent talking about little of substance. Along the way, the U.S. easily outspends every other country in the world, a trend that has only been accelerated by the gutting of restrictions on corporate contributions to campaigns in recent years. Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign could cost up to $2 billion, according to early estimates.

What's even worse is that the exceptional amount of time and money doesn't produce an engaging democratic process. The U.S. ranks near the bottom in terms of voter participation when compared with other developed nations. Issues like obstacles to voter registration and the ability to simply get to the polls without missing work contribute to strikingly low turnout in the world's most powerful democracy.

More:

http://mic.com/articles/118598/7-facts-from-the-around-the-world-show-how-absurd-america-s-elections-really-are#.Q21W2BRti

[Old Union Guy]

1. North Korea, Sudan, Iran, and ... n/t

[Old Crow]

2. Hmm?

You lost me. Are you suggesting that because there are some countries that don't have elections, there's no need for the United States to improve its election process?

[FreakinDJ]

6. We are better then countries that have "No Elections"

WOW - the bar has been raised

[EdwardBernays]

3. Having lived and voted outside of the US

I Can say the US political system and election process are thoroughly absurd.

[Old Crow]

12. I have to agree with you.

The more one looks into the subject, the crazier it looks over here. Honestly, there is simply no excuse for a country with this much wealth to be conducting elections this poorly this late in the game. Which raises the questions: How has it gotten so bad? Why are there no reform efforts (except HAVA, which made things even worse)? Is it this bad on purpose?

[EdwardBernays]

18. well..

the answer to that is simple:

- the people that care don't have any clout
- people with clout often deliberately make things worse - as it suits their agenda
- but the majority just don't care, or even vote - so why should politicians care?

[Old Crow]

19. Ugh. Can't argue with any of that.

I wish I could.

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. Debate is next to impossible with....probably what

Bernie is thinking wrt Hillary.

[Old Crow]

13. FWIW, I would not have voted to hide that post.

It's an opinion. If people disagree, fine. No need to suppress it. I think that refusing to consider the possibility of an indictment--and it is a possibility--is a little silly, personally. After Clinton's been made the official candidate, I'd vote to hide such a post, but doing so at this point seems premature and unnecessary.

I acknowledge that others will disagree with me here, and they may be right from a TOS perspective. Just my 2 cents.

[DetlefK]

7. An example for elections in Germany:

The german voting-system consists of 2 votes: The 1st-vote is for the Representative of your choice and reflects your will on county/state-level. The 2nd-vote is for the party of your choice and reflects the popular vote nation-wide. Both are mixed to calculate the distribution of seats in parliament.

Automatic voter-registration at age 18 when you apply for your national ID.

If you move to a different town, you have to go to city-hall and tell them that you live here now. They add you to the phone-book (optional) and take care of correcting the voter-rolls immediately.





2 months before the election:
- Placards and road-signs with campaign-ads everywhere.
- Campaign-ads on TV, but they are more about the party in general, not about the outrage-of-the-day. Maybe 5(?) campaign-ads per party per day during the commercial-breaks.

1 month before the election:
- The parties regularly hold small campaign-events in the inner cities to engage people passing by. "Ok, I'll take a leaflet... but only if I get a balloon."

2 weeks before the election:
- You get your voting-notification by mail. It tells you where your polling-station is and when it's open. It also contains instructions for voting early and for voting by mail.

election-day:
- Always on Sunday, 9am to 7pm.
- Show your voting-notification and your ID and you get the ballot.
- Voting is always pen&paper.
- Anybody has the right to stay and watch as the ballots get counted by hand.

1 hour after the election, 8pm Sunday:
- The results are in with ~90% accuracy.
- The final results are in by 9-10pm.

1 day after the election:
- The parties start probing negotiations who they could ally with to get the necessary number of seats to form a government.

A few days after the election:
- Coalition-negotiations begin.

2-4 weeks after the election:
- The negotiations have finished.
(For example: Recently there were state-elections in Germany. The Greens form one state-government with the Conservatives as junior-partners. Another state-government-coalition consists of mainly the Conservatives with the Social-Democrats and the Greens as junior-partners.)

[NurseJackie]

8. Interesting post ... thank you!

[Old Crow]

14. Great information; thanks.

If the U.S. emulated just half of that, our process would improve immensely.

Sad commentary, for Americans, that the once-fascist country we helped defeat in World War 2 has surpassed us in implementing democracy.

[fasttense]

9. Well, just having those malfunctioning, easily rigged machines

At the voting places gurantees a disastrous outcome. Ireland used the machines for awhile and turned them into scrap metal because they were so unreliable. Most countries that use the e voting machines have had huge mess ups.

And in TN you can't vote on anything else.

[Old Crow]

15. I agree whole-heartedly about the electronic voting machines.

I develop software for a living. All of those machines need to be destroyed. Paper ballots, hand-counted, is the only intelligent approach. The American public needs to get educated on this and demand change.

[bemildred]

10. Our political leaders do not want fair elections. If we rule, they don't. nt

[Old Crow]

16. I'm beginning to think you may be right.

Unless it's by design, it's hard to conceive how such a rotten and illogical election process could be allowed to stand, decade after decade, election after election.

[bemildred]

20. It is no accident, it's not new, and you don't need a design.

All you need is selfish amoral politicians trying to keep the good times rolling for them and their friends.

All over the planet there are countries holding more or less fake elections, only here is it considered a coincidence.

[Old Crow]

21. Oh, I do think there has been more than a little design.

Take, for example, our rush into paperless, electronic voting (which makes election fraud easier by several orders of magnitude). In order to create a sense of panic that allowed for HAVA (the Help America Vote Act) to be rushed through in 2002, the "Infamous Hanging Chad Fiasco" of 2000 was orchestrated.

"Orchestrated?" you say. Yes, orchestrated. The plant managers of the firm that had been successfully producing paper ballots for decades were paid off to switch paper suppliers to a company that had no experience whatsoever in producing paper for punch ballots. (The paper that had been used was short-thread, stiff, and brittle so that when you punched a selection on the ballot machine, a neat little chad popped out to record your vote. The new paper was long-thread and stretchy: exactly the wrong kind of paper to use.) When quality control inspectors refused to sign off on the batches of new paper that were failing their tests, they came in the next day to find the batches had been signed off by the plant managers overnight and put into production.

It gets worse. One employee who was in charge of printing the ballots was told he had to deliberately misalign the ballot printing on the cards by a quarter inch. He'd never been told to do this before and asked for clarification. The reason he was given was that the Florida ballots would stretch due to humidity; therefore, the printing had to be shifted. Again, he'd never heard of such a thing and refused to run the job. Finally, when one of the plant managers signed off, taking responsibility, the job was run--creating misaligned ballot markings on the wrong type of paper.

It was an orchestrated fiasco.

Dan Rather did a report on it back in the day, which I recently posted on DU here.

[bemildred]

22. Right, most of them cheat when they can. It's overtly dishonest. nt

[JayhawkSD]

11. These arguments are easily refuted.

We are not Canada, the U.K., Germany, Norway, Sweden, Australia, or Brazil. Case closed.

When Hillary Clinton was asked about single payer health care and Denmark was cited as an example, the entirety of her response was, "We're not Denmark." No one seemed to think that response was inadequate; not the audience present at the time, and not anyone commenting in the media or in discussion groups such as this one. I have never heard anyone suggest that her response was inadequate.

So, we do our elections the way we do because we are "the exceptional nation." We do them right and everyone else does them wrong. End of argument.

Well, I think we screw them up to the point of rendering them utterly futile, but I'm wrong too.

[Old Crow]

17. Wasn't sure where you were headed in that comment...

... but, yes, I think you've put your finger on it. Improving this nation will remain difficult as long as the idiotic idea of American exceptionalism holds sway. It's parochial, illogical, arrogant bullshit that prevents self-appraisal and reform.