VOTE!!

[donutsweeper]

Since I know all my US friends will be voting tomorrow I thought I'd share some very important facts about the day:

Voting = FREE FOOD!!!!!!

That's right! If you vote and show your "I voted" sticker you can get free Starbucks coffee, free Ben & Jerry's ice cream and a free Krispy Kreme donut!

So, do your civic duty and yadada, and then go get yourself some treats!

Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

no reason why they couldn't I suppose- they are careful to make sure you've already voted before offering anything to you

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would go down well here, I must say.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

then again you don't have to suffer through election campaigns that last two years so maybe you're still better off, even without the free coffee

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

That's very true.

At least you know when yours are. We don't. They have to be every five years, but the Government can go early if they choose. In fact since Labour have been in power they have gone every four years - so we could have one next year. Or not.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I read up on UK elections awhile back (After watching the "House of Cards (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098825/)" trilogy) and have to admit, I don't quite understand how that works. It seems kind of random.

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

I loved the House Of Cards.

"Well you might think that, but I could not possibly comment!"

I was going to say it's probably somewhat simpler than yours, and then I started to explain it. And I was like . . . Yeah. Not that I fully understand yours either to be honest.

Ours is in one way very archaic and needs overhauling - it's a 'first past the post' system. But no government is going to overhaul something that works for them. And it's always going to work in favour of our two main parties and as they are the only ones who have been in power for decades, it's highly doubtful it'll ever change.

In essence our House Of Commons has 646 Members Of Parliament who are elected in constituencies across the UK. Any one can stand if they put down a deposit and get a certain number (very small) of nominations. So we do get a lot of independents standing 'Monster Raving Looney Party' is one of the best known. But generally each constituency is a two or at best three horse race.

Each main party elects its own leader and which ever party wins their leader becomes Prime Minister.

It's random in so far that there is no set term of office - only a maximum. Also anyone and his wife and dog can stand if they get the deposit. And we don't have a 'only two terms'. But other than that it's fairly rigid.

And of course we don't spend anywhere near as much as your country does.

And I suppose the biggest difference (putting aside the whole PM vs. President) is that we can't have the situation whereby the PM is from one party and the rest of the House (houses, although our House of Lords isn't elected) are from another. The 'worst' we could have was a hung Parliament whereby the largest party actually doesn't have a majority. Whereas I know you can have the situation where you could have a Democrat President and both Congress and the House of Representatives could be Republican.

And I suspect that might have confused more rather than cleared up :-)

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Monster Raving Looney Party Oh that's priceless!

You're explanation makes sense! It's the random calling of elections that I never quite understood.

And the little parties- they can choose to sit on the side of the party in control or on the other side where the minority party sits, right?

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it did.

The random calling doesn't make sense to us either *g* When Brown finally took over mid-term he was dithering for a few weeks about whether to call and election.

Basically it means that any government can look at the state of the economy, general feeling and gamble whether it's going to get worse or better in another year. And they can call snap elections too with only a few weeks to campaign, etc. It's like when it was our Queen's Golden Jubliee; the election was due that year but Blair called it the year before with the 'excuse' that he didn't want the election to detract from the Jubilee, but everyone (from all sides) knew it was because he had some unpopular bills coming through and didn't want to risk them causing problems for him.

They keep saying we need to have fixed terms, but it's like proportional representation, it's going to take a super brave government to upset the system that got it into power.

Do you know I am not 100% certain, nor is J. We think in theory they can, but in practise, given there aren't enough seats in the house for all MPs anyway, if the government have any kind of reasonable majority their side is going to be filled up. Traditionally the small parties sit together in one particular place on the opposition side of the house.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

ah, that's very interesting. And a good point about how hard/risky it'd be to change the system that got you in there.

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you found it thus.

I guess it must be the same everywhere - after all looking at the popular vote for Obama and McCain it was a heck of a lot closer than the actual senate seats given out per state.

We do think that PR might, possibly come in at some time. Scotland (we have our own Parliament for some things but are still part of the general government for others, very confusing) has it to an extent, ditto the Welsh assembly, so . . .

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

oh boy. confusing. But politics are never simple, are they?

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

That they aren't!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

yet somehow it mostly works. To some extent anyway, which is all that really matters I suppose

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on which side of the fence you are sitting or how you look at it really.

Both our countries have, in effect, the 'first past the post system'. Which means that it's not actually in any way, shape or form truly representative.

All over LJ and the news, etc. etc. everyone is talking about Obama's landslide and how the country showed whom they wanted. Okay . . . But look at it this way: his landslide victory is in no way in line with the popular vote, is it? The landslide comes from Senate seats. The popular vote put him just over 51% - thus in reality your country is actually not overwhelmingly saying 'we wanted Obama', but your system makes it look that way.

And the same is true here as well. Last time Blair got in with considerably less than the 'popular' vote (down in the mid 30%s with the second party only a couple of percent less) in fact IMS it's been a while since any party got over 50% of the popular vote. Even in Labour's 'landslide' election they only got 43% of the popular vote.

As the Lib Dems have been saying for years/decades, the system isn't fair and in effect 'doesn't work'.

Look at it that way, and you can see they and others opposed to 'first past the post' have a point.

Scary almost when you look at it so closely.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, it's weird how if just the right number of people vote in just the right places it can really skew the overall out look and result.

But it's better then it was, when a few old guys determined who ran things.

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Very much so.

Oh, yes!