Hail to the chief
November 4th, 2008
Middle of massive party at Stanford. The atmosphere is euphoric. Champagne flowing.
As the clock ticked towards 8:00, the crowd stared counting down the seconds. The hour rang, the polls closed, and history was made: Barack Obama will be our next president.
Just my personal gripe here. Background info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2005
How is it that Iran has a more Democratically enabled voting system than ours? It kills me. It caters to more than two parties and ideals, and the election method makes more sense than ours by far.
And this is Iran. A country that many Americans believe doesn’t even exhibit Democracy…(note: I’m not saying that they actually implement it right, but I’m just comparing the idea of their electoral system – and it’s not like we really implement our correctly either: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091908dntexbarrballot.8b61581c.html )
i’d be glad to hear some opinions on this.
TW
What about Iran’s supreme (unelected) leader? What about the culling of the candidates that the Guardian Council does?
I think that it should be easier for other parties to get on the ballot (and win), but I don’t think that Iran is a good model.
Fun fact: The Economist ranked Sweden as the most democratic country in the world in 2006. Canada was 9th. The USA was 17th. Iran was 139th.
Obama won both the electoral and popular vote, so what’s the problem? I understand there’s been problems (e.g., 2000), but seriously, Tuesday was about as fair as it can get in a non-parlimentary system.
A.: think outside the box here. Obama won the majority because only two candidates got any face time for the election (98.7% of the vote went to two candidates). Do you really think that >98% of US people fall into two political types? I realize that 100 types couldn’t fulfill this task, but 3 or 4 strongly represented parties would make *much* more sense and allow for more people to truly vote for what they care about while having it mean something…
keach: you ignore my “i’m not saying that they actually implement it right” statement. my point is that a “bad” gov’t has a more democratic system after the candidates are selected that offers more choices in a less restrictive manner (multi-party debates please?). Right now, if you aren’t running as either a Dem or a Rep, then you’re not going to be represented unless you cough up a lot of cash (i.e. Perot). I should probably also mention this: I don’t like Iran – the reasons are long and varied, but any country that treats its people like it does does not deserve my respect or admiration (e.g. I respect and admire both Canada and Australia).
One solution would be for the Commission on Presidential Debates to open up its criteria for people to debate. the whole “15% of the national electorate” is ridiculous. In order to get that 15%, it’s going to take either a miracle, or a really rich candidate to promote his candidacy to 15%. if you don’t fit the ideals of either of the two major parties, then your vote truly is meaningless in the US. sure, most people don’t realize this, but most people don’t know that they are voting to designate their states “electors” to vote in accordance with their state’s majority vote.
http://www.debates.org/pages/candsel2008.html
i just want the system fixed. putting a term limit on congressional seats would be nice, and how about 4 year House reelection cycles too. we really need to be able to circulate people into our gov’t who will not be afraid of reelection concerns and fix major problems in our country. the current system allows too few people to maintain control over the US gov’t. if you think Bush caused all of the problems our gov’t has now…well, yeah. one word: Congress.