Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Being registered "as a republican/democrat" is weird.
Electoral college is weird AF
One party trying to stop people voting is weird.
Queuing for hours to vote is weird.
Purging voter rolls is weird.
Rallies are weird.
Townhalls are weird.
Flags everywhere is weird.
The orange one is super weird.
Good summary
FYI registering with a party affiliation is so you can vote in their closed primary election (where they pick candidates to run in the general election)
Anyone can register with any party, or none, and change their affiliation at will.
Town halls? As in the building or does this mean something else? Aren't town halls quite common and normal elsewhere?
We kinda do this in Denmark too tbh. I personally don't find it that weird due to that.
Townhalls are a type of political event. They are typically small forum events held in places like town halls or school gyms and involve the politician giving a short speech typically limited to a single issue or current event followed by a longer period where the audience asks the politician questions. It's not limited to campaigning, legislators often hold these events outside of elections. Theoretically they give the politician the opportunity to hear issues and concerns that their constituents most care about but mostly they are used to drum up support for legislation that the politician already supports.
Hmm okay. I do think we have something similar here where there might be meetings that we call "citizen meetings" where anyone is invited to come and hear about a current political topic. It's mostly informative and people can ask questions and stuff, not related to campaigning or elections mostly I would say. So yea I don't think that is too weird honestly.
I think they're talking about town hall meetings.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_hall_meeting
I'm not sure about the format but I know that towns in Denmark also occasionally calls for meetings. This doesn't sound that weird to me
I think it's less unique than people think. In France, there is an electoral college specifically for the Sénat, which is a secondary legislative chamber compared to the Assemblée Nationale. They can amend law proposals after they are submitted by the Assemblée, but in case of conflicts, it's the Assemblée that decides.
The college is made of people locally elected in various types of previous local elections. I think part of the reasons for this system is to have a representation of every locations that is not only proportional to the population. For example to prevent populated areas from dictating laws to unpopulated areas that don't make sense for their local circumstances (typically around urbanism and transportation).
It may make sense for specific services which are naturally bias and unfair (can't think of any that would warrant it), but for general governance weighting citizens votes differently for any reason is entirely anti-democratic.
Also the UK's House of Lords is no better. Giving a bunch of historically elite landowners authority based on wealth and birthright is fucking disgusting.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
It was just added because it was the only way to launder slave votes for slave states, if you did it 1 vote per person then who got to choose who the slaves voted for?
We need to fix it, but there's no way in hell they'll give up their most precious possession, no matter how wrong it is.
That might have been revolutionary in 1776, and cut it in 1950, but its the 21st C — as long as the electoral college exists the US should not be viewed as more than a pseudo-democracy at best.