Europeans To Monitor American Voters 1867
shonagon53 writes "The United States is known as being the world's most stable democracy. But since the Florida 2000 fiasco, things have changed.
Europe's famous Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE) will now be monitoring the U.S. elections. The institution normally monitors elections in third world countries in transition, and in crisis areas or regions where civil wars have destabilized the political process. In november, the OSCE will be monitoring local and state elections in Kazakhstan, Skopje, Eastern Congo, Ouagadougou and... the United States.
As
the BBC reports, for some Americans this comes as a humiliation; others see it as a necessity, since they have lost trust in the American election process."
2000 election (Score:2, Informative)
Add to that, the US is a sovereign nation. Europe can monitor the elections all they want, they still can't do shit about it.
This Has Happened Before... (Score:5, Informative)
The OSCE was actually invited by the State Department (unlike the attempted invitation of the United Nations by Democrats in the House) and has observed elections in the US before, such as during the 2002 mid-terms and the California gubernatorial race. Indeed, the former Bush, in 1990, signed the Copenhagen Document which stated that signers (such as the US) may "invite observers from any other [OSCE] participating States
Sad, sad indeed (Score:2, Informative)
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There's nothing unstable about it (Score:3, Informative)
This applies whether you agree with the outcome of the election or not.
The idea that a close vote means that we're unstable is ridiculous. There are rules and regulations for these scenarios and they were followed. Unfortunately, a few were added as well (ah hem, hanging chads), but all hell did NOT break loose and the results were LAWFULLY established.
Re:Huh? "Most stable?" (Score:2, Informative)
Switzerland
Re:uncontrollable laughter (Score:2, Informative)
CNN has more (Score:5, Informative)
This story explains why it is the OSCE that has been invited to do the job and not the UN, which is more common. Of course it has to do with the US congress where mentioning the two letters U.N. is worse than mentioning the four letters f.u.c.k.
As a European living in the US, I remember that back in 2000 I mentioned to my friends using UN elections monitors for the next election, after which I was verbally lynched for about an hour.
Apparently not a popular idea :)
Re:This is a gross violations of US sovereignty (Score:3, Informative)
OSCA has a policy to always accept these invitations.
Re:Lost faith? (Score:4, Informative)
People think things like that are funny. They also think that they are voting directly for a particular pair of candidates, when in fact they are merely recording their preference for President and Vice President. The U.S. has never had a directly elected president. The Federal government is a creature of the states, and the state governments elect the chief executive of the federal government that they created together.
Currently, many states apportion their votes in a winner-take-all manner. A few apportion them according to the popular vote. States can, however, apprtion their votes pretty much however they want. Don't like it? Talk to your state legislature.
Re:2000 election (Score:2, Informative)
BULLSHIT! If you look at the vote totals at this website [infoplease.com] you can see that the vote totals were:
BUSH: Total: 50,456,002 - 47.87 percent
GORE: Total: 50,999,897 - 48.38 percent
NADER: Total: 2,882,955 - 2.74 percent
I don't know what cow college you studied math and statistics at but I'd say that a difference of 543,895 votes, or one half percent, is statistically significant. The Florida debacle aside Gore won the popular vote. If we had a direct popular vote, or if electors were allocated by percentage of votes won in each state rather than the winner take all system Gore would be president today.
Re:This Has Happened Before... (Score:5, Informative)
For the record... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They have lost trust in the American election.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is a gross violations of US sovereignty (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Huh? "Most stable?" (Score:3, Informative)
Interestingly, the Althing [althingi.is] (Icelandic parliament) has a very long tradition, but Iceland was colonized by Norway (and later Denmark?), and was disbanded for a while in the 1800's. So Iceland might actually not be more stable than the U.S. which has has a sovereign democratic government that predates the current incarnation of the Althing.
Switzerland appears to have instituted a democratic tradition later than the U.S. [geschichte-schweiz.ch] (in 1798 if I understand correctly), although the city states did not succumb to a central authority.
Re:uncontrollable laughter (Score:3, Informative)
Probably not, since the OSCE is based in Vienna, Austria.
Re:mistakes (Score:5, Informative)
So this is a self-inflicted slap in the face. It often happens in European democracies, to invite outside observers to elections.
Re:mistakes (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually the OSCE were asked by Secretary of State Colin Powell to monitor the election. Furthermore, this isn't the first election in the U.S. they have monitored.
Re:I'd have to agree. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jst a asmall nitpick (Score:4, Informative)
Ooops. You forgot the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Although it was a bloodless revolution, having the king overthrown isn't exactly a good example of stability (or democracy)! From that point on England itself has been pretty stable - although the composition of Great Britain/the UK has seen quite a few changes (the last big one being independence for most of Ireland in 1922).
Of course, there's the question of how democratic you have to be to count - few people had the vote in 1688. With each set of legislation from the Bill of Rights in 1689 to the last major overhaul of the franchise in 1928, England/Britain/the UK became more and more democratic, but I'm not sure whereabouts the line would be drawn saying "properly democratic from this point on."
Anyway, England definitely beats the US in terms of long-term stability, but the rest is up for discussion.
Re:Lost faith? (Score:5, Informative)
Bill Clinton won the popular vote. He simply didn't win more than 50% of the popular vote. He got 45% or whatever, and the other side got 40% or whatever.
It's not the same situation at all. Quite a lot of presidents don't win the majority, very few of them don't win the popular vote.
Re:Thanks Flordia Republicans. (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? (Score:1, Informative)
Right... specifically that notorious Democrat... Colin Powell.
What you are thinking of is an incident several months go where some Democratic congresspersons invited UN observers in to the elections. The UN rejected this at that time because the legislators didn't have authority to invite them. The UN DID decide to send the observers some time later on the request of the State department, which decided to do so as part of a small clause of a treaty we signed with some European countries some time ago. This is why the UN inspectors coming now are coming-- at the request of the State Department, run by Colin Powell.
--Super Ugly Ultraman
Re:US votes? (Score:3, Informative)
Neither--one is legislative, the other is executive. As for judicial, the Senate fills that role, too, by having the power to confirm or reject federal judges.
Misleading slashdot article (Score:4, Informative)
If you actually look at their site they are also monitoring elections in France, Canada, Greece, Spain, and Australia [osce.org]. Hardly "third world countries", and I don't remember any recent civil wars in them either.
Re:2000 election (Score:5, Informative)
It is not rocket science, and with at least four people and two (usually opposing) agendas involved, the chance of a 'parity error' getting past is lower that the chance of a parity error read off of the RAM inside your computer. 100% ? Maybe not, but certainly more that four nines. Your suggestion of a 99% accuracy rate from machines is a red herring.
Re:European Democracy? (Score:5, Informative)
Haider was never PM of Austria, his party was a member of the ruling coalition though in 2000, and he is governor of the state of Carinthia. Read wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] to get some details.
Haider is an avowed anti-EU politician. In 2000 some EU member countries did impose limited diplomatic sanction [guardian.co.uk] on Austria. In this case this meant cancelling of visits, recall of ambassadors, etc, and had zero direct economic consequence. I.e this was a gesture of disapproval, and yes any country is entitled to do that, this is was diplomacy is all about. Israel did exactly the same BTW.
FYI Haider is a neo-Nazi revisionist [time.com]. For once you'd like Europeans to do something when people like Haider get too close to actually governing a country. You remember the last time the European did nothing?
Nice double standards you've got there.
Re:2000 was no anomoly (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.davekopel.org/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits -in-Fahrenheit-911.htm#2000_Election_Night Florida Purge of Convicted Felons from Voter Rolls Deceit 4 According to Fahrenheit, Bush cronies hired Data Base Technologies to purge Florida voters who might vote for Gore, and these potential voters were purged from the voting rolls on the basis of race. ("Second, make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote count woman. And that her state has hired a company that's gonna knock voters off the rolls who aren't likely to vote for you. You can usually tell 'em by the color of their skin.") As explained by the Palm Beach Post, Moore's suggestion is extremely incomplete, and on at least one fact, plainly false. The 1998 mayoral election in Miami was a fiasco which was declared void by Florida courts, because--in violation of Florida law--convicted felons had been allowed to vote. The Florida legislature ordered the executive branch to purge felons from the voting rolls before the next election. Following instructions from Florida officials, Data Base Technologies (DBT) aggressively attempted to identify all convicted felons who were illegally registered to vote in Florida. There were two major problems with the purge. First, several states allow felons to vote once they have completed their sentences. Some of these ex-felons moved to Florida and were, according to a court decision, eligible to vote. Florida improperly purged these immigrant felons. Second, the comprehensive effort to identify all convicted felons led to a large number of false positives, in which persons with, for example, the same name as a convicted felon, were improperly purged. Purged voters were, in most cases, notified months before the election and given an opportunity to appeal, but the necessity to file an appeal was in itself a barrier which probably discouraged some legitimate, non-felon citizens from voting. According to the Palm Beach Post, at least 1,100 people were improperly purged. The overbreadth of the purge was well-known in Florida before the election. As a result, election officials in 20 of Florida's counties ignored the purge list entirely. In these counties, convicted felons were allowed to vote. Also according to the Post, thousands of felons were improperly allowed to vote in the 20 non-purging counties. Analysis by Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh, dissenting from a report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, suggests that about 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida. (The Thernstrom/Redenbaugh dissent explains why little credit should be given to the majority report, which was produced by flagrantly ignoring data.) When allowed to vote, felons vote approximately 69 percent Democratic, according to a study in the American Sociological Review. Therefore, if the thousands of felons in the non-purging 20 counties had not been illegally allowed to vote, it is likely that Bush's statewide margin would have been substantially larger. Regardless, Moore's suggestion that the purge was conducted on the basis of race was indisputably false. As the Palm Beach Post details, all the evidence shows that Data Base Technologies did not use race as a basis for the purge. Indeed, DBT's refusal to take note of a registered voter's race was one of the reasons for the many cases of mistaken identity. DBT's computers had matched these people with felons, though in dozens of cases they did not share the same name, birthdate, gender or race...[A] review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted. Records show that DBT told the state it would not use race as a criterion to identify felons. The list itself bears that out: More than 1,000 voters were matched with felons though they were of different races. The appeals record supports the Palm Beach Post's findings.
Quote (Score:4, Informative)
Re:mistakes (Score:5, Informative)
We DO have systematic problems with our democracy...and having some outside help might get things fixed. After all, the Florida situation is an excellent example of how "steeped" our system is. Let's face it, in most states the elections are run by the "old biddy" crowd, politically active, people that have "all day" to meander out to vote. I know in my state that we have "little" elections all the time for really small things. [city, county, state] It makes it hard for "working class" people to keep up with all the issues...so things like school milages and more local things get a "fixed" election by skirting under the radar and if the media doesn't like the issues they just "forget" to publisize it!!! Keeping that in mind, when you get to a national election every 4th year you go to vote and find all sorts of petty "procedural" changes... so you end up a the wrong polling place [changed after 5 years!] or find your name on some "list" [so you could vote, but not THIS time], or because of historically low turn out they don't print enough ballots [but that IS the fault of populace not voting enough!!!]
Either way, the florida election had many of these situations all at once! Of course the national media did "create" the mess by suddenly putting the "whole" election on florida which caused tons of people that normally wouldn't have voted to turn out...to a system designed to "weed by technacality". The media made it a "hot spot" then put on all the activist lawyers & preacher to point out how unfair the whole thing was. The "impropeiety" occurred mostly because very few of the "officals" knew the proper rules to follow, so they started "making them up" under the glut of voters and outside pressure. Combine with crappy voter ballots [again a small "systematic" jab at "stupid" people] it only made things worse.
On top of everything else, NOBODY FOLLWED THE RULES of the election process... not the Florida counties, the state election office, or even the lawyers who argued in the supreme court!!! The electoral college was created for just such purpose!
The Electoral College was created by the constitution because the framers didn't trust a "national" election for the very reasons that we saw in florida in 2000!!! The USA is a federated republic....not a democracy!!! The Federal Government is not SUPPOSED to represent the needs of the PEOPLE, but the needs of the states!!! That was the REAL reason for the Civil War [The northern states with all the population were feeling "moral" and stepping on the southeren state's way of life using Federal laws. but that got lost in all the religous slavery speeches] The USA federal government is supposed to be "elected" by your already elected officals. That's one reason it was created so very limited in scope versus what we have now. The only "popular" elections gauranteed in the Constitution were for House represenatives. Senators were supposed to represent the state govenments directly..."ambasadors to the federal govt" if you will. Senators were supposed to be your state offical's direct voice in congress...think of the wide spread ramifications of THAT change...do you think "patriot" would have gotten thru a wiser board of state governers? [or many of the pettty spending bills for that matter!]
The electoral college was created to be a third process outside the state govt or popular election. Again, thru voter laziness, the "well-doers" wanted popular election for everything... and that's just not the case. There's no constitutional provisioning for how a state chooses electors!!!! yep, read it again, there's NO constitutional provision for how the state chooses electors!!! Think again how the system has been perverte
Re:Clear victory? (Score:3, Informative)
Daniel
Re: Not quite the Republic states. (Score:3, Informative)
As someone correctly clarified in a nested post, we are a democratic republic. However, in the end, we are basically a republic.
Of course, I imagine the media's handling of the word "Democracy," is tantamount to their handling of the word "Communism," of which there has never been a true implementation.
Democracy has a certain feel-good rhetoric... it is just easier to carry out the misunderstood application of the term than to bother to correct it for people.
I mean, when more people can't name the vice President than can, I don't think they bother about making sure to say "republic," which sounds so much more un-nice than "democracy" does.
Re:mistakes (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bah (Score:1, Informative)
Illegally taking money from the Oil for Food [rogerlsimon.com] program in Iraq.
USA = Republic (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Jst a asmall nitpick (Score:5, Informative)
In the end, you have nothing but lies (Score:5, Informative)
Spread your disinformation elsewhere. Here's a video [thememoryhole.org] that shows every instant from the moment Anderew Card whispered in Bush's ear until Bush got out of his chair.
Re:Jst a asmall nitpick (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Previous offers of election assistance (Score:2, Informative)
Re:US votes? (Score:3, Informative)
In any case, I expect Bush to be able to stand on his own. The fact that he couldn't face the comission on his own two feet (metaphorically) that he is not in charge. He is not a leader.
Here is your reference to Bush saying that God speaks through him: Intelligencer Journal and the Lancaster New Era, on July 16, 2004. [irregulartimes.com]. Here's the Lancaster Online archive. [newsbank.com] It requires Javascript.
I don't care about Bush's personal beliefs. I only care about the constituencies he panders to when he creates policies for our country.
Why would you vote for this failure again? He blew the war on terror before 9/11 and brought us into Iraq solely as the behest of his neo-con buddies in their quest for world domination, while claiming it was related to the war on terror. He hasn't come clean about his national guard record, nor his history of drug use. While Kerry was fighting in Vietnam, he was having Senior pull strings to get him out of his military obligation. Hasn't he demonstrated to you that he is unfit to lead our country?
Re:US votes? (Score:2, Informative)
That's basically it. They do have a tendency to change a little from election to election so in one election a tick for the first preference and numbers for the rest are acceptable, but in the next election it might not be). All that the votes really require is a clear order of preference on who to elect. If you can determine that, it's formal. Upper house votes are even harder to make informal due to the dual-voting ability (above the line per-party or below the line per-candidate).
As for postal votes, yes the system is pretty good. When the envelope comes it, it gets your name marked on the roll as having voted. The envelopes are then stored until election day. At that point the envelopes are opened in a big pile at the AEC office in the electorate and all votes placed into a big pile. The pile is then sorted according to the normal procedure. There's very little chance of connecting the envelope with the vote of the voter. Of course, there's always a half dozen eagle-eyed scrutineers watching your every move too to make sure you don't accidently loose a vote or any other nefarious thing, particularly in the highly marginal seats.
Re:America (Score:3, Informative)
Bush "won" Florida by 537 votes. Tens of thousands were turned away at the polls. That's not what I call a "just fine" election.
Re:I'm confused on this one. (Score:3, Informative)
The parliament has been gathering more and more powers over the last couple of decades in order to better control the EU commission that is selected by the member governments that are all democratically elected.
So please explain to me again why the EU is supposed to be not democratic?
Re:mistakes (Score:3, Informative)
That would be why california has 53 members of the house and Wyoming only has 1. The house represents the people, the president represents the states!
US "most stable (large) democracy"? Yes. (Score:3, Informative)
The British have had a sort-of representative government (Parliament) for, well, a long time -- many hundreds of years (perhaps you could count starting at the Magna Carta, in some sense). However, for the great bulk of that time, Britain has been only weakly democratic -- only the privileged could vote, and the monarchy exerted very strong power. Gradually, moving toward the end of the 1800's, then through the early 1900's, Britain evolved toward what we would today consider to be "true democracy". And it was a very stable transition. No nasty revolutions, civil wars, etc.
By contrast, the US dived head-first into something close to full-out democracy, over 200 years ago. One could say about 100 years earlier than the British. Yes, there were no votes for slaves or women -- but still, the "common man" ruled, which was dramatic and new -- truly radical! With the exception of one major crisis -- the Civil War -- the country has been remarkably stable. One could offer up reasons (e.g. the "splendid isolation" of North America), but could just as well offer up uniquely destabilizing challenges (massive influx of heterogeneous immigrants). For whatever reasons, the fact is that the US democratic system has been very stable for over 200 years. No other (large) country can really compete with that.
Look at the French, to get a glimpse of a possible "alternative history" -- to see how unstable the process of democratization can be. First the trauma of the French Revolution. Then the Napoleonic Wars. Then continuing backsliding with Napoleon III. Or look at Russia! Just absolute _chaos_ in the Russian Revolution, followed by decades of tyrrany.
The process of the "common man" taking over power from the privileged elite is inherently a traumatic one. It can go very, very badly, and take a long time to stabilize. Truly, the American experience stands out from the crowd.
The U.S. is subject to monitoring (Score:5, Informative)
You may be interested to know that there are actually inspection/monitoring systems set up to monitor test ban treaties and such. So yes, the U.S. might be inspected, but I'm not sure it would be by the U.N. but rather by other states.
The U.N. Headquarters is situated in the larges city in the U.S. The open nature of the U.S. society, and the seismiological and radiological monitoring stations [seismo.ethz.ch] around the world help to reveal any test of a nuclear weapon on the planet. If I recall correctly, there is allready in place an agreement not to use nuclear weapons in space. New nuclear powers and any alien governments haven't signed that treaty.
Not specifically related to WMD, is the Open Skies Treaty [armscontrol.org], which allows other countries to do reconnaissance flights over the U.S.
(The moderators said this was Interesting, so you get a matter-of-fact reply.)
Now that's a democracy (Score:1, Informative)
The United States is known as being the world's most stable democracy
Not known that way by me anyway. Not even before the Gore/Bush fiasco. What the hell is this "register to vote" nonsense about anyway? In the Netherlands, as I'm sure in many European countries, you don't need to register to vote. The country knows my name and sends me a little tiny voting-form automatically. I need not ask for this myself. Everybody in the country gets it. This makes it easier for people to vote, thus more people will vote.
Look who the Representative is... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes THAT Alcee hastings. The one that got removed from the bench for conspiracy and bribery, IIRC in the 1980's.
He is a Democrat, and a political activist.
I doubt we will see any impartiality from the OCSE given whom they have chosen as the leadership here. The Republicans are probably already getting dossiers together to discredit this guy.
They should have at least come up with a couple of impartial Europeans (say, Scotland, Denmark) instead of a corruptable US politician.
SO no matter what they find out, having that guy associated with it provides any Republican an automatic "attack the attacker" bias claim defense.
Iceland (Score:5, Informative)
Have a look at other histories besides American ones to see which countries have had democratic institutions for a period of time.
care to define the difference? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:mistakes (Score:3, Informative)
Jeb Bush is the Governor of Florida.
But other than that I think you're right, although the flaw has to be in the system that allows this kind of abuse.
Re:Jst a asmall nitpick (Score:5, Informative)
OK. Let's define our terms here: more stable means no revolutions, civil wars, major unrest, or invasions since the end of the US civil war in 1865. How many can you name in 5 minutes? Go! Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Iceland, Mauritius, Seychelles, Malta, bzzt. Out of time.
no, the President should not represent the most (Score:3, Informative)
This is the same reason countries get one vote each in the UN, not votes equal to their populations. If that were the case, the US would get one vote, all of Europe combined would get two votes, and China would get four votes. But that's not how it works, because the UN is not intended to represent all people equally, but all nations. Similarly, the US government should represent all groups within the US, not all US people equally.
seems racist to me (Score:4, Informative)
New Zealand was the first (Score:3, Informative)
The USA lags behind that on both counts, although some states (Wyoming) predate it. Most european countries also took longer to extend the vote to all adults, e.g. in Great Britain certain occupations didn't get the vote until later.
Re:of course, the rest of the world isn't any bett (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I was looking for a comment to moderate... (Score:3, Informative)
Even discounting that, the US also has not been leading in terms of who can vote: During the early days of the US, voting restrictions "even" on men were strict - many states requiring property ownership etc.. It wasn't until the 1840's that restrictions on voting for Catholics and non-Christians were lifted. Black males didn't get the right to vote until the 15th amendment in 1870, but the right was severely abridged by states putting in place requirements that were hard or even impossible to meet ("grandfather clauses" giving voting rights only to peoples whose grandparents had the right to vote etc.) - most of these restrictions lasted at least until 1915. Women didn't get the right to vote at federal level until 1920, solidly beat both 18-19 countries at least. Indians didn't get the right to vote until 1924.
The final restrictions designed to prevent blacks from voting didn't disappear until poll taxes were made illegal in the 60's
So how do you define "democratic government"?
To compare, New Zealand was the first country in the world to introduce universal voting rights - from 1893 women where given the right to vote, 23 years after the indigenous population got their right to vote.
If you, however, accept all the restrictions above, as "democratic", then the list of countries with older continuous democratic governments than the US is quite long.
Some clarification to the European views here (Score:2, Informative)
But we don't seem to be getting anywhere, so I searched my browser history a bit and found this gem:
http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleverin
(click the link under "Video" on the right side)
It's a dutch documentary, but over 75% is in english and subtitled in dutch. It's a great piece with a balanced view on democracy in this time and I feel a lot of Americans can learn a few things about the European perspective that you can find a lot here on
a U.S. organization plans to monitor, too (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This Has Happened Before... (Score:3, Informative)
Somehow I don't get the logic. It is like saying "We're so secure, that a security audit would be a humiliation." or "Our finances are so ordered, a book audit would be a humiliation." I'm sure Enron et al would love to use that excuse.
OSCE was here in Norway, reported some very minor irregularities (mostly force majeure with various degrees of recovery), and while it was nitpicking that had no effect on the outcome whatsoever, I felt it very reassuring that they were there.
Kjella
Re:Some clarification to the European views here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I was looking for a comment to moderate... (Score:1, Informative)
1. Democracy was invented in the ancient Greece.
2. The United Kindom Has the longest continious democratic government. It is a constitutional monarchy. The queen has a pure ceremonial role.
The democracy in the UK is a few hundred years old and much older than that in the US.
3. The Vikings in the pre-medieval years also knew a democratic system.
4. Denmark and Switzerland are the most modern democracies in the world. Switzerland knows referendums since decades. On the counterbalance it must be said that the right to vote came very late for women. (The US had a similar issue with black people not beeing allowed to vote for a very long time). Denmark which has people randomly selected from the citizenry to either act as representatives, or to make decisions in specific areas of governance (Defence, Environment, etc). One of the results of this would be the cessation of political parties and elections.
Re:mistakes (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Jst a asmall nitpick (Score:3, Informative)
That is a rather pointless statement. A democratic republic is a democracy whose head of state is directly elected. Contrast this with a constitutional monarchy, where the head of state is a hereditary position. Britain is the latter, the US the former.
Constitutional monarchies tend to be parliamentary democracies. A parliamentary democracy is a country where the executive (typically a cabinet lead by a prime minister) requires the ongoing support by parliament (though in some constitutional monarchies, such as Norway, the head of government is appointed by the head of state, the parliament can still throw the cabinet out, and it is extremely unusual for the head of state to choose a prime minister that has not already secured the support of the parliament in advance).
Some republics are also parliamentery democracies (Iceland and France for example), while others, such as the US are not.
So I guess what you probably meant is right - the differences are quite small, and both are practical adaptations of democracy, but looking at various Western systems, the US and British systems are two of the most dissimilar, perhaps except for one man circuits that cause very low number of parties represented in government.
Re:rights of convicted persons (Score:3, Informative)
Re:rights of convicted persons (Score:3, Informative)
Since felons tend to be from 'lower' classes and are disproporionatly from minority communities, they tend to vote for Democrats (they also tend to have low turnouts). Several reporters have observed that several Repulican governors have produced lists with significant errors. A list sent from Texas to Florida in 2000 contained people 'convicted' of felonies in 2007 as well as people convicted of misdeminors. These lists were used with the less care that Homeland Security lists that held up Sen. Kennedy and caused Cat Stephens (aka Yuseph Islam) to be deported, only four months after he met with White House staff members; so there are recorded incidents where a legitimate voter with the same name as someone on the no-vote list was turned away. In short, there are plenty of irregularities and there is evidence that they are systematic.
Re:care to define the difference? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the distinction you are trying to make does not seem to be supported by dictionary definitions or common usage.
Even the CIA fact book [cia.gov] lists Switzerland, Germany, and the US all as "federal republics".
The CIA Factbook defines [cia.gov]"republic" as So, a republic is a kind of democracy, and the kind of democracy it is is related to how it makes its laws (not how it elects its president).
Close. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the real crime in it was that the job of purging the rolls was subcontracted out to a private company with obvious ties to the political party that won in Florida. Also, Katherine Harris, the head of the Florida Election Commission, who is a big time Republican once stated out loud that, "Gore should have been nice to me and he would have won the election."
Anything here smell fishy about this who debacle?
The US system needs an overhaul. It needs no electoral college. It needs overall popular vote. The surprisingly terrible turnout mostly comes from a system where if you were a democrat in Indiana (a state that has been Republican for 40 years) like me, why vote? It doesn't matter.
That is why there is crappy turnout.
I live in a state where my vote won't matter for president... but I am still hitting the polls anyway, so I can clown people when he sends us into Iran or another nation, and people are shocked.
Re:mistakes (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the executive branch of the government is the only body allowed to run the elections. It's part of the whole "balance of power" and "checks and balances" stuff. So, each state's legislative body makes the rules of the election, unchangable except beforehand by that body. Each state's executive branch executes the rules, as set beforehand by the legislature, and has whatever power over the election that the legislature gives them.
In fact the judical branch, if they choose, can set any rules for choosing electors they want. Constitutionally, they could choose by lottery. However, whatever process they choose, the execute branch is responsible for ensuring that laws passed by congress are carried out.
The judicial branch, then, can review whether the election was carried out by the executive branch according to the rules set beforehand, but is not permitted to change the rules, even if the prior rules are "unfair".
No foreign body has any jurisdiction over US elections. Technically, the federal government, even has little jurisdiction over state elections (and electing a President is a state election, not federal). The only reason the Federal Supreme Court intervened last time was because they believed the Florida Supreme Court was acting contrary to the federal constitution.
The most the Europeans could do is reassure or be a spoiler. If they agree that the election was carried out properly, they can reassure those who 'didn't get their way' that it was, indeed, a 'fair election'. However, if they ruled that the election was 'unfair', all this would do is create four more years of complaining, and a greater schism in the American public. They simply have to power or right to overturn an American election.
And I think the reassurance would be minimal, but the spoiling effect could be great. In other words, little good would come of it, but a lot of bad could.
Re:mistakes (Score:4, Informative)
Umh yeah... women and people of lower classes. Hell, the vast majority of black men couldn't vote until at least the late 1960's (when enforcment of the 15th Amendment kicked in via applicaion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act). Women didn't get the right to vote nationally until the 19th Amendment in 1920. Every original state had a property requirement for voting. And even if you were wealthy enough to vote, the only directly elected federal office was the House of Representatives. There was no popular vote for the Presidency until 1824 (and even then it was not binding) or for the Senate until 1917.
I recommend you read some Howard Zinn. [amazon.com]