U.S. Electoral System Explained - lol

YouTube - newstopia: US electoral system explained

"...before finally the candidate with the most money is declared president."

That's about the only thing I remember back in high school when one teacher was talking about the American electoral system. So does anyone here from the US even know how their electoral system works? If money is heavily involved in being elected president then what's with the American citizens voting in the first place?

I couldn't even understand what the heck that lady was saying, talks too fast.

Usually the candidate with the most money wins. Doesn't have anything to do with the electoral system though. Each state has a number of electoral votes and whoever wins the popular vote in your state gets all of those electoral votes.

eh, vid's down :/

That's a very strange way to do things...

lol really, how does it work in the land of Aus?

Uhm... Australian electoral system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Personally, I find the AUS system pretty weird too(this actually stands for most parliamentary systems), so far Japan/Germany's Single-Member Districts mixed with a proportional representation is the best I like besides our own.

My biggest peeve with AUS is the compulsory voting. If I don't want to vote, I won't.

My biggest peeve with the US is the electoral college. We can direct elect everyone else, we even count all(or most) of the votes for president anyway.

The way I understand the Australian electoral system to work...

There are many regions, each equalling 1 seat in the house of reps. Votes are counted in those regions and whoever gets the most gets a seat in parliment and whichever party that person is a part of gets +1.

I forget how many seats are in the house of reps, but the party who has the majority becomes the ruling party and the person leading the party becomes the Prime Minister.

I can't remember how it exactly works with the senate but we vote for the senate at the same time we vote for the house of reps.


And we also have state elections to vote for the government in charge of the state you live in.

*looks around* at least that's from what I can remember..... someone get someone in here who actually knows something dammit.



Plus if you don't want to vote for either of the two parties are definately gonna win (Labor or Liberal) then you just vote for the guy who we all know ain't gonna win anything lol.

I think, for Australia, about 97% of people wouldn't vote if voting wasn't compulsory... so I guess we kinda do need it to be compulsory down here XD

here the voting is compulsory too, I don't see anything wrong with it, to vote is a right but also your duty as a citizen, why you wouldn't want to vote? 'cause you don't want to? you're lazy? you don't do all the things you don't want to do? that's so childish.
Also voluntary voting isn't so voluntary because you might not be allowed even if you want to, here people in jail vote too.

my peeve with the compulsory vote is that even analphabet people has to vote, imo, people that can't read shouldn't be forced to do it so.

I figure if you don't feel up on the issues and candidates enough to vote, you shouldn't have to. I don't think you should be wasting the vote counter's time with a messed up ballot.

I think only felons can't vote here, and only if they're actually in prison

analphabet? is that like, an actual group of people, or just another term for illiterate?

aren't synonyms? or I'm saying it wrong somewhere? Free Online Dictionary

I have never heard that word before.....and it didn't show up in my FireFox dictionary....not that that's ever very accurate.

I really don't care who get elected on US soil, as I just want to get rid of my so called un-elected Prime Minster, Can't he take advice and call a general election for the UK

Didn't he fix aload of stuff recently? XD

Did WE elect him?

You could ya know, propose a change to the system where you tell them when it's election time instead of the other way around.

I wish.... but I'm a lazy..... lazy man......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8Uc5BFogE

out of curiosity, in what other countries voting isn't mandatory?

The United Kingdom