please empty your brain below
Has this fascinating post been brewing for a while or a sudden flash of inspiration on a very rainy day. The choice of Croydon and accompanying graphics are very well thought through.
Next stop, replacing our flawed voting process with much securer electronic systems! Also some scrapping of unnecessary rules. The state of Georgia has shown us that there is no problem with the person in charge of running the election process, also being on the ballot paper. Banning that happening is just pointless red tape.
Politicians over there survive on donations from business. If we adopted a more American electoral system, we could ensure that the needs of business are heard above those of the individual. What could be more important than ensuring that the interests of people such as Mike Ashley, Philip Green, Mohamed Al-Fayed, et al are looked after.
If you want a fairer system multi party democracy and proportional representation voting is the way to go.
Middlesex disappeared for administrative purposes in 1965, not 1974, with the creation of Greater London and the 32 London Boroughs.
@DG
I wonder how Snarlene and Ian Jr. would go down in South Armagh or on the Bogside. On second thoughts, best not go there...
I doubt most of the population of Middlesex even know or relate to a county that's been defunct for 53 years.
The link to the 2017 GE is interesting. Clicking on it took me to a UK constituency map, where I clicked on the top (northernmost) one which is Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. This showed me the result of the constituency vote, with all 4 candidates losing their deposits and the majority of 2044 votes representing 0.2%. "Highest and lowest" rankings show that the constituency had the highest turnout at 2109.8% (many other Scottish seats and at least one Welsh also exceeded 100%), and was ranked 651 out of 650 for the winning % vote).
If this had been the US, such strange outcomes would have been referred by now to the Supreme Court, and chad counting would have been a boom industry.
Newport, South Wales always annoys me - what is wrong "Mon"? There is Couper Angus in Scotland that has been in Perth and Kinross for years.
We put life and development back into the provinces and stop London sucking the life and people out of the rest of the country.
Current and future employment possibilities no longer need squillions of folk commuting into the smoke. You can work at a computer terminal anywhere.
And if anyone can devise a system that excludes chancers and no-hopers standing for office, i'm all ears.
Did they put that as the now defunct Post Office Counties had Ashton in Lancashire? Was the official rebelling against the system? Or did they just forget?
I note that on my daughter's birth certificate it says my place of birth is "Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester". My son's? Just Tameside, the borough Ashton's been in since 1974.
Meh. I'm not worrying about it. It doesn't matter.
Just don't be like the guy who lives round near me know who refuses to acknowledge the town we live in is in Greater Manchester, and who flies a Cheshire flag in his garden. Cos the town only spent 80 years as part of Cheshire. It was actually part of Derbyshire for far longer...
The Parliament of Scotland was unicameral before 1707, as was the English Parliament under the Protectorate.
What is not to like.
American voter here. Not how it works.
There are polling places usually within walking distance in the areas were the vast majority of the population lives. After growing up with the UK system its a bit of surprise seeing just how many polling places there are in any kind of built up area. Literally every ten blocks or so in big cities like SF or Seattle. They are everywhere. Anyway the majority of people vote by mail.
The actual turn out of people eligible to vote matches pretty closely European countries. The numbers you saw showing low turn are based on total census population not actual citizen population. In a lot of big cities 15% plus of the adult population are ineligible to vote not being citizens.
The other big difference is the ballot. In Britain its usually a single sheet which you mark a single X on. Thats it. In my local election there are Federal elections: Senate, House; State Elections: State Assembly, State Senate; State Offices: Governor; Lieut Gov; another ten or so state offices; State Propositions: only a dozen or so this time, mostly bond issues. Then the City / County elections: City/County reps; School Board; Transportation Board; other City/County boards; City/County initiatives and bond issues; County judges, etc etc. Pages of the stuff.
My voters guide was around 100 pages to cover all these ballot items. On the small side as it was a Mid Term.
You fill in an arrow with a pencil / pen on a paper ballot in my city. No electronic voting machines. There are literally thousands of voting districts across the country and each has its own way of doing things, regulated by the local State.
The US has nothing to learn about democracy from anyone else. Only Switzerland even comes close to the degree of popular democracy there is in the US. Its just very different from what you are familiar with. When was the last time you voted on a tax or bond issues? or for judges or sheriffs? Very different. And it works rather well despite the constant raucous arguments. Which is all part of the process.
You only hear about Federal politics outside the country but when it comes to day to day politics its the local and state stuff that really matters to people living here. DC is 2,000 miles away and irrelevant most of the time. So last night when I was reading about the election results less than 10% of my time was spent reading the Federal results and 90% plus reading local and state results. Which is about the correct ratio in the real world.
Again, very like Switzerland but unlike Britain or any other European country.
"The US has nothing to learn about democracy from anyone else."
There's no polite way to put this. That's an extremely arrogant view. And it's wrong.
Every democratic country in the world has something they could learn from other democracies. Every single one. There is no perfect democracy. There is no democracy that does not have the scope to improve things somewhere.
The UK is no exception, and nor is the US.
Not arrogant. Just a statement of fact.
Given that only one other democratic country has a history and a bottom up organization that even bears the slightest resemblance to the US, Switzerland, that is a statement of fact. And given that the US has in its huge number of voting districts literally every permutation you can come up with has been tried in one form or another, somewhere, at sometime. It experiments all the time, it built into its political DNA, but at the local and state level.
The Federal system is what it is but based on almost 250 years of empirical experimentation. Some of them quite bloody.
The US is unique. Its history and culture very different even from Canada. The other side of the barbed wire fence. The only country it might possibly learn from is Switzerland but givens its very singular history there is not much new to be learned from them really.
The other side of the coin is that there is not much other countries could learn from the US. Different culture, different history. Although in the case of California over the last 60 years there are more than one lessons to be learned on what not to do. The often catastrophic unintentional effect of Propositions being the perfect example. Direct democracy in its purest form.
I'm hard put to name one single Prop of the many hundreds passed in the last century that can be considered a total success. At best they are ineffectual, at worst cause lots of mischief. Best leave these things to elected members of the assembly. Or change the process so it more closely matches - the one in some of the bigger Swiss cantons.
The locals have been discussing this one for almost 100 years. In a few decades they might come to a decision. That how the country works. In a very elliptical way. Which is one thing it still has in common with the UK.
And there's the crux of your problem. The National level...
Is there a country with a federal structure doing its national organisation better than you? Could - at a national level - the US learn from experiences in representation in (to pick two examples) Australia or Germany. Maybe, maybe not. But if you don't look, you never know.
I know history plays a part in any democracy. I know this because I live in the country with the oldest Parliamentary democracy in the world. A history that regularly makes us refuse to counter that things could be done better. "We were first. Of course the way we do it is the best! It's obvious..."
And I know why Rhode Island has two senators and why Texas has two senators. But if a country always looks back and goes "woah, we can never change this because of something that happened 250 years ago"... And it certainly doesn't make it a democracy that could learn something - no matter how small - from somewhere else.
That said, "we have nothing to learn from anyone else" is the sort of attitude you might have expected to see in the UK during the last years of the Empire.
The blinkered (and, sorry, arrogant) kind of attitude you still see, sadly, from people who don't realize that everyone has something they can learn from others. One might have hoped, in this centenary week, we might have got past "my country, right or wrong"?
@YDU at 8:09 thinks the US has some silly beliefs, but what proportion of people here read their horoscope? All the newspapers carry them. Perhaps the stars told them to vote 'leave'?
Considering that the best the country could put up for election to the top job (from a population of 375 million) were Trump and Clinton, I would say that you have a lot to learn, event allowing for 25-35% of them to be under age or foreign, and unable to vote or apply for position.
Love the last DG line. Tongue in cheek.... ?
I loved DG's gentle satire,
I loved Mac's description about how the US system works beyond the bluster and bombast we hear in the UK
And I loved the start of the "my democracy is better than yours" which as is so often the case, descended into a little bit of a slanging match in typical forum fashion!
A classic day for DG!
Does the US electorate really have the skill and knowledge, and above all the time, to make a reasoned decision on all the candidates for all those posts? Or do they just plump for the pretty face, the well-known name, or the party?
And how can the judiciary be independent when they are political appointees? (What judge will take a correct but unpopular decision if he knows he's up for re-election next week?) And is it right that the elected representatives get to choose the boundaries of the electoral areas to suit themselves?
First past the post can produce some perverse results too - it is possible for a US presidential candidate to lose, even though he won 74% of the popular vote (100% in 49% of the colleges, and 49% in the others).
Even more curious, 9% of the popular vote could be enough to get a majority in the Senate (winning by a slender majority in the 26 least populous states)
The advantage of not having a written constitution is that you never have to admit it needs amending!
Winston Churchill
I'm sure there would be some who would also like to use a similar mechanism in both Scotland and Wales.
Furthermore, there is a fundamental flaw in your proposal which is not to allow the old ceremonial counties for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales while using them in England. The population of both Counties Antrim and Down, for instance, is well over 500K each, quite a bit bigger than some English counties.
J -- the swing states may be where the US Presidential election is determined, but the swing constituencies are just as important in a UK general election . You could just as easily say that it pointless voting Tory in Tower Hamlets or voting Labour in Surrey.
I would like to throw in the seat of parliament taking a leaf from Washington DC or Canberra ACT in the form of Brum WM
And I think that voting in America for the appointment of judges leads them to give populist decisions in far too many cases - noteably giving high damages awards in cases where the insurance company is paying.
This has led to the litigious society which they now are, and which is affecting us even on this side of the Atlantic.
To be fair, this was the original English system, with two Knights of the Shire* returned to Parliament from each of 37 counties.† To be fairer, Simon de Montfort did complicate things in 1265 by enfranchising the boroughs. Which only goes to show that even fair things can turn rotten.
Alas local government reorganisation since 1974 has messed up our county structures, chopping some into unitary authorities while leaving others whole. For example, it wouldn't be fair to give former Berkshire six times the representation of Oxfordshire…
Rather, Berkshire has the unique distinction of remaining a single (non-metropolitan) local government county, notwithstanding that its constituent districts were given unitary status and its county council axed.
As for whether the county of Middlesex now exists (discussed above): the administrative county of Middlesex (created 1889) was abolished in 1965, but Middlesex county, as such, has never been dispatched.
* Occasionally more than two. But two-member shire constituencies were pretty much the norm in England from 1254. Following Victorian reforms, the final 19 multi-member constituencies were abolished in 1950.
† Excluding the palatinates of Chester and Durham but not Lancaster, natch.
On 1 April 2009, “the [local government] county of Cheshire” was abolished, superseded by two new local government counties of “Cheshire East” and “Cheshire West and Chester” (which had been created in readiness on 5 March 2008), each of which had a corresponding new district and district council but no county council.[1] In contrast, County Durham county council continued to be responsible for its county but was also made responsible for a new local government district named County Durham when its constituent districts and district councils were abolished.[2] So, as with other English unitary areas except Berkshire (and not getting into the exceptional arrangements for the Isles of Scilly and Greater London), each unitary has a county and district of the same name and area, and the council is legally either a county council or a district council but exercises the functions of both. These smaller areas are often stitched back together for the archaic purposes of lord-lieutenancies and shrievalties.[3]
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