507
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
507 points (97.4% liked)
News
23282 readers
3829 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
This is to elect the President. In a presidential system, as in the US, you choose the leader of the executive portion of government separately from the legislative leader. In a parliamentary system, as many countries in Europe use, the public doesn't choose the leader of the executive portion of government. Instead, they just vote for representatives in the legislative portion, and then those legislators form a coalition (if necessary) and choose a leader of the executive (the prime minister). The closest analog to coalition forming in the presidential election is doing exactly what the Greens are proposing above -- having a candidate drop out and endorse another, with the hopes that they can sway their supporters. It's basically what JFK Jr did, for example, with Trump.
While hypothetically the US could form legislative coalitions, in practice, due to the way the US electoral system works, US parties are essentially equivalent to electoral coalitions in parliamentary systems already -- we already form "big tent" parties necessary to control a house. In the US, the closest analog to this sort of thing actually happening after the elections is when you hear about something like "an independent legislator who caucuses with the Democrats". The US also has weak party discipline compared to many countries in Europe, so legislators are much less constrained to vote along party lines anyway.
Different systems, function kinda differently.
But I keep hearing how the American system isn't democratic since you don't directly vote for the president, you vote for some middle person who promises to vote for your president? Those people might not be members of the parliment but they can still form coalitions after the fact by voting for who has a chance to win
Well, okay, so, the US does have the electoral college, and strictly-speaking, you're choosing electors that choose the President, but the election is and has for a long time functionally been a direct one. That is, you know the person that you are voting for in voting for the elector. Some states don't even constitutionally let electors vote for anyone other than the person they have pledged to vote for, and in any case, the electors are chosen by the parties, who have no incentive to choose someone likely to vote for anyone other than the candidate that they've pledged to vote for, so it's not really an aspect of the electoral system in the normal case. While false electors exist, normally as a protest vote if they know that their candidate can't win, they're rare and have never altered the outcome of an election.
This came up this year in some discussion in the context of what happens if a President drops out after being placed on the ballot but prior to becoming President, which I assume is what you're thinking about, so that the electors cannot vote for the person on the ballot, and in that situation, yeah, they'd have to find some kind of fallback.
But that's a pretty limited corner case. That is, they don't just have a blank check to go out and build coalitions and select someone.