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Post by DADDY O on Jun 10, 2017 18:22:08 GMT
do the Brits choose their government?
I have tried to figure it out on several occasions, but obviously to no avail.
The recent elections in GB has left the country in an obvious mess. How does this happen? How do you elect a Prime Minister, or Cabinet?
What is a "devolved" country? How does Northern Ireland and Scotland fit into the equation......not to mention Wales?
Does Canada and Australia go through the same process?
I'm not complaining, just asking. Lord knows my government is a mess right now...............just trying to educate myself.
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Post by sherri on Jun 11, 2017 0:46:26 GMT
I'm not entirely sure about Canada & UK, but here, we have the country divided up into what are called electorates. Each electorate may be geographically a very different size-some are small, some cover vast outback or country areas. But each electorate is supposed to have roughly the same number of voters in it.
At election time, each electorate fields candidates. Most will be representing a political party although some may be what we call independents. Usually there will be a candidate from our two major parties but candidates from minor parties can also stand.
Each electorate may have a different number of candidates, it just depends on whether a minor party bothers to stand in any particular electorate-they may stand in some and not in others.
When we vote, we only vote for the people in our electorate, not directly for the prime minister (unless of course he happened to be the member in our electorate)
After voting finishes, votes are tallied and the party that ends up with the most votes in eg my electorate, will have that member into govt.
The party that wins the most electorates will win power.
If the two major parties win almost equal numbers of electorates, it can make it hard to govern as they may rely on the support of the Independents or minor party winners to get their initiatives through and that support is not a given. It usually comes with strings attached.
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Post by DADDY O on Jun 11, 2017 15:04:59 GMT
Are you voting for parties (Labor vs Tories or whoever), or people?
Over here, we are electing (every two years) people for the House of Representatives (could be Republicans, Democrats or Independents)and then every 6 years we elect Senators (only two from each state).
If the House of Representatives has more Republicans than Democrats elected......they usually control how the house votes).....same with the Senate.
Every four years we vote separately for Presidents.
Anyone, any party can run for election.
Elections are held on a State by State basis. If the State elects more Republicans than Democrats, they are known as a Red State. If the State elects more Democrats than Republicans, they are known as a Blue State. During the Presidential election, more states were Red than Blue.............seems appropriate doesn't it? |
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Post by sherri on Jun 11, 2017 22:41:30 GMT
I think orange is the new red. 
Over here we also have state and federal elections. Our two main parties are liberal/labor Liberals-their colour is blue. Labor-red
When we vote, we vote for the actual candidates in our own particular electorate. The party they are representing is written after their name, in brackets. A person can stand though as an Independent, no party affiliation.
So.. if you lived in a different electorate to me, we would not have the same candidate names on our voting slips.
What we are effectively voting in though is a party. The party that wins the most electorates will take office. The Prime minister is simply a normal politician who represents his/her party in an electorate. So it would be possible (though unlikely) that a party could win office by winning the most electorates, but the candidate they wanted as leader was defeated in his own electorate. If that happened, they would have to choose a new leader.
So.. we vote for the candidates in our electorate, we usually base it on what party they represent, but we don't vote on who will lead that party as such & that can change over the term of office. In fact we went through a period here where the Labor party changed leaders a few times.
The Liberals also changed their leader when they thought he wasn't too popular.
What it would translate to in USA would be that if Trump annoyed his party or got to be a liability, the others in his party could have a meeting, vote no confidence in Trump, demote him & pop another of their number in as leader. Trump would still have a position because he would have been voted in by his electorate. But he just wouldn't be leader, he might be put in a much lesser position.
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