The United States is a federal constitutional republic. Citizens do not vote directly for the President but they choose among slates of Electors pledged to one candidate or another. Each state receives the number of electoral votes equal to the number of its members of the House of Representatives, which depends on the state's population, and the number of its senators, which is always two. The candidate who obtains the majority "win the state" and takes all the electoral vote of that state.
The map above shows the number of Electors in each state who are in all 538. These Electors will make up the Electoral College and they will vote for the President during the "Election Day", fixed for the 6th of November.
Is this electoral system really democratic?
In fact regarding the American electoral system, we can consider it like not democratic. But, it will be necessary to understand before of that state. Trying to understand what happened in the past could help us to accept or consider whether the electoral system is democratic or not.
RispondiEliminaBefore the 4th July 1777, the United State of America wasn’t a federal state. When they decided to create a federal state, there was a fear of secession. The first aim was to reinforce and protect the union, and one of the best way they found was to invite all American states to participate for a President election.
If at the begin, there were many candidates for a lot of political parties, now there are above all two candidates: one of Republican Party and another for Democrat party. That situation can be explained by many reasons like economics ones, strategic ones. With that system, the little candidates will not be able to participate in equity. Sometimes during the compain they want only defend some ideas, some targets they consider important, most of them connected to ecologic problem.
Finally, we can’t present that electoral system like not democratic ones, for two reasons:
1) The first reason is the fact that citizen can vote freely, although they don’t elect directly the President.
2) On the other hand even if they don’t elect directly the President, but we know that the choice of the American people has always been respected till now.
There are lots of ambiguity around the US electoral system. It is true that people can vote but actually the election campaign is focused on few states, called swing states. The other states have a consolidate democrat or republican tradition so the candidates do not have to gain these states' vote. As a result the participation in the elections is very low.
EliminaSusanna Gallini
Ambiguity? I’m not certain, because the fact electoral campaign is only focused in few States doesn’t mean is not really democratic, but it’s considered like a strategic choice. In the “swing states”, if one of both wins most of these States, he will be certain to be the next Us President. Their aim is only to win, whatever the average, in that context it’s better to think only about victory
Eliminahttp://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2012-general-election-romney-vs-obama
RispondiEliminaIf we look at the recent data, we can see the very tight difference between Romney and Obama.
Regarding elections in America it is well known that the election winner is the one who invests the most in its promotion. Through promotion campaigns, they use subjects that are topical: differential taxation according to social class, problems within health service, environmental problems,and so on.
I don't know how democratic are the American elections, considering there are allegations that those who really decide who will be the president are leaders of large corporations.
I believe that the root cause of degeneration is the unsolved problem of the relationship between constitutional architecture and political parties. The delegates gathered in Philadelphia hated parties and thought a Constitution based on the dialectic between institutions. The organized political groups, the "factions" in the political language of the time, they were viewed with extreme suspicion.
RispondiEliminaFurthermore, the difficulty of reforming the Constitution has historically made it impossible to find a stable solution. The origins of federalism has made it possible for individual states considerable freedom regarding the rules of primary elections, submission of applications, tools for voting, counting of votes, etc. ..But we’ll discuss….Bye!
It is hard to say if this electoral system is democratic or not, but I would like to analyze 3 different aspects.
RispondiEliminaFirs of all we have to consider that the population can not directly chose the Us President. As we know, every State has a certain number of Delegates, who will represent their states to the presidential election.
Secondly, the “winner takes all” system does not consider the citizens who voted for the Party that lost the election in the respective State.
Finally, it often happens that the political line of delegates that each state has, does not reflect the will of the majority of citizens.
We have to consider those 3 aspects before trying to answer to this question.
Paun Romica