[MoreWillBeRevealed]

Interesting. Seems most of the OW I know love Trump. Says a lot about their character.

[xyzcf]

One thing that I am finding interesting is that Trump is changing his ideas and views from what he presented during his campaign for president. So I question what the value of the previous 18 months were? If what the candidates were presenting in those painful months, are not being followed through..then what was the point?

As well, for those who "complain" about how the media misrepresented him, there is a great deal of coverage on him now that seems pretty fair in what they are reporting. If the media really is as "crooked" as was portrayed, then why are they being so open in their reporting now?

Just my thoughts. I pray that the divisions that exist will somehow be healed and that the leaders that are chosen by Trump will bring their intelligence and wisdom to the table, that my worst nightmares will never be seen in the light of day.

[elray]

X,

It's almost like he held a private position different from his public position.  Where did I last here that?

I guess you could say Trump has consistently been inconsistent.  His supporters didn't seem to mind during the election, but it makes him very difficult to predict.  Compromise is a crucial part of deal making.  Maybe he is at heart, a deal maker and a pragmatist, rather than an idealogue.  If so the next 4 years are just as likely to make republicans heads explode as democrats.  An equal opportunity head exploder could provide a lot of entertainment and explose a lot of politicians on both sides as frauds.

I do NOT like the precedent of the winner putting the loser in jail -- it tends to be very unhealthy to a functional democracy, and extremely divisive, so at least in one case, I'm glad to see his position changing.  Like you, I also view this change and some of his others as healthy steps that might heal some of the divisions he created, and I too pray that he will have a strong team around him to cross check some of his strange meanderings.  Apparently however, we're going to have a president who randomly tweets bizzaro ideas;  I guess that will take some getting used to...maybe the office will wear him out and he'll start sleeping thru the night.

[stayed]

I agree X, I hope too that my worst fears are not going to be realized.  That being said, he has EXPOSED himself already as a lying, manipulative arse!  This is a person who will say whatever he has to, to get what he wants.  That is a bit of a concern. 

I am thinking, his "fans" are going to be quite disappointed especially about not arresting Hilary and putting her on trial.  It was the one promise that I heard many say, they would be very disappointed if he did not carry through with.  The other thing that is STILL concerning me, is the way that SOME people have translated his success, as permission to target "non white men and women" as their God given right.  I have even heard white men say as they carry out their act of cruelty as "we won, we can Trump you now"! 

I will be very interested in seeing how this all unfolds. 

[Onward]

The electoral college thing is quite interesting.  In Canada we don't vote separately for our Prime Minister.  We have political parties.  They choose the person they want as the leader of their party.  WE the people vote, but we ONLY vote for one person in our own constituency/county.  End of the day, the PARTY with the most delegates becomes the majority, the leader of that party becomes our Prime Minister.  Now, this is where we have issues, because some provinces are much more populated then others.  Like, the United States, the constitution stipulates that each province should have an equal voice, so like you we occasionally end up with the party we did not select, because the number of delegates for each province carries more weight then the popular vote.   

I haven't participated in the election discussion, but have been following along.

I did want to expand / clarify on what you've brought up here, Stayed. Canadian provinces don't have an equal voice in the sense that each province has the same voice. Rather, each province has a number of seats in Parliament to ensure proportional representation based on population. So, populace provinces like Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia have more seats than provinces like Manitoba and Nova Scotia. And there is a representation formula to help ensure sparsely populated regions of the country have at least some voice. This helps address some of the issues found in a country with a significant rural/urban divide.

For those less familiar, in Canada, we have electoral districts called ridings. Riding boundaries are based on population. By law in Canada, electoral ridings must be reviewed every 10 years, and redistributed if there have been changes in population. The last time this was done was in 2014.

For the electoral representation geeks, everything you need to know about the Canadian system can be found here. http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=cir/red/form&document=index&lang=e

We do have a 'first past the post' system, which means that the popular vote doesn't necessarily win the election. But, we also have a multi-party system. Votes are distributed across a number of parties, so mathematically, one can win the election without winning the overall popular vote.

A party does select their leader, but in order for the leader to sit in Parliament, they must successfully run and win the vote in their home riding. The party with the highest number of  elected delegates does form government, but not necessarily a majority government.

The difference though, this situation is easily corrected by a "vote of non confidence" in the legislature, which has happened on more then one occasion.  Which is pretty good, because we don't get STUCK with a MISTAKE for very long.  The Canadian people have proven themselves to be pretty ruthless and even though our elections have often been selected by low voter turn out, once the vote of no confidence happened and we returned to the POLLS, we  always have had massive turn outs and restored a much more stable government. 

Just to clarify, a 'motion of non-confidence' is a motion of Members of Parliament. Essentially, it happens if there are not enough parliamentary votes to pass legislation put forward by the governing party. For example, if there is a minority government (which can happen due to the multi-party system), the governing party needs to gain support for legislation in order to have bills pass. If they don't, a motion of non-confidence can be made, and an election is called.

The last time this happened, in 2011, the Conservative party led a minority government. A motion of non-confidence was held, the election was called, and the Conservatives were returned to power with a majority, while the opposition Liberal party that called for the motion lost most of the seats it held.

A motion of non-confidence has been called six times in Canadian history, including once with Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the father of our current Prime Minister. The governments that have experienced non-confidence motions have tended to be either longer term governments, or minority governments.

Canada's voter turnout has ranged in the high to low 60% range since the 90's, with the lowest rate at just under 59% in 2008. The 2015 election had the highest voter turnout in 20 years, at 68.5%

In terms of the US election, one thing that everyone can probably agree on is that the controversies aren't likely to end any time soon!

 

[Roma]

Stayed, Onward, 1Trouble, Anjae and everyone else from countries outside of the US, I'd like reading what you all say about the elections in your county. Goodness knows not only am I tired of the US Presidential elections, I'm completely embarrassed. Would love to 'hear' about how other counties select their President/Prime Minister or whatever ever your calls their President.

I find politics interesting.

Are you all separated by party? Do you have something similar to Democrats/Republicans or Independents (where Independent really doesn't count?   

Which country was it that political members had an actual physical fight recently. Is that type of thing normal?

How is Brexit coming along?

An Independent candidate (Jill Stein filled papers for a recount in three states in the US) do you all have recounts also?

Do you all have the Electoral College?

Teach us who don't know

[stayed]

Thank you Onward, you clarified that much better then I.  I didn't want to go into TOO much depth, as I didn't want to bore them, but you did a beautiful job and kept it short and interesting as well. 

No system is perfect, the one thing I have noticed with United States is a reluctance to listen to any other views/opinions/ideas by others. Every country has something special to offer.  It seems ridiculous to me, not to look at what others have/are doing and see if there is anything that MIGHT be of use to us.  Anything that might improve upon our system. 

I am not trying to be unkind here, as we are guilty of the same thing. For example, most Canadians would very much like our SENATORS to be ELECTED, like the United States does.  Ours are appointments made by our sitting PRIME MINISTER and is used to get policies/bills/decisions passed that the Prime Ministers wants.  One example of that, was the old GST (Goods and Services Tax)  It has been replaced with HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) in recent years, but basically another tax on purchases. Needlelss to say, we did not want it, as we feel we are taxed quite enough. It was voted and approved on by congress and then, the P.M. appointed some new Senators, that would support it... and bing bodda boom, we have a new TAX. 

In my opinion it is misused by our Prime Ministers... and all of them have been guilty of this.  Every single one of them.  The other problem, our Senators can and are appointed for life.  I personally do not think anybody who has NOTbeen elected by us, should  have the right to DECIDE, finalize and formulate laws and policies.  In my opinions, Senators should be elected just like our congressmen/women.  End of story.  Just like the United States.

Like the U.S. the legislature hides behind the "Constitution" to prevent taking this power away from our Prime Ministers.  By the way, even though many P. M. ran on the stand that they would REMOVE this Tax... it has NEVER happened.  I tell you this, just so you know, I am trying to be fair and not pointing my finger at the U.S.A.  Every country has a something to learn from others.  Most do not listen, sadly. 

[elray]

About a hundred years ago (1914) the 17th ammendent was passed in the US to move senators to an elected position, so we used to have something more similar to the Canadian setup, although it was always a 6 year term.  Lifetime appointments seems pretty crazy but we have that in the Supreme Court.  Even that differs at the state level.  For example in my state there is a mandatory judicial retirement age of 75.

[stayed]

Actually Elray, with Senators they are appointed.  End of story... can stay as long as they want, unless they do something illegal!  As for the rest of our congress, counselor and even Prime Minister, as long as they are dutifully elected by the people, then they can stay. 

As we have said, our Prime Minister is selected by it's party, ie.  Liberals, Conservatives, New Democratic Party, Marajuana Party...(yes we actually have such a party)... the Green Party, etc. etc.  Now, what generally happens, the party that is elected to power LEADER, becomes the Prime Minister.  As long as that party stays in power and that can be for many, many years, generally they keep their leader and he / she remains the Prime Minister.  When they lose, which they almost always do eventually, often the leader steps down, but if he / she does not, then  there is a LEADERSHIP convention, where he/she is normally voted out and someone NEW is selected. 

If your interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_Canada

Pierre Elliott Trudeau our present Prime Ministers father was in power twice... once for  11 years and the second time after a very short break where Joe Clark replaced him and was the shortest duration of any PM in our history, Pierre E. Trudeau ran and won back his seat and remained Prime Minister for 4 more years. 

Our system is pretty much the same as Great Britain.  Basically, we feel, if a party (thereby the Prime Minister) can continue to win our votes, then they should remain.  It is OUR choice.  Term limits continually come up for discussion but so far, it has not changed.  Unlike the Senator thing, the majority of Canadians would prefer to VOTE for our senators, yet that has not been acted upon.  Quite annoying but I assume that Canadians must let the question lapse, because when  we get pi$$y we usually have our way. 

Canada definitely leans towards liberalism, although there is very little difference between any of our parties these days.  We are quite socialistic,  we like it that way.  We don't like people being hungry, unhealthy and homeless. 

[Anjae]

In Portugal we have a President and a government lead by a Prime Minister that usually is the leader of the party with most votes, be it a single party government or a coalition govenment. The leader of the most voted party does not have to be the Prime Minister, for government, we vote for a party, not a person, it can be another person from the same party.

The voting system for government is some how similar to Canada's one. The larger administrative parts Portugal is divided are Distritos, each with representation on Parliament, including the autonomous regions of Madeira and Açores (Azores) - Madeira and Açores also have their own local parliements.

Like in Canada, we have several parties and we have had coalition governments. Our current government is a coalition one, and, actually, the main party in the coalition was not the most voted party. The most voted party did not had enough votes to govern nor could find anyone to make a coalition with them. In a case like that the next most voted party, if able to form a coalition can govern, if not, new elections will be held.

Presiodential elections are separated from government/parliament elections. The President can be from one party, or an Independent, and the Prime-Minister from another. Currently we have a President that is a member of a party, but has run as an Independent, a Prime Minister from another party and a government with three parties. There are more three or four parties in Parliement.

If the Prime Minister dies, another member of his party, be it a cabinet member or not, will become the Prime Minister, if something happens to the President the sucessor is the head of Parliement. We do not have a Vice-President.

We call Minister to what in the US roughly matches our  Foreign Office Minister.  State Secretary is a position below minister, either from the same Ministry or for things that do not have a Ministry (those things depend of each government, sometimes Culture is a Ministry other times it is not), there are also Under Sub Secretaries, a position below State Secretary.

The number of ministers and ministries depends of each government.

Seats in Parliement are proporcional to the votes each party had, but Parliement is a different body. The bigger party may not agree with all policies from its government.

We also have "motion of non-confidence". The President can dissolve Parliement under certain situations and new elections will be held.

Spain, that like the UK is a Monarchy, has had three elections on the space of 18 months, I think, because the most voted party did not had a majority and the other parties refused to made a coalition. Third time around they allow that party to rule as a minority. A minority party will have to strike deals in Parliement and is always under a lot of stress.

France system is more like the US one, the President runs the country, but they have a Prime Minister. Of course they also have a parliement. Germany has a chancellor, and a President. People only ever heard of the Chancellor, usually, no one outside Germany knows the name of the German President. Germany also has a parliement, called the Bundestag.

We call our Assembleia da República (The Republic's Assembly).

Several countries in Europe are monarchies, the King/Queen is the head of state, but the country is de facto run by the government. Kings and Queens are not electec, so like in the US, they only have a major national election.