The system the US presently has was made the way it was made for a reason and that was because it keeps one branch of government from becoming too powerful. These checks and balances between the branches prevent any single person from becoming too powerful. Even if some kind of legislation is passed, our system allows it to later be fixed, either by a new bill that would override the previous one or the Courts can declare it unconstitutional. Things work well the way they are now. Though if you do not agree with how they are, the system is set up so there are ways you can get and try to get legislation written that will change things. Special interest groups in Washingtion, D.C. are given a whole lot of respect from government officials. Why? Well when they can organize and mobilize voters to write their congressmen, executive officials, etc., people usually listen. These voters are who elect these officials and without these voters, the officials do not get reelected. Here in the state of Oklahoma, people can petition to bring a bill to a vote of the people. So say a bill has passed all the steps it needs to be put in effect, we the people here can petition to have the bill brought to the people for a vote. Then if it passes, it goes into effect, or if it fails to be passed, then it is just as if the governor vetoed it or it never got out of committee. In fact, the writers of our constitution in Oklahoma went out of their way to make sure the people in the state have a say in just about every possible issue. An example of this is where we have to vote just to allow money to be released to the schools of the state, even though it has already been allocated to them.
Personally, I believe in my life time, we will see the decline of the Republican and Democrat parties and see the third parties come to some power. All it is going to take is voters coming together and supporting the third parties. The Libertarian party is slowly growing to have more people's support.
People really need to stop complaining about our republic system here in the US. It is
not the system that is the problem, it is the people currently in it. So saying that, the people of the nation need to get out, vote, and vote for a different person to be in office. I personally am going to try my hardest to get as many Libertarians elected to office as possible.
Famine
What? You have to register your political affiliation to be able to vote?
In the UK, the country is divided up into 650 electoral regions (called constituencies). Each constituency has it's own candidates for at least the three major political parties (Conservative, Liberal Democrats and Labour) but usually at least three or four others (British National Party, The Green Party, UK Independence Party, Monster Raving Loony Party) as well as anyone who's got £500 to waste to stand for election (called "Independents"). Each constituency's voters vote, the votes are counted and the winner in that constituency becomes an MP. Whichever party returns the most MPs wins - and the leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister.
This would solve the US's problem of "four states can pretty much take the election" - each county could return someone to speak for their interests to your lower tier of parliament, and whoever heads up that party is your PM (France also has an elected President above their PM). However, we have no direct say over who our Prime Minister is - they are simply the leader of the party with most MPs. The leader of each party is picked, and voted for, by the members of that party. Generally though, if we don't like the PM, we don't vote for his/her party.
Actually Famine, all you have to do to vote is register. You can register for whatever party you wish to. Though if you do not wish to be affiliated with a party, you can register as an Independent, which is the same as saying No Party.
Actually with the way the system is set up to elect President, through the electoral college, it keeps just four states from deciding who is elected President. To become President, the candidate has to obtain 270--I am pretty sure this number is right, though I am not completely positive--electoral votes. As you can see in the last presidential election, four states did not decide the election. In fact, the election was extremely close, and basically came down to whoever won Florida; this just means the race between the two parties is very, very close. And as you can see, the two big parties are starting to lose a whole lot of power. This is why I think we will see the third parties gain power, especially as they get out and talk about their party.
Now, I will tell you about how our congressmen are elected. Each state has a certain number of representatives, along with two senators. The number of representatives is based on the states population; the number of people per representative is about 625,000 people I think. But the House of Representatives is limited to a total of 435 members. So as the population of a state changes, the number of representatives can also change. The state of Oklahoma actually saw the loss of a representative in 2000 after the census. The only time the number of representatives will change is after a census, which occur every ten years. Now to determine what areas of a state a representative will be the representative for, the state's legislature will draw up districts. So the district lines are drawn to give the representative a population of around the number I mentioned previously. So the resulting districts can look rather odd--i.e. see North Caroling, they have very odd lines drawn, or at least used to. The people in each district can only vote for the candidates in their district, which is pretty obvious. Now to talk about Senators. Each state has two Senators, no matter how many people are in the state. This was done to give each state a fair say in the legislative branch; while the House was done for population, so that larger states would be able to be better able to reflect the whole states' people. The voting base for Senators is the entire state; there are no districts for them. And this right here is only on the federal level of government. Each state also has a legislature. I would say every state has two house, House of Representatives and Senate, but every state does not. Some of them just have one large house and the only state that comes to mind right now is Nebraska. But each state has district lines drawn up for the House of Representatives for the state and actually right now I still do not know how they apportion senators. I really have not gotten around to looking that information up. Now we can also talk about the local level. The local level also has elected officials. By local level, I mean city, town, village, etc.
The biggest difference between our system here and just about every other system out there is that we have many, many more people we elect to office.
The biggest problem I have with a parliamentary system is that the largest political party is always going to have all the power. They automatically get to have the prime minister as a member of their party. If the party is big enough, then that party is always going to write and pass legislation that reflects their views, with no consideration of the other parties. Here in the United States, with the way the system is, it allows the minority to still keep a say in legislation, without one party having too much say in legislation.
I can understand why though you have a problem understand our system here in the US. It does seem to be rather complicated, but it was designed that way for a reason. Bur really, the system is also rather simple, since the possiblities with it are basically endless. It is always open to new issues and always open to changes to make it work better.
The Founders of the United States designed a brilliant system. It works very well here. Like I said before the system works, it is just we do not always have the best people working in the system. The problem here is, it is our fault, the people that is, that cause this problem with the wrong people in office. We have all the power to change this. But with the design of our system, it keeps these wrong people from gaining too much power and that is why it works. As everyone can tell, I believe very much in our system, though I do not always believe in the people running it. That is why I will constantly strive to make sure I vote for the best person to run my government.
