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"Better" is difficult to measure. I used to think that US elections are a lot less corrupt than Indian elections, thus are probably "better". Now I'm not so sur
by osrec 8y ago
"Better" is difficult to measure. I used to think that US elections are a lot less corrupt than Indian elections, thus are probably "better". Now I'm not so sure!
The sheer scale of an Indian election is rather remarkable though, as is the melodramatic buzz it generates throughout the country. It's an administrative marvel, especially when you consider the strangling bureaucracy that is rife in most Indian government departments.
- cies 8y ago> I used to think that US elections are a lot less corrupt than Indian elections, thus are probably "better". Now I'm not so sure! I've read some thing about the primaries in the last US election, especially in the dems party. Wow, that was corruption to a whole new level. Also these primaries are (by design) super important to the US elections; too important to be so "unregulated" if you ask me.
- misthop 8y agoWhat corruption do you think you see?
- stronglikedan 8y agoI have a feeling that you may be being disingenuous, based on the wording of your question, but the one of the most glaringly obvious examples was Bernie getting pushed out by his own party.
- DFHippie 8y agoOy. If nothing else, Bernie is an independent. The Democrats are not his party. They are his natural allies, or should be, and he understood U.S. elections well enough to know that if he ran as a third-party independent he and the Democrats would both lose, electing their natural antagonist: whichever Republican. So, in sum, Bernie ran in the Democratic primary to be the Democratic candidate, but he was not and is not a Democrat.
- misthop 8y agoI'm not at all. throwaway123156 put it well above, but there is not, in my mind, corruption. The Democratic party is a private group that defines it's own rules, including how a candidate is selected. (The same is true for the Republican party - see how primary votes per state are allocated differently between the two parties). The Democrats had a rule that allowed _actual_ members to have an increased count in their vote (superdelegates). Additionally, Bernie was _not_ a member of the Democratic party - he was an independent caucusing with the Democrats who chose to run as a Democrat. There a lots of good reasons for party members to not back a candidate who chose not to be a member and buy into their ideals until it was (potentially) advantageous for him to run as president.
- throwaway123156 8y agoPrimaries are not elections. They are private intra party affairs. Also, as far as I am aware, other than 1 district in Brooklyn whose votes were not counted in time in the Dem primary, there was hardly anything "corrupt" about either party's primary (and even that district went towards the winner anyways, and wouldn't have made a difference if every vote went in the opposite direction). While not corrupt, or illegal, caucuses in US primaries are extremely undemocratic instruments, however, that is the exact opposite of what is considered the best method of voting in a democracy (secret ballot).
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Primaries are not elections. Yes, they are. > They are private intra party affairs. That wouldn't stop them from being elections, but primaries are public affairs carried out by the State. (Caucuses are more like you describe, but even they often have state involvement.) > caucuses in US primaries Caucuses are not in primaries, they are an alternative to them.
- DFHippie 8y ago> Caucuses are not in primaries, they are an alternative to them. Are you familiar with U.S. elections? Caucuses are very much part of the primaries. They are how certain states perform their primaries. Iowa, for example.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Are you familiar with U.S. elections? Yes. Intimately. > Caucuses are very much part of the primaries. They are how certain states perform their primaries. No, caucuses are a (formerly, universally used—primaries are a newer thing) alternative to primaries still used in a minority of states (and sometimes, by some parties but not others in a state) to select delegates to Presidential nominating conventions. Because primaries have over time displaced caucuses as the main candidate selection mechanism, and because the campaigns are somewhat nationalized, and because there isn't a handy name for the whole process, the whole national process of selecting such delegates is sometimes sloppily referred to as “the primary” of each party.
- Dylan16807 8y agoThere are definitely a lot of factors. One easy way to gain a lot of points over the US is to use ranked voting and/or proportional representation.