@Maoraigh, your question is not 100% clear to me but I suspect it can be answered with the following from here….
The 20th amendment to the Constitution specifies that the term of each elected President of the United States begins at noon on January 20 of the year following the election. Each president must take the oath of office before assuming the duties of the position
In other words, no immediate change regardless, lots of time to thrash around, and anybody who is elected doesn’t enter the office for 2-1/2 months. You can imagine it took a while to count votes across 3000 miles in say 1850.
But what is really beyond scandalous is the incumbent trying to de-legitimize the counting of all votes and prematurely declaring victory.
It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on. I believe that the President is objecting, inter alia, to the counting of postal ballots mailed after election day under special “CV19” electoral provisions hastily-introduced in certain Democrat-controlled states.
In the UK those votes would not be counted. We have an election day, not an election week or month, and when the polls close, well, they are closed. Sperrstunde. Hallas.
Similarly, in a relatively free country like the USA, the practice of allowing voter registration on election day seems rather more open to abuse than it would be under a well-functioning totalitarian regime with a national ID system.
Jacko wrote:
It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on. I believe that the President is objecting, inter alia, to the counting of postal ballots mailed after election day under special “CV19” electoral provisions hastily-introduced in certain Democrat-controlled states.
Fake news. In some states mail ballots can be counted if the arrive after election day, but must be postmarked on or before election day.
That said – this is no way to run an election. The entire process is deeply flawed with 50 differnt states having 50 different sets of rules and regulations. Perhaps the FA should take over the running of elections, at least there is one set of rules for the entire country! Further it is patently absurd, that through a two-centuries old construct – the Electoral College – the winner of the popular vote can lose the election. The Electoral College may well have made sense in the 18th century it makes zero sense now.
What is interesting is – and here I have to agree with @Silvaire, which I don’t do all that often! – the people can think for themselves. I refer to some ballot initiatives here in CA that were heavily promoted by most media but where common sense prevailed.
The US election process ‘issues’ since the ‘hanging chad issue’ of 2000 have all been contrived nonsense, promoted by special interests, fanned by the juvenile media. The only one that I can think of that’s real is the insistence that no identification is required to vote, which is dumb.
The US elections are not predominantly Federal in nature, they do not predominantly decide on Federal candidates or the use of Federally sourced funding. I think few people in any state would support Federal takeover of elections, if it were Constitutional. The current setup was very carefully designed, as with most of US government process.
Silvaire wrote:
The US elections are not predominantly Federal in nature, they do not predominantly decide on Federal candidates
They certainly are when it comes to the president, senate or the house.
IMHO these should be split out from the rest.
Silvaire wrote:
The US elections are not predominantly Federal in nature, they do not predominantly decide on Federal candidates or the use of Federally sourced funding. I think few people in any state would support Federal takeover of elections, if it were Constitutional. The current setup was very carefully designed, as with most of US government process.
I don’t think there is any justification to this argument. In a federal election, which the presidential and House of Representatives elections definitely are, there should be one federal election law, not 50 different laws!
Of course, as far as state elections are concerned, every state can create their own election laws. That’s the way the system is set up in Germany: we have federal and state laws on how to run elections and which are used depends on the election in question.
An interesting observation on German media at every US election:
There’s always so many journalists which criticizes the complex US election system and the fact, that the majority in the electoral college does not reflect the results of an imaginary “popular vote” which has never happened.
They however, never seem to care about the fact that there are for sure no more than 10 people in Germany who could answer the question which share of such a “popular vote” it would require in Germany to gain majority in “Bundesrat” (one of two chambers of the German legislator / comparable but different to the US senate).
Good example for the general wisdom that the less you know about a problem the easier it seems to solve it.
MedEwok wrote:
there should be one federal election law
In a democracy, the legislative process says what the law should be, nothing else. While it is very easy to find the many flaws in any democratic election system, they are the result of centuries of development and ultimately the choice of the people of the nations that subject themselves to them.
While objectively they are very hard to change even in the face of manifest injustices (disenfranchisement and gerrymandering being the biggest ones in the US, IMO), we have yet to come up with any better system that has proven as sustainable as a (primarily) representative democracy with all its flaws.
So if the people in the US – and they are the only ones who matter here – really wanted to change from an electoral college to a direct election of their president, they could do so. The hurdle is high as this would require an amendment to the constitution, but it has happened before (for example, the current process in the electoral college is enshrined in the 12th amendment, and was the result of severe problems with the process in the original constitution; also, the senators were originally elected by the state legislature, but that was changed to direct election by the 17th amendment).
Cobalt wrote:
So if the people in the US – and they are the only ones who matter here – really wanted to change from an electoral college to a direct election of their president, they could do so. The hurdle is high as this would require an amendment to the constitution
I dont believe this is entirely true. The “problem” with our democracy on more complex issues is the population isnt very good at coming to a consensus this type of change might find favour. In other words for fundamental change to our democratic process on the whole the proposal first needs to find favour with a political class and structure, who then need to promote the proposal, for the people to express their democratic right. For example in the UK if you asked the population there may well be overall suppport for PR, but PR has never found favour with either of the main political parties so will never be on the agenda for a democratic vote.The population in turn either dont see it important enough, or understands the concept sufficiently to galvanize the population to force the political class to put this on the agenda. In the same way in may be the case that neither of them mian parties in the USA wish to see DE, but maybe if the democracy was asked, they would – of course I dont know. However I do think there are many potential changes that fall into this category but will never be put to the electorate, and this is part of the illusion of democracy.
The population tends to independnetly motivated only by far more controversial issues. Whent he window tax was introduced it was sufficiently unpopular that it was obvious the population would force change. In other words it was deeply unpopular and directly effected enough people. On the other had I doubt the current electoral system will provoke the same passion in the elctorate.
Of course I guess it could be equally argued this is democracy. If the people cant be bothered to do anything about somehting, then they shold be stuck with what they have got. Hence I see the use of your italics for “really”, but whether the democracy are able to voice what they “really” want on some issues may be questionable.
As you say it is probably the best we have got at the moment.
Jacko wrote:
It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on. I believe that the President is objecting, inter alia, to the counting of postal ballots mailed after election day under special “CV19” electoral provisions hastily-introduced in certain Democrat-controlled states.
I don’t believe that’s true. Postal ballots must be postmarked by the deadline, but can be received later.
Having lived in the US for a substantial period of time, this is not new practice. I never encounted a deadline in the USA for posting something that was the arrival date – it was always the postmarked by date. This was the case whether it was for bill payments, your tax return, and elections. It is extremely common practise (so much so that you’d get funny looks if you insisted that the mail item must arrive by a deadline rather than be postmarked by it) that everyone is extremely used to the idea.
In the UK, the practise is normally different (everyone insists a mail item arrives before the deadline), which might make someone from the UK think Trump’s got a point, but really he hasn’t got a point.
It is not democrats that are “changing the rules”, rather it’s the incumbent president who’s trying to change the rules.
