Vote for you life

Voting season is coming quickly upon us in Oz. With polititions throwing mud this way and that, it reminded me that i still need to register to vote in my native land. So i did what i always do when i'm not sure of what to do; i googled it.

my google search turned up THE OVERSEAS VOTE FOUNDATION. I worked my way through the site until i found what i was looking for: registering to vote. i clicked the link, only to find that i had to choose which state i was from. I became quite confused because the state i'm currently residing in was not listed. For some reason i could only be from a US state. That was odd.

I decided to put my mother's state in and proceed, but found that it then asked for an address. I again, put my mother's hoping that they would not actually check that i was living there.

After a few more fibs, i decided that i must have the wrong place to register. So i started again. My searching finally led me to this; an article about how overseas persons find it frustrating to vote.

It seems that i am not alone. The system that asked me to honestly assess the canadates ensures that overseas voters 1) have to lie about their address/state 2) have as hard of a time as possible being heard.

And like most Americans i wonder if this isn't an elebrate conspiracy. (i've been told that conspiracy theories reside mostly in american mentality) If it is a plot to keep those who can actually see what is happening from a distance from saying anything at all....

Democracy in action

I was listening to a speech the other day about democracy by an american politician. He was saying how important it was for the world to have democracy because it was so important for people to rule themselves. He used the USA as an example of democracy in action. I almost choked on my pen.


Since when is the usa democractic? Has anyone ever stopped to wonder why the average citizen doesn't actually vote for his or her president? In case your unfamiliar with the way the voting system works in the USA, it is done by electoral college. It was originally set up because the ruling class did not believe that the lower classes could be trusted to vote for the 'right' person. The electoral college says areas get a certain number of representatives to vote for them. These representatives have NO legally biding contract to vote the same way the people voted. They are just supposed to do it. It is an honour system in politics. (anyone else a little nervous about honour and politics being in the same sentence?)

To give a more practical example, if there are are 6,000,000 people in a state, they might get 3 representatives to vote in the presidental election. The public votes on the representative and the represetative who is voted in goes and votes for the president. So in a community that might be very narrowly split between republican and democrat, if the democrats barely out vote the republicans, the entire republican voting community is unrepresented! Is that fair? Is that the people being ruled by the people? no. it isn't necessarily even the people being ruled by the majority. It is simply the people being swindled by a system that doesn't think its citizens smart enough to vote for themselves!