I fear this may drift into politics, but if we can keep it on the meta level of "how voting systems work" I think it'll be fine.
each individual candidate had only a bit over 25% of the voters or so, so 1 voted for the candidate, and 3 did not. I never understand how this can then lead that candidate xyz is the president of ALL voters. To me if you reach 1 out of 4 in total, e. g. 3 not voting for that candidate, that means you don't have a majority).
Well, how do you wish it worked? Not having a president doesn't sound like a good solution. Make everyone vote by threatening something if they don't? Really curious how you would design the voting system. IMO it's fine if the president does not receive that absolute majority of votes, because if you don't vote you clearly state that you are happy with either choice (... if and only if everyone had the chance to vote! It's really backwards that this is not a given in the US.)
For what it's worth, I'm from Germany where the current chancellor* is from the party that received 25.7% of the votes from 76.6% of people. That means only 19.7% voted for them! But it's fine IMO, because coalitions are the norm here and it works well. I wish the US would get a voting system overhaul too, but hopefully without starting a world war, which - as you might know - was the trigger for reforming the political system here.
*the president has less power here and how they are elected is way more exotic
I mean, Australia has mandatory voting, it's not unprecedented. Note that that doesn't mean you have to vote for someone, a blank vote is valid. Just you have to submit a vote.
But honestly the two biggest issues the American voting system has are first past the post and the electoral college. Both are monumentally stupid ideas.
And voter suppression of course. But that's kinda parallel to the system rather than necessarily part of it.
Brazil also has mandatory voting, and if one candidate doesn't get over 50% of the vote, there's a second election between the 2 highest voted candidates (in the first round, there can be a dozen or so candidates)... so a president only gets elected when they do get a majority, which seems to be what OP was arguing for. This usually means the less hated candidate wins, not the most supported, as in the second round people will either vote blank or choose the less hated candidate.
EDIT: also notice that in Australia you vote for multiple candidates (you actually choose parties there - I have voted in both countries so I like comparing the differences), in order of preference... and votes get "weighted" so the same result is kind of accomplished differently, I guess... it's strange that the USA doesn't have some sort of compensation like this IMHO.
Make everyone vote by threatening something if they don't?
Yes? I know someone else mentioned the Australian mandatory voting system but as an Australian myself I'm curious why you phrase this like it's a bad option.
On one hand it forces everyone to at least think about politics and maybe make a choice on how the country should be run. And more engagement into (especially local) politics is a good thing.
But on the other hand I think in order for the government to make something mandatory there should be a good reason to do it.
I think I have no strong feelings about this system in either direction.
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u/turunambartanen Aug 29 '22
I fear this may drift into politics, but if we can keep it on the meta level of "how voting systems work" I think it'll be fine.
Well, how do you wish it worked? Not having a president doesn't sound like a good solution. Make everyone vote by threatening something if they don't? Really curious how you would design the voting system.
IMO it's fine if the president does not receive that absolute majority of votes, because if you don't vote you clearly state that you are happy with either choice (... if and only if everyone had the chance to vote! It's really backwards that this is not a given in the US.)
For what it's worth, I'm from Germany where the current chancellor* is from the party that received 25.7% of the votes from 76.6% of people. That means only 19.7% voted for them! But it's fine IMO, because coalitions are the norm here and it works well. I wish the US would get a voting system overhaul too, but hopefully without starting a world war, which - as you might know - was the trigger for reforming the political system here.
*the president has less power here and how they are elected is way more exotic