The committee had gathered – presidents from all the different countries: China, Malaysia, India, South America, Taiwan, Singapore, Nepal, Africa etc. They sat in the stone silent room, waiting.
It was Elections Day. The posts up for grabs, were that for the International Advisory Committee, a committee which headed all the other international organizations on campus, at the University of Oklahoma. The presidents had to decide who was to head the committee, as it would ultimately affect their own organizations.
A lot of people had grown apathetic about the IAC elections, and thus, almost all but two positions had competition. If these elections were held in Singapore, all the other no-contest positions would be walkovers.
But they believed in democracy – they believed in the right to vote. There may be only one candidate running for that position, but votes still can be casted – Do you think that sole candidate is fit for that position? Only a 2/3 majority can put him on the throne. If less than 2/3 is garnered, the chair is opened, for reapplications at a later date. Do you then realize how powerful a vote can be?
True, it may just be a YES/NO vote, but every vote truly counts.
The thing that puzzles me though, is why we get to vote (or not in the case of walkovers) who gets to be our President, a figure-head with not much power really, but we don’t get to vote who gets to be our Prime Minister – the guy who’s really responsible for every good and bad thing that comes out from our government? I mean honestly, do we really care who sits on the throne in England?
I’m ignorant when it comes to the political system in Singapore, but it is after all more similar to the British system then it is the American, and doesn’t the British PM get elected?
Update: HuiChieh has kindly informed me that Britain’s PM doesn’t get elected per se either.
No, the British PM–like the SG one–is not directly elected. He is typically the leader of the party with the most number of seats in the House of Commons. Pretty much standard Westminister system.
Hmm. Okay.
Actually, the US president isn’t directly elected either, if I recall correctly. Every state gets to vote for the parties, of which the winning parties get X number of electoral voters, who ultimately determines who becomes president. That’s where the whole popular vote vs. electoral vote hooha comes from right?
It’s been a long time since I’ve been around during the elections in SG. I’m not too sure I remember how Singapore Elections really work
The SG system is more or less a version of UK’s.
Now for the most US system…talk about baroque:
Each state gets assigned a number of “electors” (the collective of all of them forms the “electoral college”)–number of representatives in the house plus two (for the senators). D.C. gets three. These numbers are a function of the state’s population. (California has 55, Texas 34).
Speaking simplistically, Bush vs. Kerry ‘04 was not one but 50 polls–one per state–with varying stakes involved for each. When a voter cast a vote–say, for W–in Texas, what he is really doing is “instructing” the electors in his state to case his (electoral college) vote for W. And if W wins the majority of votes in Texas, he wins all votes of the state’s electors. (In a couple of states, the electoral votes are divided between the candidates according to the proportion of the popular votes they received in the state.)
There are 538 electoral votes (for ‘04), and the candidate who wins a majority wins. If there is no majority, then the house of representatives gets to decide…
To make it even more baroque, in many states, the electors are not actually required by law to vote according to who actually wins in in their state (!) Hence the “faithless elector”, of which there had been a few in history.