I'll try to stay out of the politics of the whole thing, as much as is possible, and more add my general thoughts on the overall process. Perhaps a list?
Things that baffle me about the US elections:
How long they take. I know it's a much bigger country, and thus requires a more complicated system, and more time, but good lord this thing seemed to drag on forever! The campaigning for the Republican primaries started well over a year ago, with the first Republican debate being held in August 2011, and the constant media coverage hasn't ceased since. In late April Mitt Romney was finally declared as the Republican candidate (yes, I am looking this stuff up on Wikipedia), and the full out campaigning from both sides started.For those Americans following along, in New Zealand we don't really have big competitions on who is going to lead each party, whoever is the current head of the party is the person who will eventually become prime minister, should their party get elected. We always know when it's an election year, but the general advertising and media coverage generally starts a month or two beforehand, rather than a year or two.
The amount of money spent. Again, I know it's a bigger country, and thus more money is going to be spent, but goodness those numbers look big. According to the New York Times, the Democrats spent $852.9 million, and the Republicans $752.3 million. And that's just the party spending. Outside corporations also spent a hell of a lot. The estimate of total spending by everyone on this election is somewhere around $6 billion! There's no limit on the amount of money they're allowed to spend, and big companies are allowed to donate huge amounts of money to candidates, thus giving corporate giants a fair amount more control in these elections than I think they should have.
In comparison, National was the only party in the 2011 New Zealand election to spend over $2 million, and there are limits on the amount of money each party is allowed to spend.
The electoral collage. This is the system they use for counting the votes, and deciding who gets to be president. (The fact that there is even a separate vote just for the role of president kind of confuses me, too) Basically, there are 50 states, and because each state has varying numbers of people, they get varying amounts of seats in the house, and are worth different numbers of elector votes. There's 538 electors all together, so a candidate needs 270 of them to win the presidency. California, for example, is worth 55 electors, because there are so many people living here, whereas somewhere like North Dakota, a state with very few people, is only worth 3. The thing that I find odd, is that each state works as a kind of lump sum. So even if 51% of California voted Democrat, and 49% voted Republican, all 55 of those electors would go to the Democrats, regardless of the fact that nearly half of them did not vote that way. This means that occasionally the person who becomes president may not be the person that the most people voted for. It's happened four times so far, I think. Last time being Gore vs Bush Jr. Gore had the popular vote, but Bush won the electoral college, and so got the presidency.
The parties involved. There really aren't any minor parties hugely involved in the US elections. That's not entirely true, but with the system the way it is, they really aren't given the time of day. The candidates from the smaller parties are pretty much dismissed by most people. Including the two main candidates, who don't even allow them into the presidential debates. There was a debate with the leaders of the minor parties, but very little was said about it, and I don't know of anyone who watched it. A vote for any minor party is essentially a vote wasted, as it's highly unlikely any of them will win any position in government, which I think is rather sad, as some of them have some very good points. Some of them are also a little horrifying, mind.
How few people vote. In the election on Tuesday, approximately 57.5% of all eligible voters actually went to the polls and voted. It kind of astounds me that so few people don't read up on the issues and cast a ballot. If that remaining 42.5% of people did vote, I imagine the results of the elections would be vastly different. I understand that some people may not feel like any candidate represents their views, or that their vote really won't matter, because they don't live in a swing state (Many states are always going to go one way. For example, California is going to turn out Democrat, and Texas will pretty much always go Republican, whereas somewhere like Florida or Ohio could go either way. These are called swing states.), but there are still a lot of other issues on the ballot that are much more local, and the individual votes count on much more. Contrasting that, the turnout in NZ has been steadily decreasing (sad, that), and was at a record low last year, at 74.21%.
How difficult it is made for voters. Maybe I'm less surprised by how few people vote when I hear about how difficult it can be made for them. In Florida on Tuesday, there were people who had to wait in line for seven hours to complete their ballot. I'm not even joking. Seven hours. To vote. I really have no words to convey how appalling I find that. And while that's the most extreme, it still is not at all uncommon for people to have to wait well over an hour to be able to vote. What the actual fuck? (Sorry Mum) Considering the fact that a large percentage of the population doesn't even vote, the fact that this has not been sorted seems completely ridiculous to me. I know that some of the ballots have a lot of various local issues on them that need to be voted on, and it can take people a little while, but still. Kind of makes you think that someone doesn't want people voting, but I'll bite my tongue, and spare you the extended rant. There's several other laws and various bullshit (again, sorry Mum) around voting that make it harder for some people to vote, and I'm sure skew the system a fair bit, but I'm not well enough educated on the issues, and I'm sure doing my research will just make me angry, so we'll leave it there.
Which issues are considered important. I know everyone has different opinions on things like this, and once again, big country has different priorities, but there were a few things I was saddened to find are still considered fairly controversial, and a few things that I noted were missing altogether from the coverage I saw of election shenanigans. For example, employers being able to decide if their employees can have affordable access to birth control or not should, in my opinion, not even be up for debate. Ditto a fair few issues to do with healthcare and so called women's issues (Because clearly men don't care. Only these silly women who want such ridiculous things like equal pay, or *gasp* the ability to decide what happens to their own bodies), but I'll try to keep my personal opinions at bay, for the most part. I do, however, find the people who vowed to move to another country if Obama won fairly amusing. If they don't want universal health care, I reckon this map can help them find a country to move to.
There was much more debate on foreign policy than I expected, although I guess that shouldn't surprise me, considering the global superpower that America is. Plenty of talk on the economy, a bit on education, but something that I don't remember hearing anything about was the environment, which kind of surprised me. Maybe things like that shouldn't surprise me, but I still would have thought there'd be some kind of talk about clean energy, reducing emissions, and all of that good stuff. I like to think that America in general cares about that sort of thing, but maybe I'm just being too hopeful.
I also find the amount of time spent on portraying the other guy as a terrible person rather sad. Surely if your argument is the best, then you can stand on your merits, rather than the other guy's weaknesses. I know this happens across the board in politics, but the amount of hatred for the other candidate, from the general campaigns, and just people you talk to, is higher than I can ever remember it being back home. Nobody is inherently evil, and everyone wants the best for their country, and solidly believes that they are doing the right thing. We may not always agree on the best ways to make this world a better place, but just because someone disagrees with you, does not mean they are an awful person. It's a pity our political leaders don't always set a particularly good example in that regard.
So yes. Elections are weird, and I am very much looking forward to not hearing about them as much in a few weeks' time. A few great things did come from this election. Four states legalised gay marriage, and another three said no to measures that would ban it, and the first disabled woman, the first Asian-American woman, and the first gay woman were all voted into the house. Good job to America!
