How does the American voting system work?

New York was not really a part of that culture. In fact, the NY Jets and NY Giants are their NFL football teams. Now, Massachusetts and Connecticut, they are of that culture.

John

New York begins the middle Atlantic states.

Granted, the weather reporters describe both as northeastern. If you divided the country into quadrants .... It certainly would be north east.

My frame of reference is US History from elementary school.

Ok another question, sounds silly but what is a 'junior' Senator? At what point do they stop being Junior? Fascinating process watching all this happen, I mentioned the elections over there in modern studies yesterday. The general consensus amongst my class was it's nothing to do with us and not important, Scotland's future sure looks bright with that mentality coming through. To be fair most of my class think if it happens outside of Stranraer then it dosnt affect them.

For a given state, the senator with the most seniority (longest time served) in the Senate representing that state is the Senior Senator of that state. Overall seniority in the Senate is important for choosing committee membership, chairs, and office space. The party with the majority of seats in the Senate selects committee and subcommittee chairs, so generally the chairs are from that party. There are no exceptions to that in the current Senate. In the case of a tie vote, the VP can cast a vote to break that tie. I believe that is the only matter in which a VP's vote counts.

The term "class" refers to the Senator's class. That is, when is that Senate position up for re-election.

John

jpanhalt said:

For a given state, the senator with the most seniority (longest time served) in the Senate representing that state is the Senior Senator of that state. Overall seniority in the Senate is important for choosing committee membership, chairs, and office space. The party with the majority of seats in the Senate selects committee and subcommittee chairs, so generally the chairs are from that party. There are no exceptions to that in the current Senate. In the case of a tie vote, the VP can cast a vote to break that tie. I believe that is the only matter in which a VP's vote counts.

The term "class" refers to the Senator's class. That is, when is that Senate position up for re-election.

John

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Hmm interesting, so in theory you could remain junior for some time?

Not only in theory, but in practice -- even long after the Senior Senator from your state has become senile. However, since party affiliation determines power position (e.g., committee appointments and chairs), if the Senior Senator from your state is not from the majority party and you are from that party, you may have a more powerful position.

John

LG,

There are elections every two years. Each election cycle, a third of the Senate and the whole House of Representatives is up for election. Every four years is the presidential election. Between primary elections, runoff elections, local elections, state elections and national elections, there are plenty of opportunities to vote.

The off year local elections is where you find the local tax issues being voted upon. Turnout is low, so either side could win by mustering like minded voters.

Voter apathy is highest in the non-presidential elections.

Democracy is NOT a spectator sport, although the largest coaamplainers typically fall in the spectator class on issues where they could have voted.

I always recommend to voting aged people to get out and VOTE. I might not approve off their choice, but it's still their choice, not mine.

Sounds like our local election where people dont think it matters so dont vote. It was said earlier in this thread that we vote for a person, this is actually incorrect but is exactly how everyone see's it! You are suposed to vote for the local MP who will do the best for your area, second to that your meant to vote for the PARTY you believe will do the best job. But the reality is everyone votes for the person they want as priminister! This is more suitable for a system like yours with a president, here the main power is supposed to fall to a party who publish there beliefs in a manifesto, but somehow this seems to have been lost generations ago and people vote as if the individual is who matters.

Structural politics is fascinating, so many different systems but all geared or used in a way that benefits the minority as a rule. or you get a scary situation like now where we have no real choice, at the last election they were all so similar there was no real choice, now only one side is even in a position to run a country. Our opposition would likely implode on itself at the moment, it would need a huge clearing out of 'red Tories' before it remotely reflected the leaders point of view.

I also think people are starting to wake up to the fact there is no quick fix to the situation that happened with the bank collapse. I wonder how much more pressure people would have put on the system had they known how bad things would be after bailing out the banks, maybe a complete collapse of the banking system is what was needed? I am not so sure propping them up proved the right thing to do, it would have taken as long to rebuild a system as its taking to patch one up. These are of course just observations and not necessarily the opinion of the author

If you read the founding documents you can see a disconnect from what was intended and what is being done.

Now some will point out the injustice, and it was, when blacks were counted as 3/5ths of a person. That was part of the Connecticut compromise, which set the apportionment of the representatives. A look at the population at that time, if they didn't do that, the New England States and the Middle Atlantic states would have had less representatives ... And they were not about to happen. So, we have a census count every 10 years to see where to distribute the reps. In 2010 Texas picked up a few reps and the Northern states lost population and representative.

JoeJester said:

If you read the founding documents you can see a disconnect from what was intended and what is being done.

Now some will point out the injustice, and it was, when blacks were counted as 3/5ths of a person. That was part of the Connecticut compromise, which set the apportionment of the representatives. A look at the population at that time, if they didn't do that, the New England States and the Middle Atlantic states would have had less representatives ... And they were not about to happen. So, we have a census count every 10 years to see where to distribute the reps. In 2010 Texas picked up a few reps and the Northern states lost population and representative.

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Thats interesting with the black vote, I wonder how it was seen here? I am thinking of it in a historical context, at the time women here didnt have the vote. I wonder if you were a women how you would take to a black person having the vote at all when you could not vote? Looking at racial attitudes at the time I wonder if in part it was allowing any type of vote is something that helped light the women's vote movement, I do know it simmered here for a long time before it exploded as a well formed and organized movement that eventually won women the right to vote.

Little Ghostman said:

Thats interesting with the black vote, I wonder how it was seen here? I am thinking of it in a historical context, at the time women here didnt have the vote. I wonder if you were a women how you would take to a black person having the vote at all when you could not vote? Looking at racial attitudes at the time I wonder if in part it was allowing any type of vote is something that helped light the women's vote movement, I do know it simmered here for a long time before it exploded as a well formed and organized movement that eventually won women the right to vote.

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Blacks didn't vote back then! That ratio was for determining the number of Representatives for each district/state.

John