US elections

[medsec222]

It does look like Biden has it. He's far from ideal - his age, and not the biggest fan of the UK - but anything is better than the orange lunatic!

Agree entirely Kaz.

[Suff]

The French keep saying that about Le Pen and they keep getting worse and worse presidents.

Voting against, as opposed to for, is a race to the bottom.

[Workingman]

And sometimes a perfectly acceptable way to effect change.

[Suff]

So, in history, was the guillotine. There have been 5 republics in France as they had to rebel over and over again.

Change is not always good.

[Workingman]

With a choice from three a moral stance can be made, others can do the dirty work. With a binary choice abstention is not an option, so dirty work has to be done. At least once the bottom is reached the only way is up.

America today?

[cruiser2]

I do not understand the American system of voting.
There is the single vote each person has with several milliom for each candidate in each state.
Then there are the College votes. How are these calculated? No information in the news about this.

May the best man or woman win!!!

[Workingman]

The simple version.

The whole population is divided by the number of states then each state gets a number of electoral college votes in proportion to its population, with a minimum of three votes. So, California, with the biggest population gets 55 votes, Wyoming, with more bears than people, gets three. Voting in all but two states is FPTP and the candidate with 50.1% or more of the vote gets all the college votes for that state. The candidate with most of the college votes wins. 270 is the magic number.

This throws up the anomaly that a candidate can win the countrywide popular vote (the FPTP bit) but not gain enough electoral college votes to win; as happened with Hilary Clinton v Trump.

[cromwell]

I suppose it will soon be back to normal in the States. Going to war in the middle east etc

[miasmum]

Just as a matter of interest what two states are not FPTP WM?

[victor]

suppose it will soon be back to normal in the States. Going to war in the middle east etc

Doubt if Biden even knows where the Middle East is !!