As we all know from watching Mitt, Rick, Ron and Newt, watching elections is more than one of the primary duties of an informed citizen- it's also a pastime everybody can enjoy. It's like baseball- periods of intense waiting and trying to predict what will happen followed by microminutes of real, delicious action.
But why are we limiting ourselves to the Amerocentric world of Etch-a-sketches and banning contraception? In these enlightened days, more of the world's people choose their governments than ever before, which means, for the more cosmopolitan election-watcher, that there's an almost endless cycle of elections to watch.
The following list will be irregularly updated as new elections of which I was previously unaware pop up.
This is the biggie this year- besides, I mean, the American presidential election. France's electoral system is, I believe, that all the candidates go to the polls on the 22nd of April, and then a run-off between the top two takes place on the 6th of May if no candidate gets an absolute majority, which seems likely. The candidates:
Nicholas Sarkozy, the incumbent, heads the UMP, the centre-right party in French politics (which also has a majority in the National Assembly, the French lower house). From what I can tell, nothing particularly horrible has happened during his term- well, aside from the financial crisis; that's hard on any president, especially in Europe. He's polling top, but is unlikely to get an absolute majority, which means that he'll probably face a run-off election against...
François Hollande heads the Socialists, the centre-left party. He was mayor of a small town in central France called Tulle until '08 and has been a deputy of the National Assembly (basically an MP) for the region since then. Among his proposals: lowering the retirement age back down to 60 from 62, creating a public investment bank and subsidising jobs for the young and unemployed, allowing gay couples to marry and adopt (currently they just have civil-union rights), and raising taxes on banks and rich people. He is polling something like 5 points below Sarkozy. I rather like the man, but it looks like Sarkozy might get the office again for a second and final term. Oh well. Hollande 2017?
While the other two are both fairly competent, the National Front'sMarine Le Pen is simply scary; she's been accurately described as France's answer to Michelle Bachmann. She's the youngest daughter of Holocaust semi-denier and racist dickwad Jean-Marie Le Pen, who ran the FN until last year. Like Newt Gingrich, she has been married and divorced multiple times (twice on both counts; she's single, boys) and has three children. Economically she's not so horrible: the worst she can offer is upping protectionist measures and reverting to the franc. What's disturbing about her is her nationalist tendencies: she favors putting a moratorium on legal immigration, going on witch-hunts for the illegal ones, and instituting all sorts of "French first" policies. She also opposes abortion, would like to re-open the question of whether France should have capital punishment. I think she may have also said something about contraception. I don't know what, though.
Then there's Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who's polling about 15% and represents the moonbats- the Left Front. He would like to rewrite the constitution to give Parliament more power, encourage nationalization and co-operatives, exiting NATO (?!), and environmental reforms. He would also like to re-do the EU to make it more democratic. He's actually rather dull after Le Pen.
François Bayrou isn't going to get to the second round and is rather dull, but I'll include him anyways. He heads the Democratic Movement and is a sort of French Obama- reasoned, moderate, neither right nor left. On his platform are fixing up the suburbs, improving education standards, balancing the budget and strengthening the EU (with France being its de facto head.) He drew some flak for suggesting that France boycott the '08 Olympics. He's rather likeable, actually, though he's not at all polling well.
This is on the 23rd of April, so you can enjoy a Canadian chaser the day after your French main drink.
There isn't actually a whole bunch to see here. The Conservatives will win, of course- this is Alberta, so they always do (right now they have 66 out of 87 seats), and Redford will continue as premier. What will be interesting is seeing how the minor parties shuffle around. Right now the Liberals (Canada's centre-left party) have 8 seats (down from 9 in '08), the NDP (the left-wingers) have the same 2 they had in '08, and the Alberta Party (a centre-right provincial party not unlike the Saskatchewan party) have one seat, which is new- I think. Wikipedia's a bit disorganized. Then there's the Wildroses, who are a rather disturbing global-warming denialist provincial right-wing libertarian/conservative movement who can only be described as "Alberta's Tea Party". Among the Wildroses' Bright New Ideas are allowing marriage commissioners and healthcare professionals to discriminate as they damn well please (allowing, for example, a homophobic doctor to refuse to treat a gay person, or a bigoted government marriage commissioner to refuse to marry an interracial couple on grounds of "conscience"). Scarily, a new poll released just last month showed that the Wildroses have the support of 4 in 10 Albertans.
Oh well. There's Alberta for you.
I am sure there are other elections, but America and France aside, 2012 seems to be a rather quiet year, since we've missed Russia and Queensland (of which I was unaware at the time, but apparently thing really shuffled around), as well as the Lib Dems choosing a new leader. This fall, though, we can all gather around and watch the New Brunswick Liberals elect a new leader!
...fun times!...
Discussion of any other elections is welcomed and will be added infrequently to the list above.
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Topic: dhokarena56's Alternative Election-Watching Thread (Read 2034 times)