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Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Democracy: US style

I am grateful to Dr Moshe Machover for sending in this very revealing information on electoral practices in the country which has the nerve to lecture others about democracy.


The US House of Representatives has 435 members, elected for a two-year term.
Following is a list, by election year, of the number of districts where there was a sole candidate, who was thus "elected" automatically; in parentheses is the number of districts where the winner obtained at least 90% of the votes cast for the two leading candidates:
1990 - 30 (56)
1992 - 16 (18)
1994 - 20 (33)
1996 - 11 (18)
1998 - 30 (49)
2000 - 9 (57)
2002 - 22 (47)
2004 - 22 (45)

1 comment:

Peter Nolan said...

Yeah, the boundaries are drawn so as to maximise the chances of "minority", which in practise means African-American, voters being represented by someone of their own ethnic group.

Your critique misses the point that the US has more elections - about two million, I believe - for many posts filled by government fiat elsewhere, and more often - biannually in the case of Congres.