ELECTIONS

Elections

Elections Tell Us That The American Ideology Of Middle Of The Road Has Not And Will Not Change.

Introduction

At the most conceptual level, elections are mechanisms capable of translating the popular will into institutionally-defined roles. At the concrete level, elections are about the choice of individuals. The word 'election' derives from the Latin verb eligere, meaning to pick out, to choose. Elections may be defined as the formal process through which people chosen by discrete collectivities to fill offices. Elections held in many contexts and to fill many different types of office, public and private alike. Though the vast majority of elections held in the private and voluntary sectors, most people tend to associate them with pubic decision-making, and hence with state governance. Elections to state bodies will be the main concern of the present discussion.

It is commonly believed that competitive elections are the sine qua non of democracy. This is untrue for two reasons. First, elections are not necessary to democracy; it is possible to conceive of a democracy in which leaders are chosen by lot, for instance, rather than through election, or one in which decision-making is conducted entirely through referendum. Second, elections are not sufficient to democracy. The holding of 'free and fair' elections is not an adequate criterion for a state to be considered democratic. Genuine democracy requires rule of law, a vibrant civil society and effective political parties. Indeed, the use of elections as means of selecting leaders precedes the advent of modern democracy by several hundred years. Elections are also a common feature of contemporary undemocratic regimes; though fewer than half the states in the world can be considered democratic, only about one in ten states lacks a functioning elected representative body.

Discussion

An election is the process of choosing a person by voting. The person with the largest number of votes is elected to the post he or she stood for. A general election takes place every five years. This is the process by which the U.S government is elected. The prime minister can call an election at any time but does so when he or she thinks that there is a good chance of being re-elected.

Quite often election polls taken prior to and during an election campaign to indicate how people feel and to whom their votes are likely to go. People may stand as candidates from the age of 21 onwards. They normally stand as a member of a party, in which case they will need to follow party procedure, which entails them going through various interviews.

Although the United States proclaims itself a democracy, the concept has had a contentious history in America. In the colonial ere, it had distinctly negative connotations. The Boston Puritan minister John Cotton, firmly denying in 1636 that Massachusetts was “democratical,” asked rhetorically: “If the people be governors, who shall be governed?” The wealthy and urbane Southern planter William Byrd, in his posthumously published History of the Dividing Line(1841), conveyed his disdain for Virginia's debased backcountry settlers in ...