The Policy Blender

No! Don't you think once was enough!?

Sorry, I'm being glib again. What I mean is - I was surprised that the Supreme Court, when faced with a deadlock, went against the 'popular vote' (especially considering America's following campaign to bring democracy to the world). Surely in a democracy, the guy with the most votes would win, especially after deciding that the representative Electoral College had failed to return a clear leader.

This is probably largely irrelevant in this case. The problem in Germany is made more complex by the fact that they have more than two parties worth talking about - if it was a straight decision between two candidates there would probably be an easy way of deciding. As it is, neither has more than 50%, or to my memory, more than 40% of the vote.

My preference (at this point I abandon attempts to be serious), is an adaptation of the Frankfurter Principle. In a Europe battling obesity and sexism, the obvious way seems to be to give the government to the candidate with the largest breasts. That way, both stand a chance.

I was amazed that in the states on TV people still go on about the 2000 election.

Can't wait for Bush to say "OK, OK, I admit it, the election was invalid, which means under the constitution I can stand in 2008 - four more years, four more years!"

I don't know - if a party I supported had got more votes than the one that ended up in charge in Britain, and they had the same number of MPs and no-one else had any MPs, and the party with the slightly fewer votes got to form a government cause they had better lawyers, or supporters on the bench, I'd be pretty pissed off about it, even 5 years later - especially if he was still in charge. I'd probably be a little put out by it, even if I supported the winner.

Still, he did get both the popular vote and the electoral college points in 2004, so he must be doing something Americans like. But if he did say 'ok, I did it guv', and he did genuinely have the option of standing again, wouldn't he also be electrocuted to death for treason for doing it in the first place, or something? So 'four more years' in which the President is a charred corpse. Would mean the end of any embarassing gaffes from misuse of the English language (not a reference to misplaced 'u's), but even I think he'd do a better job than his own burnt remains...

Proportional Representation definitely has something to recommend it, but we've been over and over that one. Can't remember what was wrong with it though. Was it that it didn't give parties more of a majority than the voters wanted, so they couldn't form a government that can push through legislation unchallenged when only 40% of the voters want them? Was it that it gave smaller parties an opportunity to have a say in Parliament, and they'd just get in the way? Or was it something we all agreed would be an improvement?