The issue’s died down a little, so I’m finding it difficult to rally the righteous indignation necessary for follow-up posts, but I do want to go into the idea further.

But I really don’t think you want a President. That would just be a whole ‘nother problem!

When we Americans vote, yes, we vote for a President (among other things). But to have ONE PERSON representing 350 MILLION, is really lopsided. Especially since the President needs only a simple majority of votes cast–heck, he could end up there on only 21.5 percent of the vote, if we had 5 parties almost equally split! (So ok, we have just two parties that get most of the votes, so it usually works out to about 49-53 percent of the nation’s votes, but a girl can dream of future diversity, right? heh) It’s hard enough in the state legislature to get adequate representation for all the residents, and that is on a much smaller scale than the country-wide scene (I speak as a person who lives in a lesser-populated area of my state, and so although our area is very different economically & geographically, we often do not get our needs met because there is more representation for the other side of the State and so what fits them usually wins. sigh) And unfortunately, our Presidents have figured out how to wield far more power than they were even intended to have–they are supposed to be just one of many branches all balancing each other (Senate & Congress, who we also vote for). But, those Presidents, they don’t WANT to be mere figureheads with limited powers, and because it is easier to just point at one person instead of a whole body of them, our citizens seem to have forgotten that is all they really mostly were by design. And so we let ‘em get away with their dictatorial behavior, and override the balances. It gets worse each generation. Grrr.

Nah. You folks just have the same problem we do–too many are not taking their government seriously for what it is and is MEANT to be, and understanding what their own INDIVIDUAL responsibilities are. We all need a reality check!

People in general give me a headache…

Executive Presidents are arrogant dictators. We already have those under the current system.

What we need are parliaments that accurately reflect the way people voted. Our winner-take-all system means most votes have no effect on the outcome of the election, so election results are always horribly distorted.

Proportional representation is a fundamental attribute of a fair voting system.