Dobleve

I get asked who I think the next US President will be often these days. The world news page of the daily paper often includes updates on the race, and since most of the news for the last few months has been about Obama and Clinton, many people are confused when my answer to their question is that we don’t even know who the candidates are yet; they assume those two are the candidates.

Trying to explain how the primary system works, why at this point neither Clinton nor Obama can win the primary outright, the electoral college or any of the other odd nuances of the US electoral process are difficult at best. After some fumbling I can generally get the gist of the system across, but I suspect people assume I have said something wrong because the system can’t be as I’ve described. Imagine trying to explain to someone that while there are 50 states it really only matters which candidate wins Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania because the other states have nearly unmovable majorities for one party or the other. Or worse the follow-up discussion that is likely to lead to discussing voting districts and gerry-mandering (not in my spanish dictionary….) or how the Supreme Court elected the current President.

The Spanish system is much simpler to explain; it is a parliamentary system with 2 houses and the president is the leader of the party with the majority of the seats, or of the largest party in a coalition of parties if one party fails to win an outright majority. There is no electoral college, but the candidates are not directly elected either. Each party has a list of candidates and the candidates win seats based on the overall vote, using a system known as the d’Hondt method.

The system works like this: Each party draws up a list of candidates that they would put in office were the party to win; the list is ordered top to bottom in priority order. The candidates get into office based on the votes that the party receives; eg you vote for the party and its choices as one unit, not for each candidate. Assume there are 100 seats available in an election and each party has a list with 100 candidates for those seats on it. If a party recieves 10% of the popular vote it gets 10 of those seats so the first 10 people on that parties list will get those seats. Pretty simple and effective, but sadly drama free, no worrying about electoral college votes or being special if you live in Ohio.