Voting for a President
If you’re feeling a bit left out on the election stakes, there’s a site called If the world could vote? where you, too, can cast a vote in the US Presidential Elections from outside the US.
I heard about the site on the BBC but can’t remember what programme I was listening to at the time so can’t reference it, I’m afraid!
The results pages are quite interesting to explore. A fairly solid swathe of support for Obama internationally although McCain is holding Burkina Faso and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia..
Slightly irrelevant but it’s Friday!
sue_clarke98@flickr
Posted on October 17, 2008, in social issues and tagged Barack Obama, BBC, Burkina Faso, election, government, John McCain, Macedonia, Republic of Macedonia, vote, world voting. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
Great idea. I heard something on the US coverage, where a pollster was asked how certain areas of US inner cities didn’t have the infrasturcture to enable people to vote and what pollsters were doing about it. Someone else phoned in and said that on a visit to the US they couldn’t believe they were in America as they passed mile long queues for soup kitchens. Apparently, only 20% of Americans have passports and marketeers complacently talk about the 80% of their fellow citizens as ‘the (literally) massive passives’…..
I think it’s just something that’s a bit of fun for the most part but there are some interesting statistics there too. I think there are similar difficulties near to home and the passport issue is mostly a matter of geography as much as anything.
I can get a train to Paris and be there in under three hours without going near an airport . In the US, it can take days to travel the country by road (I know cos I tried it once!).
That’s awesome! I love it! Yay for fun friday links!
thanks cb, that was interesting.
I’m not all that keen on the contenders, that’s through ignorance more than preference. Now if I could pick a President, that would be fun (for me, possibly not for the majority of the US?)
Lola x
PS Spongebob Squarepants isn’t a candidate, is he?
Thanks for the comments. It’s kind of a bit fun but I thought it was just quite interesting seeing how the different countries voted.
And I love that idea, Lola
It’s our NZ elections the day after the US ones – so I don’t really care who wins the election in the US, I’m much more interested in whether the Greens will gain a hold, whether there will be a swing to National, or whether Labour will hang on to power.
Ya know – I vote mainly on the approach to health funding, education funding and treatment of the socially disadvantaged. Yet it’s my taxes that fund all of this…
Ahh, politics.
And my son’s not able to vote until the next election – by three days!!
Bronnie
I didn’t know you had elections so soon.. I’ll keep an eye out for them! And that would have really annoyed me if I’d missed voting by days..!