Question of the Day!

Define ":participate."

We don't have mid-terms here. We just have elections. And voting is compulsory, so we all "participate."

Local elections here only involve the council and is only open to rate-payers. We don't elect things like school boards or sheriffs or the dog-catcher or whatever. These are jobs, not elected positions (which is insane to me - do the job well or get fired is our philosophy). Council elections are not compulsory, but they say around 75% vote because of the compulsory voting being part of our DNA.

If you mean by "participate" get involved in elections as a volunteer or candidate (here you don't have to be a party member; we have a heap of independents in our houses of power), then I do volunteer for a local indie, helping her with speech-writing and media releases.

Your system of government is weird over there. A democracy that isn't really democratic. Let's look at the stats of the last election: 63.9% of USians voted, and 49.8% voted for Drumpf (hardly an overwhelming mandate, but that's the electoral college for you, ridiculous system it is). That means 31.9% of USians voted for President Cheeto Dust. Less than a third of your country voted for him. And NO-ONE voted for Musk, RFK Jr, Linda McMahon, et al. My God, I cannot think of another so-called democracy that allows non-elected people to come in and run things.

Of course, we don't vote for Prime Minister. We vote for a party and the party with the most votes under the preferential system gets into power, and the leader of said party becomes PM.

Wow, a rant. Surprise, right?