Nobody wants to talk more about all the misunderstandings about the words "republic" and "democracy" - so that's what I'm going to do, since I feel I may have learned something more about it.
Going back to the beginning, the tangent started here, when Deirdre twice posted a phrase I found curious:
OUR democracy, as a republic
This was in response to FatPhil and talk of reports of people saying things like "Trump is a threat to democracy", which was explained to us as actually meaning "a threat to American democracy".
For me, I had no interest in that discussion, I was merely interested in why Deirdre appended "as a republic" when clarifying that the supposed threats were specific to US democracy, given that it seemed curious and irrelevant. So I asked:
What's the practical difference between democracy in a republic and democracy in a non-republic such as the UK or the Netherlands or Sweden?
I suppose with the benefit of hindsight I should have simply asked "why did you append 'as a republic' to that?" but it seemed to me that Deirdre was implying there was some difference between democracy in a republic and democracy in a non-republic (aka monarchy) and as far as I can tell there isn't, which is what I was getting at. I think this is where the confusion begins. Deirdre replied:
our "popular vote" is state specific, not federal. Like Connecticut votes who we want for president, then whoever wins the popular vote our electors then cast a federal vote for president that reflects what Connecticut decided as a state.
I personally don't think there is any practical difference. I only specified republic vs democracy because i know most posters here have small countries and straight votes. so i was just acknowledging when i say 'democracy' i'm talking about America's democracy set up vs european set ups.
Now, to be honest, I read the first paragraph and ignored it since it seemed irrelevant to the question and somewhat confused, just an odd little tidbit of information. Now, however, I think it's probably quite relevant (as explained below).
I read the first sentence of the second paragraph and figured, oh, okay, we're on the same page. And then I read the second sentence of the second paragraph and, rather than the red flag of "republic vs democracy" and recognising what Deirdre was actually saying, I focused on her mistaken belief that European countries elect their governments by popular vote (what she calls "straight votes").
And what was she actually saying? And I think this is the key to the whole thing. She was saying (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong):
- A republic is a country that elects its government by a system such as the Electoral College one
- A democracy is a country that elects its government by popular vote
A big clue is obviously the sentence "republic vs democracy", implying that the two are different (even opposing) expressions of a similar operation. Also the focus on popular vote - and to a lesser extent Electoral College - in answer to a question that had nothing to do with whether votes are tallied "popularly" or how they're delivered or otherwise.
Like I said, because I failed to recognise what she was actually saying - I didn't understand that someone would define those words in that way - I merely focused on her mistake of thinking European countries used popular vote and sought to address that. And suddenly there was all sorts of confusion since we hadn't addressed (or even recognised) our differing definitions of the key words, with mine being:
- A republic is a country that doesn't have a monarch
- A democracy is a country that elects its government by voting
Also, for me, any talk of "federal vs state" or "popular vote" or "electoral college" was merely a side issue unrelated to trying to understand why she thought "republic vs democracy" was a thing. For her, however, it appeared to be a key component - which is understandable if she thought by "democracy" some people meant "a government elected by popular vote, like in Europe, and you guys don't do that and even put the
loser in charge, which is stupid".
For the record, it doesn't look like there are many countries that use popular vote to elect their governments and the ones that do mostly use
the two-round system, which I suppose could be debated as to whether it's really by popular vote (ie, if your candidate doesn't pass to the second round your only option is to vote for somebody else).
Countries that do use popular vote are mostly in South America and Africa. In Europe, as far as I can tell, France uses it to elect the president (with caveats) but I'm struggling to find other European countries that use it (finding a simple list isn't as easy as I expected).
Most European countries (including the UK - the only system I'm really familiar with) seem to use systems where one votes locally - within a municipality or district or county or borough - and the winner of this area is said to have won a "seat" within the parliament. The party which wins the most seats (in the UK at least, where there are 650) wins the election - and if they win the majority of the seats then they form a majority government without needing to form a coalition, as happened in 2010.
(Coalitions are uncommon in the UK but much more common in other European countries where more than two or three large parties are usual and winning a majority is therefore very difficult and even unlikely.)
The main point is that most European elections are not vastly different to US elections but there appears to be some sense in the US that they are. Not only is this due to people perhaps thinking that Europeans elect by popular vote and that they couldn't elect a leader who
lost the popular vote - which is exactly what happened in the UK in 1951 - but because of the peculiarity of the US "Electoral College", which I have often heard pointed to but which, in my opinion, doesn't really seem to be anything other than an unnecessary ceremonial addition - a glorified mailman.
In my understanding (put simply):
- Citizens of the state vote for who they want to be president
- These votes are counted and a party wins the state
- But wait! It's not as simple as that
- Each state has electors who look at what the people have decided and then they get to decide whether to follow the people's vote or not
- That is, the people's vote doesn't go directly to making the final decision, these electors actually cast the votes that make the final decision
- The reason I say it appears unnecessarily ceremonial is that in the 31 elections since 1900 only 27 electoral college voters voted unaligned ("faithlessly") with the result of the public vote
- Out of these 27, 8 were made because of death (ie, the winning candidate died and the elector cast their vote for the replacement); 3 were invalidated; 2 would have cast their vote aligned with the public if it would have made a difference; and another was presumed to be an error. That leaves 13 genuinely faithless electors over the course of 120 years
- In the entire US history there have only been 165 instances of faithless elector voting (90 for president, 75 for vice-president) with 43% of them being because a candidate died just after the election and 84% happening before 1900. They have never swung an election and it looks like only twice have they affected anything (in 1796, when the "wrong" vice-president was placed in office because of a rumour; and in 1836, when the vice-president's appointment was delayed by a few hours).
So taking US and UK elections as a comparison, in practical terms they're really not that different:
- They're both democracies ("representational democracies" if you want to get technical)
- They both vote locally for the party of our choice
- The party that wins the most votes within that area wins the seat/electoral college vote
- The party that wins the most of these wins the election
- The party that wins the election may be the one that lost the popular vote
- If you happen to live in an area where you are vastly outnumbered by supporters of a different party your vote is pretty much worthless
To be honest, the only real difference appears to be that voters in the US focus more on the leader (ie, the president) whereas voters in the UK focus more on the party (eg, the Conservatives or Labour or Lib Dems) - which I imagine is also the case in most (if not all) European countries.
(I wonder, for example, if Deirdre and our other US contributors are aware of the fact that 5 of the UK's last 7 prime ministers resigned/were ousted from their jobs and were therefore replaced as the country's leader by someone voters hadn't actually elected?)
EDIT: In addition, as added by econ41 below, there is the difference that
an entire state's electoral vote goes to the winning party - up to 54 votes - whereas in the UK seats are always individual, meaning there's slightly less chance of a large number of votes being rendered "meaningless". I guess this is primarily what people are complaining about when they mention the electoral college system, not that there's a pointless middle man who can theoretically change his mind but almost never does.
Anyway, so what did I learn?
- Some people define the word "republic" in ways other than "a country that isn't a monarchy" - and in particular in the US, where it appears to sometimes have political connotations and sometimes mean something like "representative democracy"
- Some people also define the word "democracy" in ways other than "a country that elects its government", perhaps meaning it as "pure democracy" or "direct democracy" or seeing it as different to "representative democracy" ("standard democracy")
- I shouldn't dismiss sections of a reply as an irrelevant tangent just because they don't address my question in terms that I'm expecting: they may give clues as to what the other person sees as relevant, even if mistaken, as well as potential sources of confusion
- Some people are a bit prickly and confused around things like "popular vote" and "democracy" and differing election systems, perhaps based on misunderstandings, false assumptions, and having been on the receiving end of criticisms of their own particular electoral systems. This may be due to the election of leaders who lost the popular vote and who many see as being kind of disastrous and idiotic, or because they're sick of nosy foreigners telling them how they should run things and also not being aware of how things are run elsewhere
- Communication is tricky when we're using very different definitions of the words that make up the conversation and doubly so when not realising we're using different definitions
- It may be better just to tell someone they appear to be using a term in an unorthodox way - as well as introduce the orthodox definition - rather than ask them why they're employing the term in a particular manner (since, to them, it's normal). Assuming, of course, that the unorthodoxy is recognised.
- The EDIT above
I also wonder if wikipedia may be partly to blame in some of this. I went there and looked at the page for "republic" and the very first line is:
a form of government in which "supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives".
This would seem to put me in the wrong - that to me a republic is a nation, not a government, and that it has nothing to do with how power is administered - but what I notice is that this headline definition is actually a misrepresentation of the entry from a very basic online dictionary:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200606025252/https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/republic
Contrast this with the Oxford English Dictionary (supposedly the #1):
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/163158
So according to that a republic is a
state and - conspicuously absent from the wikipedia definition, which I suspect has been edited somewhat subjectively and with an agenda - "specifically a state without a monarchy in which power rests with the people
or their representatives" (not
and). And while democracy was sometimes
implied (especially in the 17 and 1800s) nowadays the term is "chiefly used to denote any non-monarchial state headed by an elected or appointed president."
I also notice that another citation for the wikipedia definition is from a book published in 1849!
Someone really should update that.
