Elections elections in great britain and the u. S. A.

A parliamentary (general) election in Britain takes place every four or five years. Election to the House of Commons is decided by secret ballot. Those -eligible to vote must have their names entered in electoral registers compiled yearly in each constituency.

A parliamentary election is preceded by a strenuous election campaign which begins well in advance of the election date and involves expenditures running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Shortly before Election Day, each elector is sent a poll card stating the date and hours of the poll and the situation of his polling station. On entering the polling station the voter receives a ballot paper from the poll clerk and going into a screened booth puts a cross opposite the name of the candidate of his choice. Then he puts it into the ballot box in the presence of the presiding officer.

As soon as the poll is over, the votes are sent to a central place in each constituency where they are counted in the presence of the returning officer. The result of the poll is declared by the returning officer publicly, e.g. from a balcony outside the place where the count is made.

There are 630 constituencies in Great Britain each of which returns one member to Parliament. With electorates ranging from fewer than 40,000 to over 80,000, there exists a wide disparity between, the number of electors represented by different M.P.s (members of Parliament).

The candidate must deposit the sum of £150 with, the returning officer. If the candidate polls at least one eighth of the total votes cast, he is entitle to have his deposit returned; if not, his deposit is forfeited.

According to the plurality system of voting used in Parliamentary elections in Britain, a candidate is returned if he has polled more votes than the next standing candidate. The more candidates there are in a constituency, the less may be the individual majority of the candidate Returned.

As it stands today, the British electoral system can and does produce results opposite to those intended by the majority of the electorate. The most notable example was the 1951 election which gave the Conservatives majority of twenty-six seats over Labour though their, total vote was nearly a quarter of a million less.

The President of the United States is elected every fourth year. In November, voters in each state cast their ballots for electors previously nominated at party conventions held in summer. The Electoral College is composed of presidential electors from each state equivalent in number to their total of congressmen and senators. Altogether there are 535 electors.

By practice, the electors are bound to vote for the candidate who gets the majority of votes in their state, even if his popular majority is very small. So there can be a big gap between the popular and the electoral vote.

Though the outcome of the election is generally known in November, formally the balloting takes place in the Electoral College in early December, when the electors cast their votes in their respective state capitals. The votes are then sent to Congress where they are counted in the presence of both houses on January 6.The President-elect is inaugurated on January 20.

Before being eligible to vote in November, every citizen must register in accord with the laws of his state. This entitles him to participate in future primary elections held to nominate candidates or to elect delegates to a nominating party convention. The registration procedure is highly complicated.

Even though constituency delimitation is supposedly based on the "one man, one vote" principle, the bourgeois ruling parties in Britain as well practise so-called gerrymandering, or reapportioning of election districts so as to give themselves an electoral majority in a large number of districts while, concentrating the voting strength of the opposition in as few districts as possible.

The U.S. Constitution contains only general provisions supposedly guaranteeing every citizen the right to vote. Everything else is established by state laws, which provide for numerous voting qualifications specifically aimed at depriving vast sections of the people of their franchise.

In all, but four states, the age qualification is 21 years. There are also residence qualifications ranging from 6 months to 2 years. Seventeen states still have literacy tests (used, as a rule, to exclude Negroes) and seven have poll taxes.

In the Southern states there is the unofficial means of depriving several million Negroes of voting rights by intimidation, violence and even murder.