USA ELECTIONS 2020

                                USA ELECTIONS 2020

Hello friends Come, let us talk about one of the most important elections in the world The presidential elections of America Although the main elections are slated for November 2020, when people would choose one out of the two main Presidential candidates and make him the US president But right now, another elections are ongoing in the US which is even more interesting than this The elections to choose the Presidential candidates These are conducted within the political parties This is interesting because the Indian political parties can learn a lot from this Come, let us see The ones amongst you that have never heard of primaries before will be surprised to hear that because basically, this is an election where the common public vote to decide upon the candidate within the party as to who would become the presidential candidate to represent the party Comparing with India, it is akin to the common public in India voting and deciding on whether Rahul Gandhi should become the Congress President or not And should Rahul Gandhi become the PM face for the Congress or not? The common public would vote and decide whether Narendra Modi should become the PM face for the BJP or it should be someone else There would be elections for that too And these are called Primaries This election began in the US in February and would go on until July- August They go on for a long period of time. I will explain to you how they work What are its benefits and drawbacks and whether it can be implemented in India? It sounds quite simple to hear but actually, the process of the US primary elections is quite complicated and controversial When are these elections conducted? who can vote in these elections? How are they conducted? Regarding this, in every US state... There are a total of 50 states in the US Every state has its own rules Furthermore, each of the political parties have their own rules One of them is a democratic party, another one of them is a Republican Party They have all made separate rules But in this  article I shall talk about the generalized rules that are normally seen in the primary elections generally The first thing is that the people do not vote directly for their favourite candidate They vote for a party member who is called a delegate The people vote for the delegate and the delegate pledges that he would vote for their favourite candidate The delegates pledge beforehand that if people vote for them they would vote for their favourite candidate Taking the example of the democratic party, there are a total of 3979 delegates in the entire USA that are voted for And for any candidate to become a presidential candidate one needs to pass the halfway majority mark amongst the delegates That is, more than 1991 delegates are required The elections are conducted state by state. This process takes months Elections are conducted in the states one by one where delegates are voted for And in the end, all the delegates assemble to vote for the Presidential candidate and the meeting where all the delegates meet is called the National convention The national convention for the Democratic party will be held between July 13th and July 16th For example, if I tell you the current state of the ongoing primary elections then within the democratic party the candidate Joe Biden is currently at number 1 670 delegates have won until now In the second place is Bernie Sanders who has won a total of 574 delegates In the third place is Elizabeth Warren who has won a total of 69 delegates The difference between the second place and the third place has become so huge that realistically, Elizabeth Warren has no chance of becoming a Presidential candidate So the next Presidential candidate from the democratic party would either be Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders On the other hand, Donald Trump has no competition in the Republican Party Donald Trump enjoys majority completely He has already won by 833 delegates And the one in the second place is a man named Bill Weld who has won just one candidate until now So basically looking at the current state we can say that the next US President would be one amongst the three-Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump Generally, when any elections are conducted anyone above the age of 18 can vote but since the primary elections are elections that are conducted within the party, it does not make sense to allow everyone to vote So what some of the states have done is that only the registered party members If you want to vote in the elections then you need to get yourself registered as the member of that party and you can vote in the primary elections of that particular party Such elections are called closed primary elections But in some of the US states, it is kept open If you are independent and are not registered with any party then too, you can vote in the primary elections These are called semi-closed primary elections There is also a third type- open primary elections, that is, even if a voter is registered for a particular political party he can come and vote in the primary elections of another party Some US states conduct closed primary elections Some conduct semi closed elections and some conduct open elections This also differs from party to party For example, California, a State in the US there are open primary elections for the democratic party but not for the Republican party You could ask what is the logic behind the different systems? One reason is that there is a clear advantage of open primary elections over the closed primary elections and that advantage is that when the independent voters cast their votes in the primary elections then you have a rough guess about the neutral people, who are not registered members of the party and which candidate would they vote for in the Presidential elections- which candidate do they prefer within a party which would benefit the party in the November elections But then you could ask why does every state not conduct open primary elections? The reason behind this is that every state in the US is free to act according to its own will The states have been given quite a lot of power in the United States In comparison to India, the Indian states do not have the power to make different rules for every matter The system of conducting elections is also different in the different states of the US There are mainly two ways of conducting elections- One is primary and another is caucus The primary system is basically how the voting in the elections are generally conducted The people stand in queues They cast their votes in the ballot boxes or on the EVMs And this is private voting, in a way You can not see who is voting for whom But caucus is public voting People physically assemble in party offices and make groups The people supporting the same candidate congregate in one corner The people supporting another candidate assemble in another corner of the room and then both the groups debate among themselves and if someone in the group gets convinced that the other group is debating better and if they find that they like the other candidate more then they switch sides And in the end, it is finally counted to find how many people are standing in which group and the candidate (who has more people supporting him) is considered the winner that is, the delegates are awarded (to the candidate) Do keep in mind that some States have primary system, some states have caucus system and some States have both the primary as well as the caucus system How many delegates are awarded on what voting percentage This system too, differs in the different US states Some States have proportional representation A candidate would be awarded delegates in the proportion of the percentage of the votes received In some of the states, the winner takes all If you cross the majority mark then all the delegates would be awarded to you For example , look at the California State regarding the democratic party Bernie Sanders won there with 34% of the vote share Joe Biden came second with 27% of the vote share Bernie Sanders was awarded 186 delegates while Joe Biden was awarded 150 delegates So all of it depends on the vote share as this is proportional representation A huge mistake and one of the big differences between you and me I never believed what Cheney and Bush said about Iraq Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? Are you forgetting already what you said two minutes ago? The best thing that I like about the US elections is there debate system Debates are conducted among the candidates during the entire process of primaries until before November Candidates come up onto the stage and talk to one another They put their policies before the public that if they vote for them, they would do the following things for them If any candidate has a shortcoming or if there is something in the candidate's history, then the rest of the candidates expose his hypocrisy right in front of him It is very entertaining to watch In fact it is quite useful so that the people know which candidate supports what things I will release my tax returns — against my lawyer's wishes when she releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted As soon as she releases them, I will release.. I will release... I will release my tax returns In India neither Rahul Gandhi nor Narendra Modi have been able to muster up the courage to debate with one another Keep aside debates, our Prime Minister is fearful of giving unscripted interviews Where is going to debate?! There is one more complexity in the entire system Some percentage of the delegates are not chosen by the people but by the party's leaders These delegates are called super delegates Generally they are vice chairmen or governors or old senators or congress leaders or they might be very popular party leaders 15% of the delegates in the democratic party are super delegates 7% of the delegates in the Republican Party are super delegates No matter how much the people vote and (back a candidate) until the very end, A lot of times it so happens in the end that if two candidates are neck to neck in the number of delegates, then the super delegates vote and decide who would be the Presidential candidate from their party Looking at it, it seems quite an unfair system Such a long process is conducted, people are asked to cast their votes over months And in the end, if it is the super delegates decide who is going to be the nominee from the party, then what is the use of getting all this conducted? So, lot of people criticize this. In fact, Donald Trump also criticizes this and he says that the entire system of the primaries is rigged And remember this it is a rigged election It's a crazy world we're living in. But that's what I mean It's a rigged election But interesting thing is that no one changes this system When one's favourite candidate wins, then everybody forgets that the system is terrible Donald Trump had said this very openly and shamelessly that now that I have won, there is no need to change this faulty system You've been hearing me say it's a rigged system. But now I don't say it anymore because I won. Okay? Its true Now I don't care I don't care The main candidates of the democratic party in the race in the primary elections this time Come let us see what their opinions on different issues are and on what agendas have they been fighting the elections I stand with Barack Obama all eight years, good, bad, indifferent. That's where I stand The first is Joe Biden who used to be vice president when Obama was the president Although he was Obama's right hand man, Obama never wanted that he should run for the Presidential elections His main promise is that he wants to make two years of college education free He wants to increase the spending in defense He wants to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour and wants to levy taxes on carbon emissions Most of the Promises of Joe Biden are common to all the other democratic party candidates For this reason, Joe Biden is called a moderate candidate He is seen from the perspective that the ideas that he has and the policy changes that he wants to bring are not extreme changes Basically, he does not want to change the system drastically Healthcare is a human right- not a privilege We are prepared to tell the fossil fuel industry that their short-term profits are not more important than the future of our planet! The other one is Bernie Sanders- he is seen as a progressive candidate because he wants to bring a drastic change in the existing system In his own words, he wants to bring a political revolution especially in the fields of education , health care and environment According to him, the existing system is terrible and there is a need to bring a drastic change in it For example in the field of education he wants to make the colleges tuition fees free and wants to end the student debt A huge problem in America is that the colleges and universities there are extremely expensive In the aspect of health care, he wants to bring Medi care for all- basically insurance coverage that is available all over the country His foreign policy is complete opposite ti Joe Biden's- he wants to lower the defense budget He does not want US to interfere in the other countries So he wants to call back the troops of USA which are stationed in other countries He does not want to interfere in the matters of the other countries So I have made clear what my principles are here And that is -Costs will go up for the wealthy and big corporations, and for hardworking middle class families, costs will go down. Elizabeth Warren is another progressive candidate. Her ideas are very similar to that of Bernie Sanders Both of them basically want to implement similar policies But unfortunately ,Elizabeth is no longer in the race because her delegates have been left far behind and she dropped out ...and I would argue that I am the candidate that can do exactly both of those things I am New Yorker I know how to take on an arrogant con man like Donald Trump, that comes from New York. Michael Bloomberg was a very interesting candidate who also contested the race He is the CEO of the Bloomberg company His net worth is of 58 billion dollars that is, he is even richer than Mukesh Ambani He basically said that he is so rich that he could buy the elections and that he would give out so much money to people and spend so much on advertising that nobody would be able to compete with him and this almost became a joke In fact, he spent 500 million dollars on advertising and on promoting himself to solicit votes for himself as the presidential candidate but despite that, he lost the election It is extremely Ironic because the 500 million dollars that he spent went to waste Instead of measuring GDP, we should be measuring childhood education rates, average income mental health and freedom from substance abuse environmental sustainability the proportion of our elderly who can retire in quality circumstances If we change the measurements, we can change everything and finally Andrew Yang, another interesting candidate who contested the elections on two unique issues The first was universal basic income- a very interesting concept on which I will make a  article in the future explaining it An entire  article can be dedicated to this And second was- data privacy He wanted data to be declared as a property right because Because what happens today is that a lot of social media and advertising companies make use of our data without seeking our permission for their own profit Andrew Yang's demand was to bring about a policy to declare data as a property right that which company should get our data should be upto us And if some entity has our data, it should be upto us to get the data removed if we wanted This hasn't happened. But if today you want to protect your online privacy then you can make use of a VPN The best app to use VPN in my opinion is NordVPN.
Thank you!