[OSM-talk] Voting

[Robin Paulson]

2008/4/9 Dave Stubbs <osm.list at randomjunk.co.uk>:
> > > maybe someone should tell the government? apparently we're all wasting
> > > our time voting for them, and 'rough consensus' should be used to
> > > decide who's in power.
> On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 12:31 AM, Bruce Cowan
>  <lists at bcowan.fastmail.co.uk> wrote:
>  > On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 14:57 +0300, SteveC wrote:
>  >  > Like, er, electing President Bush, or Prime Minister Gordon Brown (no
>  >  > election) ?
>  >
>  >  I'm a pedant, but you never vote for a Prime Minister. You vote for your
>  >  local MP and the leader of the party with the most MPs gets to be Prime
>  >  Minister.
>
>  Well, if we're being pedantic then the Queen appoints the PM, and by
>  convention she chooses the person most likely to have the confidence
>  of parliament. There's nothing other than "constitutional convention"
>  to stop her picking anyone she likes, whether they're an MP or not,
>  and whether parliament likes it or not -- luckily the convention seems
>  quite strong. So all in all, there's not much voting going on, or
>  where there is it isn't necessarily treated in the way you'd expect,
>  which was kind of Steve's point.

well, if we're being really, really pedantic, then i wasn't talking
about that government, but the one here (nz), where there are no damn
monarchs choosing leaders, and no hanging chads or cheating governors
to screw things up:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html

so my point stands