Did we ever see anyone vote in the Federation?

I mean for an enlightened Federation we had not seen a whole lot of voter activity.

 

If it served a story they would have shown it, otherwise it occured outside of the episodes.

 

I'm sure you could find plenty of shows set in the United States, Canada, England, or other democratic nations that don't portray "voter activity" much or at all. Most shows are not exhaustive catalogs of the entire spectrum of life within a civilization. In fact, ST has shown us very little of life in the Federation proper, since it's usually about exploring the frontier.

"Journey to Babel" established the idea of a council of ambassadors voting on the admission of Coridan, though that's not a popular election. DS9: "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost" established that the Federation president was an elected position. (Jaresh-Inyo: "When they asked me to submit my name for election, I almost said no." Sisko: "Overthrowing a legitimately elected President and giving Starfleet direct control over the government? It sounds like a dictatorship to me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks so.")

Actually the book to check out is the one that precedes that, A Time for War, a Time for Peace. That's the book that actually portrays the presidential election process in the Federation; AotF is about the first year of President Bacco's term in office.

 

Voting is mentioned in Losing the Peace, in the context of a refugee who didn't submit a vote in the last election, figuring that no matter who was in charge the Federation as a whole would go on "normally". And in the afore-mentioned Articles of the Federation a child asks her mother who she, the mother, voted for, and concludes from the terse response that it was the losing candidate. So the issue does come up in Trek lit from time to time.

 

You people will believe anything!

The Federation is a military-industrial complex run by Starfleet who in turn are puppets of the Organians. Federation citizens just think they are free!

What you think the Borg really exist and are going to invade the federation?

LIES.

They have been doing it for generations, every so often Starfleet fakes an event to keep the population in line:

* V'ger incident - just a disguised Starship

* The Khan/Genesis incident - simply a frame-up, Khan was a peaceful settler, the federation made him and his family a dupe for their illegal testing of weapons of mass destruction.


So it's OK for the Federation to have weapons like the genesis bomb but not the Klingon Empire? give me a break, the Klingon empire is a peaceful place regards of the disinformation put out by the state controlled Federation News Service.

You really think that Kronos's moon simply blew up due to a mining accident? Look at the official records, there was a federation Starship nearby - and who was the Captain? Why it was Captain Sulu. Why is that important? Because he served with James T. Kirk who was involved in both the V'ger and Khan incidents. Bit of a 'coincidence' that he also happens to be in the area when the moon just 'blows up'.

I recommend you all read Unwarranted Influence: James T. Kirk and the Military-Industrial Complex (Icons of the Federation) by G'Rok.

 

^ You Sir are awesome.

 

Do you have a link to this book? I really want to read this. I am tired of this white washed version of Kirk and his Starfleet and want to see the whole story...

 

Well done, JoeZhang.

 

And the Federation Government is....RUN BY ALIENS !

 

Losing the Peace by William Leisner also features the people of Alpha Centauri voting in the affirmative on a referendum on whether or not to stay in the Federation. This inspires several other Federation Members to do the same.

... and on the flip side, Typhon Pact: Paths of Disharmony by Dayton Ward features the people of Andor voting by a small majority in the negative on whether or not to stay in the Federation.

Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn by David R. George III establishes that Bajoran First Minister Asarem Wadeen won re-election after serving out the remainder of the late Shakaar's term.

The eBook Slings and Arrows: Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment by Keith R.A. DeCandido gives us insight into the 2372 Federation Presidential Election, in which three candidates ran: Governor Rel Obertag of Betazed, Federation Councillor Min Zife of Bolarus, and Federation President Jaresh-Inyo of Grazer. Captain Picard is established to have voted for Obertag, while Sisko is established to have been "one of the few" who voted for Jaresh-Inyo. (Apparently Obertag came in second and Jaresh-Inyo in a distant third.)

In Vanguard: Harbinger, the first novel in that series, reporter Tim Pennington muses to himself that the Federation government hasn't provided a good explanation for why Starbase 47 in the Taurus Reach was put on the fast-track to construction, and remarks to himself that when asked, the Federation President provided such vague answers that he was surprised he had any left for his re-election campaign. This was probably Federation President Kenneth Wescott, seen in the Errand of Fury trilogy.

As others have said, A Time for War, A Time for Peace establishes how Federation Presidential Elections work. In short: Anonymous petitions for presidential candidacy are submitted to the Federation Council, which then legally certifies that these persons fit the eligibility requirements for presidential candidacy. Upon accepting candidacy, these candidates campaign for however long until the election. The Federation practices universal adult suffrage, and it can take upwards of a week to count all of the votes. The count is then verified by two independent accounting firms before being announced, though the Federation News Service is usually able to accurately estimate which candidate has received the majority of votes. In most campaigns, the candidates try to travel to as many Federation Members as possible for a good cross-section of Federation space; in the 2379 Federation Special Election, the candidates only had enough time to hit the core worlds and relied upon the media and on surrogates to reach the rest of the Federation, because there was only one month to campaign.

 

A week to count all the votes, in some countries the result of an election is known within 12hours of polls closing. And that's wiith paper votes.

One might expect the Federation to use some form of electronic voting.

 

The largest of those democratic countries (India, population 1.2 billion) has a population that's likely something in the area of 0.12935051111% the size of the Federation's population.

[This is assuming 155 Federation Member states and an average Federation Member population of 6 billion; an average Federation Member colony population of 12 million and an average of 3 Member colonies per Member; an average Federation colony population of 100,000 and 123 Federation colonies; to yield a total population of nine hundred thirty-five billion, five hundred ninety-two million, three hundred thousand (935,592,300,000).]

Bottom line: It's ridiculous to expect a democracy the size of the Federation to be able to count all of its votes with care and accuracy in only one Earth day.

 

Going way back, in Spock's World, Vulcan had a vote on whether to remain in the Federation. And we learned that Vulcan has a 100% voter turnout.

 

For paper ballots yes, but an electronic ballot system should be able to yield results within a day,

And whilst the population for the UFP might be close to a trillion as you say. You forgot to account for voting age, which could halve that number.

 

Whose day?

You're talking about something in the area of 500 different planets, starships, stations, outposts, and starbases, all of which use different local calenders and none of which would have identical "days." Any given planet's "day" would by definition start at different times, end at different times, and last for differing lengths of time.

Then there's the basic logistics of voting that we're all familiar with. Then there's the challenge of ensuring voter security in an electronic format. Then there's the challenge of data transmission and ensuring transmission security. Then there's the time delay in sending and receiving such information from one side of the Federation -- and beyond, since you're also talking about starships out on long-range exploration missions beyond Federation space -- to the other when the UFP is itself so large that it takes months for all but the fastest of Starfleet ships to traverse it. Then there's the challenge in putting it all together. Then you've to factor in the time it takes for two independent auditing firms to go over everything to make sure it's all kosher.

So, yeah, I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to say it takes seven Earth days to reach an accurate conclusion.

And besides -- what's the rush? It's silly to presume that you must know who wins that same day. Our ancestors understood that -- in 19th Century America, for instance, weeks could go by before the winner of a presidential election might be announced. It's silly to demand instant gratification on something like this.

There's no way to include that factor one way or the other, because we don't know what the age of majority is for different Federation Member's cultures. For all we know, Sulamid offspring are considered to have reached the age of majority at six months. All we can go on is a reasonable guestimate of overall population size.

 

^Are you discussing the actual time need for people to vote. Or the time need to calcualte those votes?

And where do you get the idea that you need two independant firms to audit it?

And what took days or weeks centuries ago, doesn't mean it has to take that long today.

It could be a simple case of a retina scan/thumb print/dna scan to verify a person and then pushing a button on a console. And when the polls close simply a matter of pushing a button to pull up the results.

True it could take days or weeks for some votes from the more remote ships and planets to reach Earth.

In an electronic form the results should be availble within hours, the actual process of voting could take days. Besides for more remote worlds they simply vote earlier. So if it takes 2 days for a subspace radio message to reach Earth, they vote 2 days befoe Earth.

 

Both.

This was an established part of Federation electoral procedure in the novel A Time for War, A Time for Peace.

No one's talking about today. We're talking about a fictional super-state in the future that has a higher population than has ever existed in human history. It's just silly to expect something like that not to take longer.

No, because you've also got to have safeguards in place to ensure that no one has installed any malicious programs designed to fabricate election results. Electronic security is a major consideration.

 

I'm with Sci here. What's the rush? For something this important, better to take the time to get it right than to demand instant gratification.