How Is The Federation President Elected or Chosen?

[Dayton3]

David Macks Destiny trilogy made the Federation president out to be a very powerful position. Easily equivalent to the role the U.S. president has in the U.S. today.

But I was wondering.

To have that much power, would the Fed president have to win a popular vote election by the people of the various planets of the Federation (and how would you ever go about something like that on hundreds of planets?)

Or is the Federation president simply chosen by the Federation Council members? Kind of a "first among equals" situation?

 

[TheGodBen]

I prefer to think that he is selected by the council, I don't see how it could be a direct vote because the Federation is too big for that. In one episode of DS9 they said it took a signal 6 weeks to get from one side of the Federation to the other. Imagine voting and not knowing the result for a month. The wait would cause news pundits heads to explode!

I see the Federation as more of an European Union type structure; nation states that come together under a common set of principles for social, economic and scientific advantage. Countries in the EU have our own laws and governments, but we also have an EU-wide institution that passes laws on a range of issues. The EU has plans to create the post of an EU President who would be appointed by the nation states, but their powers would only be over the running of EU institutions. But us Irish voted against the Lisbon treaty, so that whole idea may have to be scrapped.

 

[Bacl]

I think they pick the Federation President the same way they pick the Pope. Drinking contest!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't see how it could be a direct vote because the Federation is too big for that.

I don't agree. The Federation may be big, but I think they have the technology to allow for direct election of the President. In fact, in the (admittedly non-canon) Articles of the Federation, this is exactly what happens - candidates submit applications, anonymously, to the council, which determines if each candidate is qualified to run; the subsequent elections are by direct popular vote.

I would definitely not be in favor of having the Federation Council actually select the president. That seems anti-democratic to me.

 

[Dayton3]

I suppose if it took six weeks to get election results from one end of the Federation to the other that would be close to equivalent to how things worked in the first American presidential elections.

But I was thinking of more practical problems.

Would they go by a system of "one citizen one vote" or would it be by planets or both?

If you counted each individual Fed citizen, then some worlds with a population of tens of billions of inhabitants would easily dominate.

A number of colony worlds would be completely ignored.

IIRC from "Operation: Annihilate", Deneva was considered one of the most beautiful planets in the galaxy yet had a population of only around one million people.

 

[Praetor_08]

I cant remember if it was stated in the ST book "Articles of the Federation" But its always been my impression that the president was elected by direct vote.

As for the delay it takes to have the final results, I don't see how that's ultimately a real significant problem. Just look at the USA, Back when the USA was founded, we had pres elections on Nov4 and they didnt get inaugurated until March 4, so they had enough time to travel by horse back. it was only in the last 70years that inaugurations were moved up to Jan20.

Plus, its not like once the results are in the current president steps for the next. Barack won in Nov, and he still has almost 2months left before he gets sworn in.

So the idea of voting and not knowing the results for over a month wouldn't really be anything new.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I suppose if it took six weeks to get election results from one end of the Federation to the other that would be close to equivalent to how things worked in the first American presidential elections.

But I was thinking of more practical problems.

Would they go by a system of "one citizen one vote" or would it be by planets or both?

If you counted each individual Fed citizen, then some worlds with a population of tens of billions of inhabitants would easily dominate.

I would think that by Trek's time, all notions of "domination" in terms of Federation elections would have been dismissed as archaic nonsense.

 

[Praetor_08]

Would they go by a system of "one citizen one vote" or would it be by planets or both?

If you counted each individual Fed citizen, then some worlds with a population of tens of billions of inhabitants would easily dominate.

A number of colony worlds would be completely ignored.

IIRC from "Operation: Annihilate", Deneva was considered one of the most beautiful planets in the galaxy yet had a population of only around one million people.

I think the Federation would be smart enough to learn from the USA's mistake and go with a "one citizen one vote".

The Last thing they need is to create their own version of the electoral college, ((were whole chunks of the populations are still ignored)) and enter a situation were a candidate win the electoral/planet vote, yet looses the popular vote.

 

[Dayton3]

I suppose if it took six weeks to get election results from one end of the Federation to the other that would be close to equivalent to how things worked in the first American presidential elections.

But I was thinking of more practical problems.

Would they go by a system of "one citizen one vote" or would it be by planets or both?

If you counted each individual Fed citizen, then some worlds with a population of tens of billions of inhabitants would easily dominate.

I would think that by Trek's time, all notions of "domination" in terms of Federation elections would have been dismissed as archaic nonsense.

Even if humans have supposedly evolved culturally beyond this (and this is VERY unlikely), there is no reason to suppose other races have.

 

[TheGodBen]

Babaganoosh[/B];2387314]I would definitely not be in favor of having the Federation Council actually select the president. That seems anti-democratic to me.

I don't see how it is anti-democratic, it is a parliamentary system, just like the majority of the world's democracies. It is far easier to remove a head of government in a system like this than it is in a presidential system, so I could make the case that this system is more democratic. Remember, the majority of Americans have wanted Bush out of office for 2 years, yet he's still there. When Irish Taioseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahearn began to lose the confidence of the Irish people (and the legislature) earlier this year, he resigned.

The problem I have with the idea of directly electing a UFP President is just how many candidates there would be to vote for. Every planet has a different culture and different politics, so there could be multiple candidates from each world. Imagine having to choose between a field of 300 candidates for President!

The only way around this would be some form of political party system that spans the Federation, and I am very hopeful that in the future political parties are abolished.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The problem I have with the idea of directly electing a UFP President is just how many candidates there would be to vote for. Every planet has a different culture and different politics, so there could be multiple candidates from each world. Imagine having to choose between a field of 300 candidates for President!

I'm sure it's a lot easier in this future for the average Federation citizen to get all necessary information about each candidate. 300 may seem like a lot, but assuming a few years between each election, there's a fair amount of time available to studying each one. And I rather doubt that there's that many candidates in typical Federation presidential elections. A dozen, maybe, but more than that? Probably rare.

 

[Eternality]

If the Council is winnowing the field down to a few qualified candidates, I don't see any problems with an interstellar populace trying to decide who they like best. It may be less than democratic, but I think it's practical and even desirable (especially since Federation politics seems to be non-partisan officially)

I also don't have a problem with a directly elected President in terms of representation and influence since we have a Federation Council that allots one planet one vote.

 

[Mike Farley]

since your question referenced Trek Lit, the election of President Bracco was covered in A Time for War, A Time for Peace, by Keith DeCandido.

 

[Mirror_Barclay]

There's a popular reality show, "Who wants to be the next Federation President?" based on an old Earth TV show called "Survivor."

 

[Dayton3]

The "one citizen, one vote" has another problem in my opinion.

What if you had a brand new Federation member with billions of people.

And you have a Federation member that has been around for two centuries and been a solid contributor for all that time. But because it is a small, largely barren world the population is never that large. Only a hundred million at the best of times.

Would it really be fair for a brand new Federation member to so thoroughly outvote that of a centuries old member world?

 

[KSullivan76]

I'd guess they would use a democratic-vote with the Federation being so Utopian and all.

 

[Dale]

To this day, each and every Federation President has been chosen by a powerful entity known as the Casting Director.

 

[Timo]

I would think that by Trek's time, all notions of "domination" in terms of Federation elections would have been dismissed as archaic nonsense.

But domination is the only reason to have a democracy in the first place!

The sole purpose of that system is to allow the majority to decide for the whole. In relatively monobloc communities, that is a good thing: it maintains social coherence and equality and reduces internal tensions. In a distributed reality, an overarching democracy does the exact opposite: it forcibly imposes the tyranny of "the others" on people who have little or nothing in common with these others, do not benefit one iota from the things that benefit these others, and do not suffer from those things that these others find undesirable.

A populous world (vote per person), or perhaps a species/culture with many colonies (vote per planet), would in a democratic setup get to dictate things for minorities that are literally worlds apart from these dictators. In such a situation, one can only hope that the majority is so spread out and diverse itself that its decisions aren't narrow-mindedly selfish. In practice, this equates to hoping that the decisions made are always watered down to near-ineffectiveness...

Now, a popular vote for one official need not be a big deal. The President must be a figurehead anyway, for all practical purposes: none of the political decisions he, she or it makes could be expected to serve the interests of a specific corner of the UFP anyway, so it's irrelevant whether the election is democratic or perhaps a lottery. The President only gets to set extremely generic general guidelines, perhaps limited to foreign policy - and on such things, local vote would be irrelevant in any case.

The more relevant question would be how the representative government is organized and elected. Direct UFP-wide democracy there would essentially mean anarchy and tyranny wrapped in the same package, and would be worse than nothing. Some sort of a more localized setup must be in place.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sci]

David Macks Destiny trilogy made the Federation president out to be a very powerful position. Easily equivalent to the role the U.S. president has in the U.S. today.

Just for the record, Mack's Destiny trilogy was taking its cue from previous novels featuring the Federation Presidency, especially Articles of the Federation by Keith R.A. DeCandido (which focused on Nan Bacco's first year in office), but also, in reverse chronological order before Articles:

* A Time for War, A Time for Peace by Keith R.A. DeCandido
* A Time to Heal by David Mack
* A Time to Kill by David Mack

And those novels' depictions of the Federation President being akin in power to the US President are taking their cues from the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the DS9 episodes "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost," which establish extensive foreign policy, military command, and national security powers for the Federation President.

But I was wondering.

To have that much power, would the Fed president have to win a popular vote election by the people of the various planets of the Federation (and how would you ever go about something like that on hundreds of planets?)

Or is the Federation president simply chosen by the Federation Council members? Kind of a "first among equals" situation?

We know from DS9's "Paradise Lost" that the Federation President is democratically elected. We do not know how he is democratically elected; the canon allows for everything from being chosen by the Council to an indirect election (a la the US Electoral College) to a popular election. However, if he is determined by the Federation Council, one would think he would be the Prime Minister of the United Federation of Planets, since an essential distinction between a President and a Prime Minister is that Prime Ministers are chosen by the legislature from amongst its own members, whilst presidents are independent.

In any even, the novel A Time for War, A Time for Peace features a Federation special election. It's the first appearance of Nanietta Bacco, then Governor of Cestus III, who runs against Federation Special Emissary Arafel Pagro of Ktar for the presidency. The novel establishes that petitions for candidacy are anonymously submitted to the full Federation Council, which then votes on whether or not the potential candidates meet the specified qualifications for the presidency. (Those qualifications are never enumerated in the novel.) If the potential candidates are approved by the full Council, then they have the option then of accepting or declining candidacy. Upon accepting candidacy, a candidate then campaigns at various locales across the Federation. There's usually at least one debate. A the conclusion of the campaign, there is a popular election that directly elevates the winning candidate to the presidency. Federation elections are massive endeavours that typically take over a week to complete (since every single sentient entity holding UFP citizenship is entitled to a vote), and the results are then audited by two independent firms before the winner is officially certified by the Federation Council.

More data here: http://startrek.wikia.com/wiki/President_of_the_United_Federation_of_Planets

 

[Timo]

We know from DS9's "Paradise Lost" that the Federation President is democratically elected.

I guess you are the perfect person to ask, Sci: what does it mean, "democratically elected"?

In the DS9 episode, the President refers to having been elected and being morally indebted to his voters. He does not refer to having been democratically elected, though, not by those words. What would be an undemocratical election? One that does not involve voting? One that involves undemocratic voting? (What does that latter mean?)

Timo Saloniemi