• Harvard University, Juris Doctor, Law, 1988-1991.
• Columbia University in the City of New York, Bachelor of Arts, Political Science, concentration in International Relations, 1981-1983.
• Occidental College (Los Angeles), Political Science 1979-1981.
• Obtained early education in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hawaii.

Government experience:

• US Senator since 2005.
• Member, Illinois State senate 1997-2004.

Other experience:

• Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School, 1993-2004
• Civil rights lawyer
• Community organiser

Vice-presidential candidate:

• Joseph Biden, Democrat Senator from Delaware; born 1942

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Why should the world have a say in the US Election?

If every nation has a right to self-determination, does the rest of the world have a right to an opinion on that country’s election? Many people around the world have argued that in the case of the United States in particular, the rest of the world has a right to let US citizens know how they feel, and that US citizens have a responsibility to consider those feelings when casting their vote.        

The United States is without question the most dominant country on the world’s stage, and its every move has an impact on the rest of the world far greater than any other single country. This influence is felt on all levels of society - politics, economics, environment, military, culture and even religion.

The 2008 US election is has captured the attention of the rest of the world perhaps more than any previous election. Eight years of the George W Bush administration have taken the country - and the much of the rest of the world with it - into two ongoing wars, an energy crisis and an economic recession. Its foreign and internal policies have also contributed to the current world food crisis. Bush is arguably the most unpopular president in history, both within his own country and throughout the world.

The world waits with baited breath for the outcome of this election, but here at Global Votes you can let your voice be heard. Whether you live in the United States or elsewhere, you can cast your vote and express your opinions in our Debate section. This vote will be open until the real election on Tuesday 4 November.

The Candidates

John McCain

Barack Obama

For the purpose of this vote we are focusing on the two main presidential candidates, Senator John McCain (Republican - Arizona) and Senator Barack Obama (Democrat - Illinois). Even though there are other candidates, realistically only one of these two men will be President after the election. For more information on each candidate, click on their names.

The candidates’ policies contrasted

The official US Government site offers a basic contrast of each candidate’s stance on nine major issues.        

The CNN site is also basic, covering 20 issues.

BBC News is basic on eight issues but has links to more detailed analysis on all of these issues except for climate change.

The New York Times has a more detailed contrast of 11 issues with many links to more information. On the economy it offers a more comprehensive analysis.

Truthout has a broad and clear examination of both candidates tax proposals, based on an incisive Washington Post chart.

The excellent Science Debate 2008 site compiled 3,400 questions from more than 38,000 scientists, engineers and other concerned citizens, and narrowed these down to 14 questions that were put to both candidates. Their answers are presented in a side by side comparison.

In-depth analysis

This presidential campaign has been noted by the Washington Post and the New York Times for a significant amount of outright lies being pushed by both candidates.        

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s. He examines the impartiality of the major US news media at the independent Consortium News website.

Read the excellent introduction to the book ‘America Against the World - How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked’ by Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes. It is not a work of speculation, relying principally on survey data collected by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Former Australian conservative prime minister Malcolm Fraser believes that America has lost its way in the world.

The religious right plays a strong role in US politics - unique for a western democracy. Truthout presents a five-part series on how the US founding fathers’ idea of separation between church and state morphed into ‘One nation under God’.

• National War College, 1973
• United States Naval Academy, 1958

Government experience:

• US Senator since 1986
• US Congress 1983-1987

Other experience:

• Pilot, US Navy 1958-1981 (including Navy liason to US Senate from 1977).
• Prisoner of war in Vietnam 1967-1973.

Vice-presidential candidate:

• Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, born 1964

According to Wikipedia, ‘democracy is a system of government by which political sovereignty is retained by the people and exercised directly by citizens’. In practice however, most countries only have a form of representative democracy, where once every 3-4 years the citizens choose the handful of people who will then make all their decisions for them. Occasionally in some countries major decisions are decided by a referendum of that country’s citizens, but referendums are a very costly and time-consuming process, and for that reason are not used very often.

Global Votes changes that by introducing a system of direct democracy, where the people directly participate in the decision-making via the internet, contrary to relying on elected representatives.

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Read Frequently Asked Questions

• The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income.
• The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.
• Up to 30,000 children die each day due to poverty.
• Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
• For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.
• The world’s billionaires — just 497 people — are worth over 7% of world Gross Domestic Product. A mere 0.13% of the world’s population control 25% of the world’s financial assets.
• To provide universal education, basic health, nutrition, water and sanitation in all developing countries, it would cost the world an extra $40 billion dollars a year. Europeans spend nearly 4 times that amount on cigarettes and alcohol. Nearly 20 times that amount is spent every year on weapons around the world.

Global climate change is now finally accepted as reality, and fuel prices are rising fast as we approach the end of cheap fossil fuels. In 2007 the Government of the United States - a country that consumes a quarter of the world’s energy - spent roughly $1,150 million dollars on alternative energy research and development. That may sound like a lot of money, but it amounts to just 1.18% of what they also spent on the Iraq war in the same year, according to the website Solar Power Rocks.

Clearly current systems of government are not working for the benefit of humanity or the planet we live on, as many of these situations mentioned are actually worse now than they have ever been. It is for these reasons that Global Votes was born.

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