Disgusting

people seem to be under some assumption that to actually get into power u need most of the votes (ie over 50%)

America and the US use 1st past the post and it doesn't matter if u get 1% or 100% as long as u have the biggest percentage of the vote, u win. Bush may not have got 50% of the voters on his side but he got more than anyone else (spare me the al gore/ rigging arguments cos im not interested)

No, you're wrong Jim.
It's not about that largest percentage of overall votes.
If that were the case, Al Gore would be in office.
Al Gore won the popular vote (based on actual number of people that voted.)
However, in the US, it's actually decided by the electoral college.
Each state has a number of electoral votes assigned to it (not unlike having some courses weighted when tabulated a grade point average.)
You need to win the popular vote in a given state to have that state grant you their electoral votes. Then, the majority of electoral votes determines the winner. Some states that have a lot of electoral votes are swing states and carry alot of weight towards whether or not you win.
That's why Florida was the issue.
They called the election results early in the media (a call, by the way, made by an executive at Fox News who was, by the way, a cousin of George W. Bush - interesting to note, isn't it?) Then they looked into whether or not the electoral votes really should go to Bush or Gore, basing it upon number of votes. That's when you got into the discrepancies - write-ins, absentee ballots, dangling chads and old Jewish people in Miami Beach voting for Pat Buchanan (as if that would every happen on this plane of existance.)
It's not simply the largest percentage. It's much more complicated than that.

it's the same here in the uk i was looking at it from grass roots level.

u get constituencies here which could be certain parts of a city or a massive amount of countryside, all so the population is kinda equal. the person who gets the highest percentage of votes in the constituency wins it, the party who gets most constituencies (and as a result, parlimentary seats) wins power. k in some cases u may have someone narrowly getting more votes than the other parties leader and not get into power but its very rare for it to happen.

and anyways people shopuldn';t be voting in favour of a person they should be voting for the party