Pantyfanatic,

While it is true that my post could not be characterized as a “one liner”, or “sound bite”, there are, I’m sure you’ll agree, issues which are not satisfactorily served by such brevity. A filibuster is a tool used to obstruct or delay a debate. Judging from the responses my post has elicited, I’d say that it has had the opposite result.

I do agree with you in regards the anachronism of the Electoral College, although we tend to express our opinions differently. As this process is written into the federal constitution, it is as close to having been carved in stone as a process here can be. Only by an amendment to the Constitution or a Constitutional Convention can the Electoral College be replaced, both of which are most unlikely, so I’ll bet you’re right about that also. It is a piece of rococo eighteenth century democracy which will outlast both of us.

Jseal,

I must commend you, you know more about the Australian Constitution than most Australians.

You are correct in that the Queen has the power to disallow laws and this is there to prevent a dictatorship or unconstitutional laws.

It has never been used and it is a precendent that the Governor General and the Queen accepts the advice of the Prime Minister of the day.

I do not know the actual words used when a successful Prime minister approaches the Governor General and presents his credentials.

Messrs. Howard and Blair then presented their credentials to their respective heads of state, who prudently entrusted the governance of the countries to the parties whose policies most closely matched those of the citizens.

I would think that Bilbo disagrees with "parties whose policies most closely matched those of the citizens"

I believe that the incoming Prime Minister informs the GG that he is able to form a government. (This would mean that the Goverment would command control of the parliament because they had the numbers to do so)

The constitution is not as simple as it seems and disputes on it are settled by the full bench of the High Court of Australia.

As you can see Aussies are good with politics and we are tanned and sexy. What catch! We can even eat meals without putting our elbows on the table! :)

Catch22,

May I retain your services? Both of my children delight in raising my blood pressure by doing so. Perhaps if someone else explained the principles to them, they would listen.

Grumble,

There is no doubt that there are major structural differences between the democracies of Australia and America. I expose my Anglophile tendencies when I say that I envy the discrimination between head of state and head of government. What I was attempting to describe were the great similarities in getting the PM or President into office.

Based upon Sharni’s two comments, your suggestion that Bilbo was criticizing the results of the election rather than the subsequent process makes sense. Perhaps any misinterpretation should be viewed in the light of the terseness of his comment. If he is indeed criticizing the results of the election, then he stands in good, if disappointed, democratic company. I can think of American Pixies who have had difficulties coming to grips with the result of the 2000 election, and others who remain dissatisfied with the two prior to that.

In re the Australian constitution and amendment count: yes, you seem to have done a rather good job of it. Australia must have called upon some penetrating thinkers and sensitive historians when it was being drafted.

And that is the good thing about democracies. We have the right to be unhappy. When it came out in the war trials after ww2. Was there any oppositon by the German people to the Govt. The reply from Hermann Goering was: Not from anyone living.

I believe it was Mr. Churchill who said, "Democracy is the worst form of government...except for all the others"

scotzoidman,

I did some checking, and it turns out that when the Electoral College received its current form in the 12th Amendment, the idea of electing the president by direct popular vote was not widely promoted as an alternative to redesigning the Electoral College. This may be because the excesses of the recent French revolution (and its fairly rapid degeneration into dictatorship) had given the populists some pause to reflect on the wisdom of too direct a democracy.

The Electoral College system imposes two requirements on candidates for the presidency:

1. that the victor obtain a sufficient popular vote to enable the winner to govern (although this may not be the absolute majority), and
2. that such a popular vote be sufficiently distributed across the country to enable the winner to govern.

Such an arrangement ensures a regional balance of support which is a vital consideration in governing a large and diverse nation. At the same time I also discovered that the Electors are not bound to vote for the candidate to whom they had been pledged! I have this vision that following a large infusion of money, following the election – Al Sharpton emerges as the President Elect!

I know that Tawana Brawley(sp?)will vote for him! Irish :eek:

Irish,

OK, I'll bite. Who's Tawana Brawley?

I don't remember the story exactly,but years ago,she was supposed to be a
black girl,that (according to him)was raped by white men.I believe the story was eventually proven to be a hoax.It's another of his stories about the White
Man,picking on the Blacks.Don't hold me to this,verbatum,The details are only
from memory.I think that he was fined,??money,but never paid.It's kind of hard,to pay a fine,when you've never held a "real" job! Irish
P.S.There is,probably,some kind of search,that you could do.As said,the details are only from memory. :jester:

Irish,

Ms. Brawley may have served as a role model for the French woman who falsely claimed she had been the victim of an anti-Semitic attack last month. She has admitted inventing a story of an attack by a gang of North Africans on a Paris suburban train.

Other than sheer inertia, is there any reason to still have the electoral college? I made great sense in the past, but as the technology exists to actually count each vote, why can't we get rid of it. It might be nice to have a president that was actually elected by the most votes.

:eek: you really want to allow people to choose for themselves in this day and age... preposterous!!!!!!!! We can barely get the technology to a place that allows the vote to occur in a somewhat accurate manor as it is.... can you imagine the name calling and accusations if an election came down to just a few votes... oh wait... that already happened!

Good lord, what was I thinking. We can't just let people vote. We need criteria! I've you've ever voted in American Idol, you can't vote for president. If you believe that a bunch of rich white guy laywers who went to Ivy league schools care about lower and middle class slobs, you're out. If you think that you need a 64 oz Huge Ass Gulp (or whatever it's called) from 7-11, so sorry. Am I missing anything :-) Or they could just play rock paper scissors.

or if you've ever been on Jerry Springer, you're definitely out!

fredchabotnick,

That was not the intent of the Electoral College. Ref my post to scotzoidman above. Perhaps that should be changed, but that would require a constitutional amendment. As there have been four - or three, depending – occasions where the candidate who received the most popular votes failed to become president, it doesn’t seem to be that big of a problem.

jseal, 4 occasions computes to nearly ten percent failure rate...maybe acceptable in some situations, but for choosing our leaders, I find it appalling...& if memory serves, the previous occasions resulted in ineffective one-term presidents...

scotzoidman,

It could only be considered a failure if the presumption is that the candidate with the most votes should be the president. As best as I can tell, that is not the way the Electoral College works – and not how it was intended to work. Do you read it differently? This is not to say that it cannot be replaced with a popular vote based approach, but a structural change of that order may be a difficult sell. You couldn’t point to England, Australia or Canada as models.

The election of 1824 could be identified as the first in which the candidate who obtained the greatest popular vote (Jackson) failed to be elected president. The claim is a weak one, though, since six of the twenty four States at the time still chose their Electors in the State legislature. Some of these (such as the populous New York) would likely have returned large majorities for Adams had they conducted a popular election. You’re not seriously suggesting that Andrew Jackson should have become president with less than 50% of the popular vote, are you?

In 1876, Hayes had announced in advance that he would serve only one term.

Benjamin Harrison's election in 1888 is really the only clear-cut instance in which the Electoral College vote went contrary to the popular vote. This happened because the incumbent, Democrat Grover Cleveland, ran up huge popular majorities in several of the 18 States which supported him while the Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison, won only slender majorities in some of the larger of the 20 States which supported him (most notably in Cleveland's home State of New York). Even so, the difference between them was less than 111,000 votes out of more than 11,000,000 cast - less than 1% of the total. Interestingly, in this case, there were few issues other than tariffs (Harrison for, Cleveland against) separating the candidates so that the election seems to have been fought - and won - more on the basis of superior party organization in getting out the vote than on the issues of the day. I find this strikingly similar to what happened between Messrs. Gore and Bush.

And, of course, the election of 2000. It seems somewhat presumptuous to refer to that winner as a one term president (even if the presumption seems appropriate).

I have had several acuaintances,that were,hugely,popular,in a variety of circles.They may have been popular,but their decisions,wouldn't be right for
a country!Being popular,doesn't mean that you can make the correct decisions.It still remains that,if your candidate,didn't win,there will always be
"sour" grapes! Irish

Sorry to steal your catchcry Sharni...but that smells of frogshit to me :D

Having one's name checked off of the electoral roll and submitting a ballot paper is compulsory only for those enrolled to vote. Being eligible to enroll to vote (being over 18) does not compel one to enroll to vote. If you don't enroll to vote, you won't go on the electoral roll and so won't be compelled to vote. Of course, once you're on, you can't remove yourself, but I have friends who are nearing their mid-20s and are not enrolled to vote.

Even if you are enrolled to vote, there is nothing compelling you to actually write anything on your ballot paper. Plenty of people submit a blank ballot paper, it's called "voting informally".

So essentially, you can sign yourself up to be forced to go through the rigmarole of showing up to a place of voting until you snuff it, but even then you don't have to submit your preferences. So I'd say that voting is not compulsory for all intents and purposes in Australia.

Belial,

I think Sharni and Catch22 were merely pointing out one of the differences between the Australian and American election processes. In Australia, the state may penalize voter non-participation, while in America in cannot.

People can be VERY difficult to organize, as your example illustrates.

*LOL*....most politics is frogshit Belial

As for the not enrolling...just because they dont know your there doesnt mean its wrong to not enrol...by law you are sposed to enrol and vote...bit like tax dodging...illegal but ppl do it...still not right eh

Your are being given the chance to have your say on how you want your country run....the whole hiding or donkey voting is a crock of shit...stand up and be counted...your missed vote may have been the deciding vote for all you know...and you've just flushed it down the toilet

I wouldn't go all the way to a polling booth and then put a blank paper in the box. Would vote for someone. Even if it was just the silly walks party!

I didn't know that, and apparently, you're right. It sounds a bit stupid to have a compulsory enrolment process.



Many people would see it as an appropriate response to a pointless exercise, and that the odds of their vote deciding anything is somewhere in the area of being struck by lightning on the way home. And the unfortunate part is that many of them are right.

Sharni, I like the idea of having some sort of compulsary law in place, even if it's not foolproof...makes me ashamed when I hear of people in emerging democracies braving bullets and/or death squads to vote in their 1st elections, when less than half of us in the so-called developed countries can't be bothered to go out & vote cuz it's raining or [insert lame-ass excuse here]

I'd really much rather perv than walk to a booth to decide between Pepsi and Coke. My "lame-ass excuse" is that it's completely pointless.

My take on compulsary voting is this.

A democracy only operates properly if the people do their duty and vote.

We all have rights in a democracy and hand in hand with rights goes responsibilities. You have no say in paying taxes you have to and voting is in the same category. So you vote or get fined.

It does get a much more representative result. Not too many people vote informally. Often the ones that vote informally do so because of their misunderstanding of how to vote not through submitting a blank voting slip.

Amen Scotzoid....typically closer to 30% here but we still find the need to exalt democracy to the rest of the world. Bit hypocritical.

I've got a friend who told me in October 2000 that he didn't think his vote mattered. He lives in Florida. Three years ago, he told me to quit forwarding him news articles with the subject line "does it matter yet?" He'd gotten the point. Damn good thing he loves me, cause I can be annoying as hell sometimes.

I've always been fascinated by Australia's mandatory voting policies....but they've kind of left me wondering about something. Pixies seems as good a place to ask as any, since it's on topic in this thread: if you knew that you would be forced to vote, would it make you any more interested in paying attention to the issues around you? Or would those who don't care today (not the only reason not to vote, just one that puzzles me) vote casually and ignorantly? Not that I'm saying that some of the votes that ARE cast aren't done in ignorance....just curious to know if the new votes wouldn't just make the signal/noise problem worse.

Wandering back to the pics now ;),

G

I am like Sharni, I have always considered a priviledge to vote and always take the opportunity to do so. Local council elections are not compulsary and a 30% turnout is considered good.

The idea that people may not know what they are voting for is virtually a moot question really. The ones that vote in the USA would be mainly polarised voters who support a party and they would vote for that party regardless if the other had better policies.

I don't agree that compulsory voting is an essential part of the democratic process nor that it necessarily affords one a say in the running of the country.

Compulsory voting requires one to endorse a candidates, or in preferential systems, endorse multiple candidates to different degrees. When there are no suitable candidates (in the voter's eyes), the voter must endorse a candidate they do not support. I would much rather the option of offering no candidate my support if I do not wish to do so.

Saying that every voter gets a say in the running of the country assumes that there is a candidate(s) agreeing with the voter on how the country should be run. Let's say, for example, that I believe funding to higher education should be increased, however, no candidate has any commitment to do so. What say do I have in the running of the country, at least as far as this single issue is concerned? What if I find that on all the issues that matter to me, no candidate adequately represents me? Am I to vote against my own views?

To me it's like being locked in a room with a drink vending machine, and you can't leave until you've had a drink. What is there for the voter that sees Coke, Pepsi, Fanta, Sprite, and says "fuck that, if there's no water I'll pass"?

At my age one is always passing water! :)

After the fiasco,over my last post,I wasn't going to post anymore,but I have to give an example.My wife & I,have many times voted,for what we considered,the best of two evils.There is also always,a spot,to write in another name.To think that your vote doesn't count,is alot of crap!
Ex:We,technically,live in Barrington NH.My property,is on the border of Barrington & Rochester.A FEW yrs ago,Barrington had no kindergarden.Our
oldest daughter thought that her kids,would benifit from a kindergarden.She
bugged,my wife & I,her sister & husband & her husband,to vote for kindergarden,in the next election.(Town)Kindergarden passed by 12 votes.
My wife & I,=2,youngest daughter & husband=2,Oldest daughter & husband =
2. 2+2+2=6.That's 1/2 of the passing votes,so don't tell me that individual
votes,don't count! Irish

The only prefix I would like to see in front of Democracy is Participatory.In order for it to work,Democracy needs everybody's participation and not just in the voting booth.We don't have to agree on everything everytime. There is plenty of room for differences.But I believe the long road to putting Bush in the White House began with the realization that less than half of the people bother to vote.