The continuing speculation about the date of the Federal election, and the continuous state of semi-campaign, is getting really annoying. I’ve never been a fan of four year terms – the arguments in favour of them are generally anti-democratic, based on the idea that the further voters are kept away from policy, the better – but I’d happily accept a four-year term as long as it was fixed. While a four year term reduces accountability, the fixed term reduces the power of the Prime Minister, which is a good thing.
As regards the date, I think it would be really silly to run a campaign during the Olympics and Grand Final Season. If Howard tries this, I think (and hope) he will be punished for it by the voters.
If we rule out that option, our campaign will coincide with that in the US. This leads me to the suggestion that we could make a more informed choice if our election is held after the American election[1]. If Bush gets back in, that’s a significant argument in favour of re-electing Howard – relations between a Bush Administration and a Latham government are unlikely to be warm. If Bush loses, the credibility of Howard’s foreign policy is severely undermined.
fn1. Theirs is Melbourne Cup Day, first Tuesday in November, except when that falls on November 1 (the rule is “first Tuesday after first Monday“). Holding elections on a workday is one of the many ways in which the world’s leading democracy discourages voting.
John Quiggin 
This period is annoying me royally as well.. but every time I come to think of fixed terms and get all misty eyed, I keep running into a hurdle which is the (right?) ability of a government to resign and go to the polls. This is also a right of the people. Unfortunately it has been turned into a circus by both sides of politics.
I’d like to see the ability to call an early election, but only in special circumstances, and with a penalty for the government. Like fixed terms unless you call a double dissolution. Or there could be an allowible window, excluding the last 12 months of their term. That way, if they do go early it’ll lop 1 year of their term and that would make it available only for real crisis.
Many months ago Kevin Rudd nominated October 9th as the election day. He reasoned that Howard would want to capitalise on the distraction and feel-good factors from the Olympics and footy finals.
Would that mean Howard goes to the GG on 4-5 Sept or a week earlier?
9/10 Oct is looking better to me. It would allow the FTA kerfuffle to settle, and he must know he is testing our patience with an undeclared election campaign in progress.
Howard is clearly doing a lot of feints here to keep the opposition off balance. I reckon he pencilled in a preferred date a long time ago (I doubt that John’s royal annoyance figured greatly in his calculation).
Brian/Kevin Rudd’s guess seems a fairly good one – the logic seems right. I don’t think he’ll be keen to go after the Yanks, cos he knows the odds are on Bush losing and he wouldn’t want the demonstration effect.
If Bush gets back in, that’s a significant argument in favour of re-electing Howard – relations between a Bush Administration and a Latham government are unlikely to be warm
a significant argument? hmmm. should we choose our PM because of whether or not the American president is buddies with him? i mean, sure, Latham may not get invited down to the ranch as often but Bush would still have to respect the alliance (which is bigger than him) even if he prefers dealing with people like Howard.
Current ABC headlines “PM hints Sept 18 election unlikely” – is someone trying to suggest that he actually doesn’t know?
Does anyone enjoy these games?
I’ve always thought October sometime. As late as possible but before the Americans. Which date exactly? No idea – but the 9th seems as good a guess as any.
The idea of choosing our P.M. for the right feng shui with the U.S. is something that should die as quickly as possible. After all, Nixon and Whitlam weren’t the best of buddies, were they?
“If Bush gets back in, that’s a significant argument in favour of re-electing Howard – relations between a Bush Administration and a Latham government are unlikely to be warm”
Bush getting back in??? But what of those between Kerry and Howard?
“As regards the date, I think it would be really silly to run a campaign during the Olympics and Grand Final Season. If Howard tries this, I think (and hope) he will be punished for it by the voters.”
I don’t believe you actually mean this comment other than as a flippant throw-away, John. Not a brilliant deep-thinking academic like youself! Surely serious voters don’t vote to punish or reward contestants. They vote for the party or person whom they believe will deliver the best government either for themselves or for the country in the coming electoral term.
“Holding elections on a workday is one of the many ways in which the world’s leading democracy discourages voting.”
Interesting that you should give a link that explains why the USA election date was chosen as that date because it made it as easy as possible to vote and that you would turn it around to assert that it is that date for the very opposite. Words like cynical and disingenuous come to mind, the latter being a gentle word for lying, a word I try to use more carefully than the left which tends to fling it about without any regard for its actual meaning.
TrueRWDB –
John’s position is quite consistent if most voters in a compulsory system are not ‘serious voters’. You’re failing to distinguish the positive (“voters would punish the government”) from the normative (“voters should punish the government”).
But I think he’s empirically wrong; panem et circenses will always favour the incumbents. Shortly after he became PM Malcolm Fraser described his re-election strategy as “getting sport back on the front page”.
RWDB, the choice of Tuesday was perfectly reasonable 150 years ago (when Saturday was a workday anyway), but not today. If you want to change “Holding” to “Continuing to hold”, feel free.
Your comment gives me the chance to take the footnote further. A striking feature of US democracy is the fact that, whereas there was vigorous reform of political structures until about 1920, everything has been frozen since, including anachronisms like the Electoral College, local/political management of voter registration and so on. So a country that was the most democratic in the world at one time is now less democratic than most other developed countries.
Yes, Howard would be silly to campaign during the Olympics, because it’s a non-stop TV event and viewers would be annoyed to see election content intruding. Don’t think that applies to the Grand Finals though. The election did happen on the NRL final weekend once in recent years, and Howard got back. But I agree that Oct 9 looks likely. He’s starting to get flack for winding people up for an election and not calling it.
True RWDB – I don’t know what link you’re talking about, but the link JQ included within the item explained the choice of the US election date (first Tues after first Mon in November)in terms of giving people a day to travel to the polls (the Monday) after their day of worship (the Sunday). That might have made it as easy to possible to vote 200 years ago, but I don’t think that holds now…
Derrida, by using the word “hope” John is recommending that people should vote to punish, an indefensible position for an academic who takes his own perceived intellectualism very seriously indeed.
His footnote reads as though he believes US policy-makers are actively discouraging people from voting but produces nothing but anti-American prejudice as evidence for this. No doubt many people have theories about how to improve democratic processes and his are just part of a multitude. This doesn’t help us to decipher the motivation of the US.
A couple of corrections/adjustment to my previous comment. First, the period of reform was longer than I suggested. I ignored important civil rights reforms in the 1960s. The last constitutional amendment, in 1972, extended voting rights to 18 year olds.
Second, it’s important to observe that the freeze since then has not been the result of anti-democratic consensus, as was impied by my post. It has been purely due to the resistance of the Republican Party, originally the progressive force in the US. The Republicans have opposed very measure to make voting more accessible, and have prospered as a result.
I would be interested to see some evidence (a link maybe?) of a rejected measure to change the Presidential Election date from the First Tuesday after the First Monday in recent decades to some more accessible date.
If TrueRWDB wants evidence rather than “anti-American prejudice” in relation to US policies which discourage electoral participation, he should check out the following sources:
Angela Behrens; Christopher Uggen; Jeff Manza (2003), “Ballot manipulation and the ‘menace of negro domination’: racial threat and felon disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850-2002 (1)”, American Journal of Sociology, November 2003.
Uggen, Christopher and Jeff Manza (2002), “Democratic Contraction? The Political Consequences of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States,” American Sociological Review 67:777-803.
These articles show, amongst other things, that a combination of the US policy of permanently disenfranchising convicted felons (i.e. not just during their incarceration), and the growth in the rates of imprisonment in recent decades due to the drug war, “three strikes and you’re in”, etc., has had a decisive effect on election outcomes by disproportionately disenfranchising voters from African-American and other disadvantaged groups which are over-represented in the prison population.
For example, if rates of prior or current imprisonment in 2000 had only been what they were in 1960, Gore would have won the 2000 Presidential election. Conversely if imprisonment rates in 1960 had been as high as in 2000, Nixon would have defeated Kennedy.
Paul, both you and John are trying to change the subject or move the goal posts. My comment referred specifically to his reference to continuing to hold Presidential Election Day on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November as representing part of a deliberate disenfranchising policy. I would like to see some actual evidence that this is so, rather than mere inertia or a feeling that this date is now so traditional that no one wants it changed. Why does the left continually try to impute the worst possible motivation on any event or non-event?
I don’t discount the possibility that he is right in this case, which is why I asked for evidence rather than to simply assert that he’s wrong.
TrueRWDB, my assertions are
(1) Continuing to hold elections on a Tuesday makes voting more difficult
(2) The Republicans routinely favor measures that make voting more difficult
Point 1 is I think, evident. On point 2, there is tons of evidence. Today’s Bob Herbert column is on this very topic.
John, even if both your points 1 and 2 are true it simply does not follow that Republicans or anyone else in the USA has deliberately let the traditional polling day stand because they want to make voting more difficult. That is a possibility but only one of many, and it’s not even close to the most plausible one.
TrueRWDB, since we are in nitpicking mode, please point to any point at which I made the assertion
“Republicans have deliberately let the traditional polling day stand because they want to make voting more difficult.” (emphasis added)
I’ve said (and you haven’t denied it) that Republicans want to make voting more difficult and have deliberately acted to do so,
I’ve also said (and you haven’t denied it) that holding elections on Tuesday makes voting more difficult.
But I never made the precise (and probably untestable) statement to which you refer and with respect to which you’ve been happy to make the claim that I’m “cynical and disingenuous .., the latter being a gentle word for lying”
“Holding elections on a workday is one of the many ways in which the world’s leading democracy discourages voting.”
Any reasonably objective reader with an understanding of English would interpret the active verb “discourages” in the way I have. You can call it nitpicking if you like, I just call it understanding the English language.
TrueRWDB, your handle is most appropriate. Endless snarky pointscoring over trivial side issues (turkeys, anyone?) is the standard RWDB modus operandi.
In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve been hoaxed here.
I’ll just leave it here. You know my point is both substantial and correct, John. You’re just stubbornly refusing to admit when you’re clearly wrong.
Quickly and half heartedly to John’s aid:
I read John’s comment as the American major parties disenfranchising voter’s by still holding elections on a Tuesday (that may, near probably, advantages the Republicans). It’s essentially a battle of the loyal partisans rather than a poll of the wider population. The problem I think John was pointing out was that a country that holds itself up to the world as a beacon of democracy effectively disenfranchises a substantial proportion of voters by holding elections on a day when they’ll be preoccupied by work.
To one of the points of JQ’s article – why isn’t anyone promoting a 3 year fixed term? Removes nasty Senate/House timing problems. Removes the need for controversial reform of the Senate. Removes the sort of shenanigans we’ve seen lately (and before now) where the PM goes into campaigning/adjustment mode but spends a lot of time figuring out when the best date is according to his chances (ie internal party polling.)
If you leave electoral reform to the major parties, they’ll soon come up with a system that makes it more likely for them to win in the Senate. For partisans, the incumbent would be more likely to get their proposals through without moderation, and it would benefit those you don’t agree with as much as those you do.
A cheery start
I know its just a Taverner Poll, but it’s still nice to have the Fairfax Dodgy Bros coming up with a Labor answer to their OmniTalk counterparts in the local American tabloids. A nice six point spread at 53/47, with…
A cheery start
I know its just a Taverner Poll, but it’s still nice to have the Fairfax Dodgy Bros coming up with a Labor answer to their OmniTalk counterparts in the local American tabloids. A nice six point spread at 53/47, with…
A green senate?
It looks like the Olympics have won out over the federal election: Rowe I’m not suprised. Howard still needs to
A green senate?
It looks like the Olympics have won out over the federal election: Rowe I’m not suprised. Howard still needs to