Two things have always struck me as slightly odd about American elections: first, the very public primary elections (particularly with respect to the current line-up of Democrat candidates). In Australia, the leaders of the various political parties are decided by the party members, and the leader of winning party becomes Prime Minister. (With the Liberals in coalition with the Country Party, the leader of the Country Party traditionally becomes Deputy Prime Minister).

Interestingly enough, the debate about Australia becoming a republic (instead of a constitutional monarchy as it is today) was squashed some years ago when a referendum showed that a majority of Australians rejected the idea. In fact, this was largely because the pollies (politicians) wanted to choose the President themselves, while the people wanted a popularly elected President. So for now, we still have a queen (Queen Elizabeth is Queen of Australia quite independently of being Elizabeth II of UKoGBaNI).

The other confusing thing is the apparent rag-bag of policies that make up the Democrat and Republican party platforms. For either party, half the items seem to bear little relation to, well, anything. This is explained by the fact that the parties are de facto coalitions of numerous unnamed smaller parties, whose policies and goals are far from uniform. So the Republicans have the NeoCons and the economic conservatives, who I largely agree with, and the Religious Right, who from an Australian perspective appear to be completely bonkers, but who remain something of a political force in America. The closest thing we have here is Fred Nile's Christian Democrats, who have pretty much zero influence in anything. (And are viewed as being completely bonkers by most Australians.)

The other big - but more subtle - difference is that voting in Australia is preferential rather than a simple "first past the post". This means that if you want to vote for a fringe candidate - say Ted, who supports model rocketry but has little chance of winning - you can direct your preferences to another candidate - say, Susie. All the votes are tallied, and if Ted comes last, the preferences on those votes are then distributed. If most of Ted's fans are also Susie fans, then Susie picks up most of Ted's votes. Which means that a third-party candidate like Perot or Nader would not have the effect of splitting support for their nearest political allies.

Whether this is good or bad is too complicated a question for me to ponder during my lunch break.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:40 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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