A while ago, almost exactly two years back, I asked Is the Bush Administration fascist? I think we can now safely say it is, at least in the style of Mussolini and Franco. Now Echidne of the Snakes has a series of articles up on whether the Republicans have so poisoned American politics that America itself is now fascist. Our hope, at least outside the US for those who like America, is that an Obama administration will roll back the worst excesses of the Rovian Extremists. But Echidne asks how the American republic can be protected from cronyism, profiteering and the corruption of the past eight or more years in a more systematic manner. My solution: copy Australia's Electoral Commission. Here is a public service organisation not under political control, independent of state and federal intervention, which maintains all electoral rolls, runs all elections (including those for organised labor), is totally open to scrutiny by parties and the public, and which sets the boundaries of electorates according to public statistics and demographics, not political advantage.
A while back I had dinner at a conference where an American ornithologist, Pete Richerson, was sitting next to me. America had just invaded Iraq. I suggested that Australia should invade America and make it safe for democracy, because, after all, we know they have weapons of mass destruction... he laughed. I'm not laughing so much any more.
Hat tip: Bora
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The US would need to change its electoral system before the AEC would do any good. Because the President is elected by the Electoral College each state gets to decide how to send its delegates so there are 50 different systems to reform. The AEC also has a simpler system to deal with because of compulsory registration and voting. Good luck getting that idea across in the US.
I'm not suggesting that America change its electoral system, merely the administration of elections. At the moment it is hostage to political, local and corporate interests and corruption.
I understand that it is voluntary in many places but I think you should get rid of completely the practice of linking registration to party affiliation. Just seems to be asking for trouble.
I have 2 problems with the U.S. electoral system.
One is,that you have 50 separate elections to elect the president.
Second is,that you have to be a multi-millionaire to be able to run for president in the first place.
Looking in from the outside, the US doesn't seem to have a similar tradition of apolitical civil service as Britain or (I assume) Australia. That makes it more difficult to have something like the AEC work effectively because it becomes politicized so easily.
John, I think you missed Zarquon's point. (Perhaps because he mentioned the electoral college, which is not really relevant.) In America, each state administrates elections in its own way. Consider, for example, getting a presidential candidate on the ballot. You might think this would be determined by the federal government? Wrong. The rules for putting a presidential candidate on the ballot are determined by each state, and every state has different rules. Every presidential election year there are about 4-8 presidential candidates that are on the ballot in some states but not in others. (So-called 'third-party' candidates.)
The rules for handling ballots, counting ballots, and nearly every other administrative procedure are also determined on a state by state basis. As another example, consider absentee voting. In some states, anybody can vote by mail. In other states, only US citizens living abroad and invalids can vote by mail.
There was a period - from about 1900 to about 1960 or thereabouts - when states copied rules from each other, or from the same legal organizations - so most of the rules are similar from state to state - but no two states have identical sets of rules. So the fact that you don't intend to get rid of America's electoral college doesn't help; you still have to deal with 51 (50 states + Washington DC) different bodies, each of which administers elections in its own way. And it's not something that's easily fixed; constitutionally, the right to administer an election is not specifically assigned to the federal government, so it's left up to each state. A new constitutional amendment would be required to implement your plan.
As a Canadian, I also have to shake my head at the American voter registration system. Putting the parties in charge of voter lists seems an obvious fox & henhouse situation.
Our voter lists (both federal and provincial) are compiled partly from the income tax roles, partly from...I dunno, we moved here 27 years ago, and no longer recall what we had to do to get registered as voters in this riding (a registration which has transparently survived a couple of rounds of re-districting). Our election is this Tuesday. I still don't know who I'll vote for (the Tory incumbent looks like winning with a clear majority, so it really doesn't matter), but I have absolutely no doubt that I'll be able to cast my ballot, no questions asked. Now if we can just ditch this stupid FPTP system.....
I, for one, will welcome our new Australian overlords.
eddie:
The point of this is to allow members to vote in their party's primaries. Although some states now have open primaries... which is bizarre to me.
Bob O'H:
No, we do. The top tiers are political appointees, the bottom tiers are all apolitical civil service. I'm pretty sure this is the same as you. The main difference is the way we separate executive and legislative branches -- your ministers are all also elected MP's, right? Our secretaries are nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate.
Unfortunately the Bush administration has done a lot of damage to the civil service, and politicized it to an extent we hadn't seen for a long time.
The U.S. does have a tradition of independent civil service, but that tradition has been under concerted attack for the last couple of decades.
A little history: When Andrew Jackson became president back in the first part of the 19th Century, he introduced the Spoils System, the practice of rewarding supporters with Federal jobs. The abuses that went along with the spoils system became a great political issue later on in the century, and President Garfield ran on a platform of reforming hiring practices. He was assassinated precisely for this reason by a disappointed office seeker, who was a politically active member of the other faction of the ruling Republican party. In the aftermath of the assassination, the Civil Service was instituted in order to insure that hiring would be based on merit. The current administration has gone very far in restoring the old spoils system by cowing the professional civil service and expanding the power of political appointees.
Ah, you don't understand the British system - you should watch some of those fine instructional videos by Sir Humphrey Appleby.
Our civil service is separate from the elected government. Ministers are politician, who have the job of setting policy. This policy is implemented by the civil service, which is apolitical. The people at the top of the civil service are thus not political appointees.
The same would go for other appointments, like the electoral commission. Even if the members are nominated by the prime minister, the ethos of civil service means that the appointments would not be political (or at least too political: I wouldn't claim the system works perfectly). The point is that there is a social class who's job it is to serve the country, and their role is jealously guarded. When someone is needed to fill a job like being head of the electoral commission, they'll see themselves as being part of that class, even if they were politicians (Chris Patten springs to mind as a good example).
I don't see the same ethos in the US - even high court judges are discussed in terms of their political views.
No, 13,000. Each county has its own ballot, its own decision about voting machines, and so on.
Does not compute. Why isn't there simply a separate party membership card?
Which is of course an outrage: people running for judge on the promise that they will not be impartial!!!
I'll never forget the shock I got when I saw on TV, during the 2004 US election, a banner "Republican for Judge".
Wow. Amerca's pvoting system is even more completely balls that I thought. I think we should invade. Lets hold a referendum...
llewelly: I didn't miss the point. This is exactly what needs to be reformed. One nation, one electoral system. Federalism doesn't justify making some people's votes worth less or harder to cast than others in a civil country.
pubcat: A referendum? Why? Are you trying to kill the idea?
A humerous story: Back in the late 50's my wife and I registered to vote in my little hometown in Texas. That was back when we had a poll tax. You had to pay to register to vote; kept the riff-raff out, you know. We recently found our poll tax receipts. Mine is to "Jim Ed", as I am known back home, no last name. My wife, a furriner from way out in West Texas, was "Jim Ed's wife". Gives you an idea how far we are from a federal system. I very much think we need to do away with the Electoral College, which would require constitutional ammendment.
As someone who lives in the Australian Capital Territory, it is a bit hard to accept that we have a fair equally valued vote in Australia. I live in an electorate with over 111,000 registered voters. If I lived in the Northern Territory, my member would only represent just over 53,000 people. The approximately 300,000 people in the ACT have access to 2 Senators. The 500,000 people of Tasmania have access to 12. The citizens of the ACT are the least represented at the Federal level, and we're the ones who have to put up with all the people everyone else votes for.
Another perspective on fascism and America, also written a number of years ago: http://www.zompist.com/fascism.html
Silver that is the way its meant to be - 2 senators to balance the power of the larger lower house. can you propose a more balanced system?
My point is that as a citizen of a territory, I have far less representation in the Senate then if I lived 20 kilometres further north. Tasmania has less than double the population of the ACT, but 6 times the number of Senators.
Also, in the lower house, were the disadvantage of living in a territory shouldn't matter, I find that my electorate has more than twice the number of people living in it than the lowest populated electorate, and several thousand people more than the national average.
I'm doubly under represented at both levels of Federal parliament. I'd be happy with 3 electorates and 3 Senators for the ACT.
Silver - point taken. i think at 3 am i had a bit of a mind fart and forgot how our system works.
another interesting point - i live in the electorate of parkes which takes in a good half of new south wales and even though i know our local member (lives down the road a bit) it buggers me how he can 'serve' the whole district some times.
still i think its a fair bit better than the systems of many other countries. and if we went and changed the number of senators for the territories then we would have to reform the whole upper house, maybe some of the electorates are slightly out of whack but given australia's population distribution it is hard to get this down properly.
i thought there was a population limit where they changed the electoral boundaries? 140,000?