Culture

Four Ways Australia’s Democracy Is So Much Better Than America’s

There are no democracy sausages in America!

by Osman Faruqi  9 November 2016

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It wasn’t until I travelled to the US in 2012 to observe the presidential election up close that I realised how much we take for granted in Australia. The US does democracy in a unique and incredibly bizarre way. Compared to Australia it actually comes across as a bit of a joke. Which is pretty funny considering Americans consider themselves the greatest democracy on earth.

A lot of the attention on this year’s race has focused on Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton, which makes total sense. They are the candidates, after all. But the wild and wacky world of American elections goes much deeper than just the candidates for the presidency. Here’s a few of the weirdest things about elections in the US.

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They Vote On A Tuesday

A lot of Australians think the biggest problem with US democracy is that voting isn’t compulsory. But the issue isn’t so much voluntary voting, it’s that elections are conducted in a way that makes it incredibly difficult for the average person to vote.

In Australia voting is held on a Saturday. That makes a lot of sense. It’s a weekend, so most people can take the time out to head over to a polling booth and line up.

In the US voting is on a weekday. In most states it’s not a public holiday. It’s just a regular workday. Employers are supposed to give their workers time off to allow them to vote, but lots of people I spoke too, particularly in the retail sector, said that doesn’t always happen.

So why is polling day held on a Tuesday? Because in the 19th century Friday, Saturday and Sunday were considered religious holidays. And it took a full day of travelling for rural farmers to get to a polling booth. If voters left on a Monday they wouldn’t arrive to vote until Tuesday. That’s seriously the origin story of Tuesday voting.

You’d think that in the past 100 years someone might have thought about updating the system to reflect the fact we don’t get around on horses anymore, but nope.

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There Are No Democracy Sausages

One of the greatest Australian election traditions is the humble democracy sausage. It makes voting even more delicious and satisfying.

There are no sausage sizzles at US polling stations. In fact there’s very little, if any, presence from campaigners or fundraisers outside booths. Voting is an incredibly dull exercise.

Thankfully Michael Rowland from ABC’s News Breakfast went over to Washington and set up his own sausage sizzle to school the Americans into how to do voting properly.

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There Is No Independent Election Commission

Another thing Australians are rightly proud of is our independent election commission. The Australian Election Commission (AEC) manages the whole voting process. It prints the ballots, organises polling booths, coordinates early voting, advertises when the election is happening and counts the votes.

There’s no equivalent to that in the US. Each state has different electoral laws and regulations and the actual voting processed is managed by county level election commissions. Here’s the kicker: they aren’t independent. Election commissioners are actually voted in to office. That means some county commissions are run by Democrats and others are run by Republicans.

Those commissions decide how the vote will be conducted, where it will be conducted and how it’s counted. Sometimes these commissions screw up massively and don’t open enough polling stations in high population areas, leading to massive voting lines.

Often these decisions are driven by a desire to make it harder for certain communities to vote. This year there’s been allegations that Republican aligned commissions are deliberately suppressing black voters by cutting polling stations in black communities.

Partisan, elected election commissions are an absolutely terrible idea. Thank god for the AEC.

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The Ballot Papers Are Insanely Long

If you think filling out the Senate ballot paper is complicated… wait till you see what US voters have to put up with.

The official voter guide for California is more than 200 pages long. That’s because in addition to voting for elected representatives Californian voters are also voting yes or no on more than a dozen propositions. These propositions deal with things like the death penalty and marijuana legalisation. It’s actually a pretty cool part of the US electoral system, but it can be pretty overwhelming for voters.

sample ballot

An excerpt of this year’s Florida ballot. It’s incredibly confusing.

On top of voting for the President, congressional representatives and senators, Americans also regularly vote for judges, public officials, school board commissioners and water board commissioners. Some counties in Florida even elect mosquito commissioners. Their job is to… control the mosquito population.

While most of the media attention is focused on the race for the White House, voters are presented with potentially dozens of other contests when they walk into the polling booth. It can be hard to choose between candidates without a lot of information, so lots of voters do something called “voting down the ticket”. If they’re Democrats, they’ll vote for all the Democratic candidates and if they’re Republicans they’ll vote for all the Republicans.

So yeah, before you complain about having to choose six parties on our Senate ballot, spare a thought for the Americans.

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There’s really not a lot to admire about America’s voting process. Even before considering big reforms like making voting compulsory, there’s lots of relatively simple things they could do to improve engagement and make it easier for people to actually vote.

Before they lecture the rest of the world on democracy, they should probably work on independent election commissions and holding the election on a weekend, or a national holiday. Until then the system is pretty prone to manipulation.

Oh, and more delicious sausages. Definitely more sausages.

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Feature image via Twitter