Australian election: rabbit eye's view

The election is almost finished (they're still counting the votes sent by mails) , although my feeling is it has hardly started. Six weeks ago, John Howard announced Nov 24 as the election date, and both Labor and Liberal just officially launch their election campaigns two weeks ago, and now they are done already?!

(Even so according to MM, six weeks is quite long compared to historical records. Of course one can argue the campaign was actually on ever since Kevin Rudd was elected as the Labor leader in 2006.)

This is certainly very refreshing compared to my US experience: for two whole years a day can hardly goes by without hearing some new about presidential candidates, and at this stage there are 16 of them (I only know nine by now and even MM doesn't recognize two faces).

Of course it is unfair to compare the two processes side by side, for example, there is no primary election in Australia and the task of selecting a party leader is accomplished by the parliament members only . In the US, however, every registered party member can vote in the primary. So in order to reach each one of them, the presidential candidates have to visit all the key states and kiss all the babies there. Obviously people believe the earlier a State holds their primary election, the more influential they are. So the recent trend is for States to push their primary election dates earlier and earlier, which means the whole campaign process was pushed ahead and the spending is higher and higher. According to this article, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) started in June 2006 (1.5 year before the primary), and by early Feb 2007 he spent $375,000 already (One campaign cycle earlier, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) only had spent $4,200 in a similar period).

I didn't find any numbers to compare the spending of these two countries' federal election, but I bet Australians are much more thrifty.

They are much more involved too. Of course it is mandatory to vote here, and in the US you don't have to (in 2004 64% voted compared to 60% in 2000, according to the US Census Bureau). But this year people seemed to be more on board, even for those Australians live overseas who don't have to vote.

There was even an unexpected line where MM voted. It was in a primary school and kids there seemed to have a promising future in business school, if you asked me. They sell drinks and hot dogs to the people waiting in line, and for $3 you can get your hot dog delivered to the exact spot you stand. The kids (and their food) were certainly much more welcomed than campaign workers, who were there to make last-minute effort by giving out fliers to tell people which numbers to write. It is a preferential voting system, by the way, one's second choice will count if your first favorite doesn't win, which again, is different from the "either/or" system in the US.