The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, NovembeÔ 22nd, 2000. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Editorial: Free and fair elections? Clinton was quick with his propaganda message when the US Presidential elections resulted in gridlock. It proves, he said, that every vote counts. It is claimed that the right to vote is the most important democratic right. The right to a universal franchise is not unimportant and must be preserved, but the electoral system has and is being systematically manipulated to regularly produce an outcome different to that indicated by the majority of voters. "The will of the people" is a cliche being regularly invoked by both Bush and Gore and used by politicians in other countries as well. But the present system does not work out like that. Any election is far from "fair" when only millionaires can buy the necessary radio and TV time and media space to put their policies before the people. The total of money spent by the Democrat and Republican campaigns runs into hundreds of millions of dollars and most of it is provided by corporate donors who expect to get more than their money back in the policies to be implemented by whoever is the winner. This money is not only spent on media time and space but is also used to stage-manage meetings with paid cheer-leaders. Support is bought and the favours of other politicians all have a price. In Florida, where attention has been concentrated as a result of the Presidential ballot, "more than 400,000 ex-offenders were excluded from the vote." (See last week's "Guardian"). It is the "law" that even after offenders have served their sentence, they are still not entitled to vote. As the majority of those disfranchised in this way are African-Americans and Hispanic migrants who would tend to vote for the candidates of the Democrat Party, it is clearly one of those manipulations intended to affect the ballot outcome. Australia is not free of similar manipulation of the electoral system. Recent amendments to the NSW electoral law by the Labor Government will result in the exclusion of many smaller parties who might otherwise stand candidates. There is also a very onerous financial hurdle to jump to stand candidates. The NSW electoral changes are designed to ensure that the existing two- party system remains intact with the spoils of office being shared by the Labor and Liberal Parties long into the future. In the Federal sphere, the votes cast for the respective parties bear little relationship to the number of seats they "win". In the 1996 Federal election the Liberal-National Party Coalition took 47.36 percent of the total vote but ended up with 63.5 per cent of the seats. The National Party gained 8.26 percent of the vote and secured 12.8 per cent of the seats, whereas the Australian Democrats gained 6.72 percent of the votes but not a single seat in the House of Representatives. This result is obtained by manipulating the individual electorate boundaries so that the candidates of the Coalition have an advantage. The Labor Party does the same thing when in office. In Australian elections, media advantages are also extended to the major parties. The right to vote is only one element in the electoral system. So long as the media is controlled by those who support either Liberal or Labor (or Democrat or Republican), so long as they are able to use government offices to manipulate electoral campaigns and bribe voters with last minute handouts, so long as electorate boundaries are manipulated, to mention only a few areas, there will be no such thing as "free and fair" elections. The introduction of proportional representation is one important measure that would help to achieve a fairer outcome. The media should be available to all and the government funding of the major parties' election campaigns brought to an end. Another aspect is the actual involvement of the people in the selection of candidates and in the elaboration of policies. Until these changes are implemented, elections will continue to be manipulated and the outcome will favour the parties of the ruling class. The "will of the people" will be denied. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: Guardian Editorial. Free and fair elections?
Communist Party of Australia Thu, 23 Nov 2000 00:53:33 -0800
