5 more years: election frequency correct ?

[cyberianpan]

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time

RTE

A possible explanation for the fall in Fianna Fáil support lies in another question asked by Red C.

60% of voters believe that the Government misled them about the economy before the last election, compared to 27% who said they disagreed, while the rest said they did not know.

It doesn't seem efficient to me to vote in a government all-in-one-go-every-5-years. In the US they have more separation of powers and mid terms feature.

Why couldn't we have an election for 10%of seats every 6 months ?

It would make the parties work a lot harder & get rid of the ridiculous amount of false effort they got to every 5 years: every 6 months would mean that they'd have to work week-to-week as their doings would be in the recent public mind at election time.

cYp

[toxic avenger]

Because there would be constant irresponsible electioneering-informed policy-making, nothing would be possible long-term. Irresponsible election pledges would have to be upheld or said party would suffer losses within weeks. 4 years would possibly be the best term.

[twowheelsgood]

How funky, I was just thinking about this. There was some sense to a 5 year rule in the dark days when governments fell relatively often. But in this new era of 'peace of prosperity' we face an average of two elections per decade, hardly enough I suspect. Something like once every four years would seem more appropriate, to prevent recent occurences of a three year break between local and general elections.

Off the top of my head, Australia goes to the polls every three years, the US has congressional elections every two years and the UK usually elect parliament every four years (1997 being an exception).

[Binx]

I think U.S congress two-year cycle is the shortest you can go in terms of national elections. Policies take time to implement and to see the result of and 6 months would be way too short a window for any government to prove themselves. Having said that, 5 years is too long. 4 is good.

[farnaby]

At the very least FG/Lab should have challenged FF on their key pledges during the election to undertake a commitment to hold a new GE if they reneged on their promises.

I don't see how the US style mid-terms would work for us - a GE followed by a presidential election followed by GE every two years wouldn't change much in our case. What would engage the populus in the democratic system would be a say on specific areas of policy every year/6 months. E.g. which party should be in charge of the health system?

[odie1kanobe]

5 years is adequate enough as it was initially 7 years within the constitution.

Seems to me that some people who wish elections more often don't really believe in Democracy but just want to keep bitching because the electorate refuses to allow them into Government.

[cyberianpan]

Because there would be constant irresponsible electioneering-informed policy-making, nothing would be possible long-term. Irresponsible election pledges would have to be upheld or said party would suffer losses within weeks. 4 years would possibly be the best term.

I'm only saying to have 10% of seats on the table every 6 months.

constant irresponsible electioneering-informed policy-making

Isn't that what the public now seems to believe happened with the last election ?

Also to my mind government is > 50% about performance, not policy and in any private organisation I've ever seen performance is often assessed quarterly and certainly annually (I'm thinking about performance relating to external financial reports, employee evaluations, internal budgets etc).

cYp

[Auditor #9]

I've been thinking about this too today.

How about a safety valve to pull the plug on them initiated by the electorate? During any term (preferably 4 years) the electorate get one chance to pull the plug on the govt. This would be initiated by petition or by the opposition and would require a fairly high level of participation and dissatisfaction and involve a referendum-style vote.

I don't know, but there should also be some way of augmenting the mechanics of the democratic system to suit changing times. It isn't flexible that way - as someone said there, twowheelsgood, the set-up we have is for a different era. We're still running Windows 3.1 lads when Ubuntu is freely available for download.

(if I could only get the wifi working )

[tonys]

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time

It doesn't seem efficient to me to vote in a government all-in-one-go-every-5-years. In the US they have more separation of powers and mid terms feature.

Why couldn't we have an election for 10%of seats every 6 months ?

It would make the parties work a lot harder & get rid of the ridiculous amount of false effort they got to every 5 years: every 6 months would mean that they'd have to work week-to-week as their doings would be in the recent public mind at election time.

cYp

If you’re looking for the ultimate in short term political thinking then this sounds like the way to go. There has to be time for policies to bed in & start to produce results, five years seems about right to me.

[odie1kanobe]

I've been thinking about this too today.

How about a safety valve to pull the plug on them initiated by the electorate? During any term (preferably 4 years) the electorate get one chance to pull the plug on the govt. This would be initiated by petition or by the opposition and would require a fairly high level of participation and dissatisfaction and involve a referendum-style vote.

Govt by Populism !!!!

Oh great then you have Demagoges getting elected witha populist message.

It works now so why change ?