US Mid Term Elections?

I can see what you're getting at but remember that the 'mid term' refers to the Presidential term. The Americans elect a President for a 4 year term and the House and Senate elections are not held at that time, but 2 years afterwards, also on a 4 year cycle. Because we don't have a separate election for an independently powerful Prime Minister/President, that doesn't equate to Australia at all.

We go part of the way there with the way our Senate is elected i.e. 6 year terms with half the Senators being elected at each General Election.

Before anything like an Australian version of mid-term elections could be implemented here, we would need fixed 4 (or better still, 6) year Parliamentary terms and then perhaps elect half of each house on a different 4 (or 6) year cycle. A major, and I believe insurmountable problem I see with anything less than 6 year terms would be that the country would be almost constantly in election mode. Little enough gets done now, but with an election guaranteed every 2 years, it would be unmanageable - it could also potentially mean a change of government every 2 years which would be very destabilising to the economy. Any changes along those lines would involve major constitutional changes and I really can't see it happening.

BTW, the Westminster system refers to the overall structure of Parliament, not the system of voting - the Poms have a Westminster system and first past the post voting.

EDIT:

Point taken Paula and you're absolutely correct, though I wasn't really trying to explain the whole US system; just the meaning of 'mid-term' in the American context.

arokh72 - I don't think that our having preferential voting would make any difference. Both preferential and FPP voting end up with an individual being elected and I can't see how the method of getting to that point would change anything. Of course, preferential allows people to make a protest vote e.g. vote Green knowing that the Labor candidate you would otherwise have voted for will get up anyway whereas FPP could actually change the result but I've often thought that if we moved to FPP, Australian voting patterns would change to move more towards the major parties so the net effect would be the same anyway.

Well we couldn't have a mid term election for the House of Reps because the House of Reps decides who is in government. So the only other option is a mid term senate election. So... we vote for the senate halfway through the term of goverment? Remembering that senators have 6 year terms and we only vote for half the senate at a time, and that the next crop of senators are replaced in on 1 July 2011, that would mean:

late 2012: house of reps election (for government)

April/May 2014: half senate election, senators take their seats July 1.

late 2015: house of reps election (for government)

April/May 2017: half senate election, senators take their seats July 1.

etc.

I kind of like it! And we could do it without changing the constitution. I once heard a commentator say we haven't had a half senate election since about 1970 and no one would tolerate so many elections. But not me, I like being able to vote.

p.s. Preferential vs. 1st past the post is a separate issue. The UK has a westminster, 1st past the post system.

p.s. It doesn't affect her argument, but what Ozmaniac says about US elections isn't quite right. The entire house of reps is elected every 2 years; 1/3 of the senate is elected every 2 years (so senators serve 6 year terms).

i think the thought in the back of that's to end precisely what you pontificate. 4 years is long term to depart everybody in skill unchecked, and checking the skill of government is what our gadget is all approximately. i think of it is likewise greater advantageous to rotate new human beings and strategies as detrimental to having one extensive changing of the look after. i won't be able to think of how issues are carried out effectively if all places of work are up for re-election on a similar time. The gridlock is achievable, yet what do the mid-term elections could do with that? It purely happens that 2 years in the past the Democrats took administration of the two residences and the presidency. it is uncommon. in lots of situations those are chop up 2-a million in some way.

I understand what you're saying. For some reason the Libs/Nats couldn't see the huge brightly coloured writing on the wall regarding "Workchoices" or just chose to completely ignore it and ploughed on regardless.

Do you really think an extra election would help?