Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke take stock of the unfolding USA presidential election at the end of the second week of the Kamala Harris presumptive candidacy for the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump appeared for a tense and heated interview with three Black women journalists at the annual convention of the National Black Journalists' Association. It did not go well. The former president questioned whether Kamal Harris was, "Indian or Black": a self-evident false binary. His campaign is going all out to define his opponent as "fake". Meanwhile, Harris addressed a wildly enthusiastic 10,000 strong rally in Atlanta, Georgia, delivering her evolving stump speech with "Freedom" as its rhetorical leitmotif. She also fired back at her GOP opponent's racist attack.

With Harris's choice of VP running mate looming, Peter and Margo try to predict that choice.

This year marks a significant anniversary in Australian political history. But few Australian citizens will be celebrating it mainly because they simply don’t know what it is. In 1924, as Australia entered its third decade of federation, our federal parliament passed legislation mandating compulsory voting. 100 years later, that innovation has been meshed into our political lives and democracy as utterly normal. The “democracy sausage” effect. Our turn out for elections is persistently high, unlike most other democracies we might compare ourselves with.

How has compulsory voting shaped our democracy over the last century? What are the positives and negatives? What might we lose if we abolished it as has been tried relatively recently.

Emeritus Professor of Politics at Monash University, Paul Strangio, co-edited the 2021 book Compulsory Voting in Australia : Genesis, Impact and Future. He speaks with Peter Clarke about the history, current status and potential future of compulsory voting in Australia.

RESOURCES

Compulsory voting in Australia is 100 years old. We should celebrate how special it makes our democracy by Paul Strangio

https://theconversation.com/compulsory-voting-in-australia-is-100-years-old-we-should-celebrate-how-special-it-makes-our-democracy-234801

Compulsory Voting in Australia : Genesis, Impact and Future

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-33-4025-1

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting by Judith Brett

https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/from-secret-ballot-to-democracy-sausage-how-australia-got-compulsory-voting

Ultimately, it happened at lightning speed. After weeks of apparent digging in, USA president, Joe Biden, finally bowed to the inevitable and withdrew his candidacy from the presidential election contest, endorsing his Vice President, Kamala Harris, as he did so. She, within 24 hours, had secured sufficient Democrats' delegates to the upcoming national nomination convention to instantly become the putative nominee. Harris immediately started campaigning with feisty, speeches, taking on her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, frontally and laying out her policy themes under her slogan "We're Not Going Back!" to counter Trump's, "Make America Great Again", making the intensely fractious, febrile contest ostensibly about the past versus the future. Peter Clarke and Margo Kingston take stock of the first days of this utterly transformed and crucial US presidential election contest.