COVID-19, democracy and voting

31 March 2020

Coronavirus lingo is proving as catching as the virus itself. Attempts to ‘flatten the curve’ of infection and transmission involve full blooded efforts at ‘social distancing’, a term that really ought to have been thought through a bit more.

In Australia, every politician from Canberra to the Northern Territory is insisting on isolation measures and avoiding close contact, keeping to distances of 1.5 to 2 metres. Work from home and only go out for necessaries. Avoid the beaches. Avoid areas of congregation. For all this urgency, such messages have been inconsistently policed.

When it comes to the very practice of democracy and political representation, the social distancing imperative has been approached with confusing inconsistency. Legislatures, such as the European Parliament, have cancelled essential meetings and debates indefinitely. Regional elections in Spain’s Basque Country and Galicia have been postponed, as has Italy’s constitutional referendum that would have taken place on March 29.

We can admire the statements of those who insist that the business of parliament and the election process must go on. As Italy’s Senate President Elisabetta Casellati put it on 22nd of March, ‘The centrality of Parliament can never fail, especially when government measures limit citizens’ personal freedoms and activities essential to the country’s economy’. John Meachem makes a similar case for the United States, reminding us that President Abraham Lincoln was ‘unwilling to sacrifice democracy to save it — a lesson we need to bear in mind as the coronavirus epidemic threatens primaries in many states’.

Such a position has been adopted with full and foolhardy force in Queensland’s council elections. The Palaszczuk government has unwaveringly insisted that its citizens practise compulsory voting, despite lengthy queues and extensive periods of congregation. Overnight, 70 new COVID-19 cases were identified, pushing the state’s total to 625. In the face of the continuing spike, Queensland’s chief health officer Jeannette Young insisted, with breezy confidence, that there was no risk in going to vote in person. ‘Make sure you’ve got a pen of your own, take in your card so you can quickly and efficiently be ticked off the electoral roll.’

Young, instead, had a comparison to make, though it had little by way of evidence to support it. It was far better to do your duty and vote than frequent liquor outlets. The former came with no risk of infection; the latter, with considerably higher risk for COVID-19 to do its work. ‘The scenes

Join the conversation. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter Subscribe

AUSTRALIA

COVID-19, democracy and voting

Subscriber login