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Because elections here aren't "announced". They're on a fixed 4-year schedule. Everyone knows they're coming, and if they start just a little sooner than the ot

Because elections here aren't "announced". They're on a fixed 4-year schedule. Everyone knows they're coming, and if they start just a little sooner than the other guy this time, that may give them an advantage. Over time, it creeps earlier and earlier. Like retail stores putting out Christmas stuff in mid-october. Obviously, in great Britain's recent election, nobody knew there was going to be an election until it was announced, so there was no way to jump the gun.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago
Mid-October? Your stores are behind Sparky, they should put it out in August
maxerickson 2y ago
I think the way we do ballot access also contributes to it. We give candidates backed by established political organizations preferential treatment (vs separating out qualifying for the ballot and support from the organization).
- wongarsu 2y ago
  Tbh, I never understood why "support from the party" plays into it at all. If we truly want separation of powers shouldn't we encourage the leader of the executive to have no ties to any of the factions of the legislative. Instead it seems to be the opposite
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    The practical explanation is easy, people that seek power engage and work to change the rules to that end.
arp242 2y ago
Plenty of countries have elections on a fixed cycle and an election date known years in advance, and they don't have these extremely long drawn-out campaigns. Also, in most countries candidates also don't spend a fucktillion dollars on campaigning – another thing that has gotten rather out of hand in the US. And the mid-terms make it even worse. De-facto the US runs on a two-year election cycle. I suspect this is part of the reason why things are so screwed in the first place.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  Most countries put legal limits on either campaign spending or campaign duration, or both. That prevents campaign lengths from spiraling out of control and forces campaigns to be a lot more focused (hopefully focused on substance). The US is one of the earlier modern democracies and as a consequence there are lots of little implementation flaws. And any change is seen as blasphemy against the will of the founding fathers. Many other democracies either had more hindsight available when they wrote their constitution, or were more open to change
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    Also gives the people in power control and the ability to block out new messages. No sure it's fair or democratic. Some countries give tax payer money based on how you did previously which greatly benefits the status quo
    - wongarsu 2y ago
      > Also gives the people in power control and the ability to block out new messages. No sure it's fair or democratic. With limited campaigns you usually run with people who are already known and have a long track record that's decently well known. The equivalent of running a Hillary Clinton or a Bernie Sanders. There shouldn't be much new stuff to drag up except their specific policies. > Some countries give tax payer money based on how you did previously which greatly benefits the status quo On the other hand if the state doesn't give parties money then the parties are just going to do whatever brings them the biggest donations, leading to a country run by the rich and the corporations. And you can't hand out money regardless of past performance since anyone can form a party at any time. There is no winning solution here, but giving tax money to parties can be the smaller evil
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    This isn't an implementation flaw, this is (arguably) by design. You can't regulate campaign spending or duration without regulating political speech, which is a huge no-no under the 1st Amendment. I don't actually agree with that argument, of course. SCOTUS has been perfectly willing to go along with "time and manner" regulations on political speech in the past and I don't see why "nobody can spend more than $X or campaign longer than Y days" is forbidden when "nobody can protest the G7 summit" is. The US's free speech extremism has, in practice, turned into a delegated right to censorship. And under current SCOTUS interpretations of the Constitution, the government is equally powerless to stop both speech and private censorship. The true answer, of course, is that Trump and the donor class have coopted SCOTUS into an instrument of centralized power. SCOTUS is the scorpion[0] that stung the Progressive frog. They make this shit up as they go - free speech for me, censorship for thee. Fortunately, SCOTUS's legitimacy is in the toilet, and that power base can be broken; but it requires Congress and the President act to defang SCOTUS in a way that does not merely shift power. It needs to be distributed again. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
occz 2y ago
As a counterpoint, Sweden has elections on a fixed schedule as well, and electioneering is still essentially contained to a month before the election proper.
- bigthymer 2y ago
  > electioneering is still essentially contained to a month before the election proper. Correct me if I'm wrong but the one-month limit is by law. Candidates are not allowed to campaign for longer than that. Just a little context I wanted to add for those that are unfamiliar.
  - Erikun 2y ago
    You are wrong, there is no such law in Sweden. But the person you’re replying to isn’t really correct either. Electioneering ramps up slowly over the calendar year but since the election always is on the second Sunday in September there is a lull in July during vacations and then way more activity in August.
    - bigthymer 2y ago
      > You are wrong, there is no such law in Sweden :thumbs_up I forget which country but there is one that limits campaigning to a single month. It has been proposed as a way to remove money from influencing politics but hasn't really gotten much traction elsewhere.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  Frankly the US just has a much larger area to campaign in than sweden. Candidates have to at least visit every state once and spend tons of time in 5-10
  - lawn 2y ago
    There's another significant difference in Sweden: the focus isn't on a single candidate but on the party, so different representatives can do the talking and there's no need for a single candidate to be everywhere.
glenndebacker 2y ago
The fixed schedule is the case for most EU countries, in Belgium every 4 year we go out and vote. The only possible way to vote earlier is when a government falls and they write out new elections but that is extremely rare.
- kgwgk 2y ago
  > The fixed schedule is the case for most EU countries, in Belgium every 4 year we go out and vote. I think you mean 5, not 4. > The only possible way to vote earlier is when a government falls and they write out new elections but that is extremely rare. It's not rare in many other EU countries - and even when there are no "snap" elections the there may be some flexibility about the timeline of the "standard" ones. I'm not sure that "fixed schedule is the case for most EU countries" is a good description, compared to the US where the exact date is known.
michaelt 2y ago
The UK has a number of policies and traditions that reduce this tendency, in addition to snap elections. Obviously in a sense politicians are always campaigning, in the sense that they're always looking to deliver on their election promises, raise their personal profile, announce popular policies, kiss babies and so on. But that's a constant background effort, rather than an election-specific effort. Perhaps the most important factor is the campaign spending limit; a campaign might have £50,000 to spend in a constituency with 70,000 voters and when the money runs out, they can't legally spend any more. So any money you spend early is money you can't spend later. Also a great deal of campaigning involves the candidate physically being in their constituency, not in Westminster. So to start campaigning early would involve a burdensome amount of travel, and much less free time to spend with family. During the short campaign period, parliament is dissolved and public servants enter 'Purdah' [1] where no important policies can be announced. Candidates can spend all their time in their constituencies campaigning - but the government is basically in stasis. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdah_(pre-election_period) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdah_(pre-election_period)
rsynnott 2y ago
For practical purposes, in parliamentary democracies, the approximate date of the election is almost always known. Occasionally, they’ll go notably early, as with the recent UK one (they could have gone up to December) but it’s not really the norm (or certainly the out-of-the-blue nature of wasn’t), and it was still only five months.
smlavine 2y ago
Great Britain's election season is shorter compared to the US in part because they don't need to spend so much time choosing the candidates. Various prospective parliamentary candidates were already selected months before, and Keir Starmer was the Labour Party's "PM candidate" since all the way back in 2020! But since in the US the parties are so much larger and multidimensional (and internally democratic in terms of choosing the candidates), that takes up most of the time that we think of in a Presidential election.
- SllX 2y ago
  That and the election for the President is functionally independent of the House and Senate elections because they’re serving terms and controlling Congress does not mean controlling the Presidency and vice versa. In the UK, y’all put the leader of the majority party (or the leader of the senior partner in a coalition) in Parliament as your Head of Government which is essentially a selection process which is an internal party affair; and your Head of State is of course the King. I think for most Parliamentary systems (with or without a Monarchy), the Prime Minister or equivalent thereof is chosen similarly.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

Mid-October? Your stores are behind Sparky, they should put it out in August

maxerickson 2y ago

I think the way we do ballot access also contributes to it. We give candidates backed by established political organizations preferential treatment (vs separating out qualifying for the ballot and support from the organization).

wongarsu 2y ago
Tbh, I never understood why "support from the party" plays into it at all. If we truly want separation of powers shouldn't we encourage the leader of the executive to have no ties to any of the factions of the legislative. Instead it seems to be the opposite
- maxerickson 2y ago
  The practical explanation is easy, people that seek power engage and work to change the rules to that end.

arp242 2y ago

Plenty of countries have elections on a fixed cycle and an election date known years in advance, and they don't have these extremely long drawn-out campaigns. Also, in most countries candidates also don't spend a fucktillion dollars on campaigning – another thing that has gotten rather out of hand in the US. And the mid-terms make it even worse. De-facto the US runs on a two-year election cycle. I suspect this is part of the reason why things are so screwed in the first place.

wongarsu 2y ago
Most countries put legal limits on either campaign spending or campaign duration, or both. That prevents campaign lengths from spiraling out of control and forces campaigns to be a lot more focused (hopefully focused on substance). The US is one of the earlier modern democracies and as a consequence there are lots of little implementation flaws. And any change is seen as blasphemy against the will of the founding fathers. Many other democracies either had more hindsight available when they wrote their constitution, or were more open to change
- ipaddr 2y ago
  Also gives the people in power control and the ability to block out new messages. No sure it's fair or democratic. Some countries give tax payer money based on how you did previously which greatly benefits the status quo
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    > Also gives the people in power control and the ability to block out new messages. No sure it's fair or democratic. With limited campaigns you usually run with people who are already known and have a long track record that's decently well known. The equivalent of running a Hillary Clinton or a Bernie Sanders. There shouldn't be much new stuff to drag up except their specific policies. > Some countries give tax payer money based on how you did previously which greatly benefits the status quo On the other hand if the state doesn't give parties money then the parties are just going to do whatever brings them the biggest donations, leading to a country run by the rich and the corporations. And you can't hand out money regardless of past performance since anyone can form a party at any time. There is no winning solution here, but giving tax money to parties can be the smaller evil
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  This isn't an implementation flaw, this is (arguably) by design. You can't regulate campaign spending or duration without regulating political speech, which is a huge no-no under the 1st Amendment. I don't actually agree with that argument, of course. SCOTUS has been perfectly willing to go along with "time and manner" regulations on political speech in the past and I don't see why "nobody can spend more than $X or campaign longer than Y days" is forbidden when "nobody can protest the G7 summit" is. The US's free speech extremism has, in practice, turned into a delegated right to censorship. And under current SCOTUS interpretations of the Constitution, the government is equally powerless to stop both speech and private censorship. The true answer, of course, is that Trump and the donor class have coopted SCOTUS into an instrument of centralized power. SCOTUS is the scorpion[0] that stung the Progressive frog. They make this shit up as they go - free speech for me, censorship for thee. Fortunately, SCOTUS's legitimacy is in the toilet, and that power base can be broken; but it requires Congress and the President act to defang SCOTUS in a way that does not merely shift power. It needs to be distributed again. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

occz 2y ago

As a counterpoint, Sweden has elections on a fixed schedule as well, and electioneering is still essentially contained to a month before the election proper.

bigthymer 2y ago
> electioneering is still essentially contained to a month before the election proper. Correct me if I'm wrong but the one-month limit is by law. Candidates are not allowed to campaign for longer than that. Just a little context I wanted to add for those that are unfamiliar.
- Erikun 2y ago
  You are wrong, there is no such law in Sweden. But the person you’re replying to isn’t really correct either. Electioneering ramps up slowly over the calendar year but since the election always is on the second Sunday in September there is a lull in July during vacations and then way more activity in August.
  - bigthymer 2y ago
    > You are wrong, there is no such law in Sweden :thumbs_up I forget which country but there is one that limits campaigning to a single month. It has been proposed as a way to remove money from influencing politics but hasn't really gotten much traction elsewhere.
HDThoreaun 2y ago
Frankly the US just has a much larger area to campaign in than sweden. Candidates have to at least visit every state once and spend tons of time in 5-10
- lawn 2y ago
  There's another significant difference in Sweden: the focus isn't on a single candidate but on the party, so different representatives can do the talking and there's no need for a single candidate to be everywhere.

glenndebacker 2y ago

The fixed schedule is the case for most EU countries, in Belgium every 4 year we go out and vote. The only possible way to vote earlier is when a government falls and they write out new elections but that is extremely rare.

kgwgk 2y ago
> The fixed schedule is the case for most EU countries, in Belgium every 4 year we go out and vote. I think you mean 5, not 4. > The only possible way to vote earlier is when a government falls and they write out new elections but that is extremely rare. It's not rare in many other EU countries - and even when there are no "snap" elections the there may be some flexibility about the timeline of the "standard" ones. I'm not sure that "fixed schedule is the case for most EU countries" is a good description, compared to the US where the exact date is known.

michaelt 2y ago

The UK has a number of policies and traditions that reduce this tendency, in addition to snap elections. Obviously in a sense politicians are always campaigning, in the sense that they're always looking to deliver on their election promises, raise their personal profile, announce popular policies, kiss babies and so on. But that's a constant background effort, rather than an election-specific effort. Perhaps the most important factor is the campaign spending limit; a campaign might have £50,000 to spend in a constituency with 70,000 voters and when the money runs out, they can't legally spend any more. So any money you spend early is money you can't spend later. Also a great deal of campaigning involves the candidate physically being in their constituency, not in Westminster. So to start campaigning early would involve a burdensome amount of travel, and much less free time to spend with family. During the short campaign period, parliament is dissolved and public servants enter 'Purdah' [1] where no important policies can be announced. Candidates can spend all their time in their constituencies campaigning - but the government is basically in stasis. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdah_(pre-election_period) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdah_(pre-election_period)

rsynnott 2y ago

For practical purposes, in parliamentary democracies, the approximate date of the election is almost always known. Occasionally, they’ll go notably early, as with the recent UK one (they could have gone up to December) but it’s not really the norm (or certainly the out-of-the-blue nature of wasn’t), and it was still only five months.

smlavine 2y ago

Great Britain's election season is shorter compared to the US in part because they don't need to spend so much time choosing the candidates. Various prospective parliamentary candidates were already selected months before, and Keir Starmer was the Labour Party's "PM candidate" since all the way back in 2020! But since in the US the parties are so much larger and multidimensional (and internally democratic in terms of choosing the candidates), that takes up most of the time that we think of in a Presidential election.

SllX 2y ago
That and the election for the President is functionally independent of the House and Senate elections because they’re serving terms and controlling Congress does not mean controlling the Presidency and vice versa. In the UK, y’all put the leader of the majority party (or the leader of the senior partner in a coalition) in Parliament as your Head of Government which is essentially a selection process which is an internal party affair; and your Head of State is of course the King. I think for most Parliamentary systems (with or without a Monarchy), the Prime Minister or equivalent thereof is chosen similarly.