SEMINAR: Political Science and International Relations Seminar Series 2019 - A Tale of Two Continents: How America is Looking to Australia on Electoral Reform Tue, 10 Sep 2019 13:00 - UWA Social Sciences Building, room 2.63 Professor Benjamin Reilly Electoral reform is a hot issue in the United States, particularly since the election of President Donald Trump. This presentation will examine how US reformers are seeking to introduce distinctively Australian institutions such as compulsory voting, preferential ballots and independent electoral boundaries as a means of combating polarization and improving legitimacy in American politics. It will focus in particular on the recent adoption of preferential voting in Maine’s 2018 mid-term Congressional elections, the first time ‘our’ system has been used for national elections in US history. Ben is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences at UWA, working on research and engagement in a range of policy and international issues across the Indo-Pacific. He was formerly Dean of the Sir Walter Murdoch School at Murdoch University, and prior to that head of the Policy and Governance Program and Director of the Centre for Democratic Institutions at the Australian National University (ANU), and has also worked with the Australian government, the United Nations and other international organisations, and held visiting appointments at Harvard, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins universities. As a political scientist, he has authored or edited seven books and over 100 scholarly papers, and received financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the United States Institute of Peace, the East-West Centre, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Australian Research Council. For more information: Flavia Zimmermann flavia.zimmermann@research.uwa.edu.au Starts : Tue, 10 Sep 2019 13:00 Ends : Tue, 10 Sep 2019 14:00 Last Updated : Fri, 13 Sep 2019 09:22