Duran Duran were also Arcadia and found some success with Election Day. It doesn’t appear the lyrics have much to do with an election as we know it in politics.
Anthropologists have traced voting back to ancient Sumeria (roughly, present day Iraq, of all places) about 6,000 years ago. Elections played a more formal role in the Greek city-states in the fifth and sixth centuries BC.
Today, the world over, elections vary as much as political systems regarding their function, frequency and method. And, despite the simplicity of casting a vote, the implications are very important.
Elections are a precondition of democracy because they provide voters with choice and political power. Elections are also about an orderly change of governments, something we take for granted, but in other countries can lead to a lot of bloodshed… if they get such a right or opportunity, at all. Election campaigns further serve as an important role in the political education of the electorate.
Elections can be an intensely collective or communal experience. They are one of the few things most people in a country actually do together. We make different political choices on the ballot, but organically we all did something somewhat alike and united.
The hard part is after elections: figuring out, what will the results mean!
To paraphrase the traditional Passover formulation honored in Jewish homes: why was this election different from all other elections? What makes 2012 stand out in recent political history, either as a temporary anomaly or a significant, long-term shift in the electorate?The most striking change in the results this year involved a precipitous and alarming decline in voter participation, a drop-off that stemmed from a deliberate strategy by the Obama campaign and almost certainly provided the president with his margin of victory.