![]() The rhythmic dimension of elections is treated in chapter 3 (tracing how law defines the temporal aspects of polls and election cycles) chapter 4 treats sceptically trends to increase early and postal voting, suggesting persuasively that that dilutes the communal experience of polling day. It charts extensively comparative legal practices – drawing mainly (but not exclusively) from the United States, the author's native Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada – and critiques their contribution to fostering and sustaining space for the ritual and celebratory aspects of elections. While the book's focus is on the law, the observational analysis incorporates many anthropological and sociological insights. Orr's purpose is twofold: to expose how the law opens up – and closes down – space for ritual experience within elections, and to encourage election law discourse to embrace this neglected feature of the law's role. Those approaches view voting as essentially an instrumental process, overlooking that “elections and electoral democracy are phenomena experienced by people as a source of social meaning and lived practice, rather than neatly principled constitutional abstractions” (8). He sets up his approach in the first two chapters, treating the institution of elections as creatures of law and considering the concept of election ritual in contrast to the two dominant paradigms in existing works: the “competitive integrity model” of elections (which approaches them as aggregative devices for tallying votes) and the “political liberty and equality” model (housing a spectrum of theories centred on individual rights and participation). ![]() ![]() Orr's project in this book is to encourage an appreciation of this aspect of election law. This social and experiential dimension happens in a space regulated by laws governing how we vote.
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