quicko: voting

There was an election this last weekend, at least in Sydney.  I'm not sure if it was a national, state or local sort of thing, but I'd gotten plenty of junk mail in the lead-up.  Didn't see too much else going on, so I'm assuming it was a reasonably minor election.

In contrast, of course, is the upcoming American election in November.  Now, I'm probably the one blogger you meet who wants to say absolutely nothing about politics, but is interested in how the different countries view voting.

In particular, Australians (like most of the rest of the world) tend to know way more about American politics than the average American.  I have friends who have been watching the national conventions and are mildly surprised to find that I haven't.

I guess I view the national conventions as something akin to the State of the Union address, but less important -- i.e., the sort of thing I would really only use as a fall-back plan if my other plans for the evening fell through and there wasn't a new episode of Big Bang Theory on.  At that point I might watch the State of the Union, but would be quite likely to read instead of watch the conventions.

Would you ever catch an American watching the equivalent of another country?  Okay, there's the odd politically-minded exception here and there, but by and large I've never heard of an American ever watching, say, the Russian equivalent (perhaps because it'd be in Russian?) or even the British or Canadian.