I have a question for all those folks who study elections: any democracy hold an election within a week or two of being announced?
Steve Saideman is Professor and the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He has written The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict; For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (with R. William Ayres); and NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (with David Auerswald), and elsewhere on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, and civil-military relations.
The Sikkimese monarchy referendum 1975? The referendum was held four days after it was announced.
That certainly sounds like “the exception that proves the rule.”
(Yes, I am using the phrase in its common, not its correct, meaning.)