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this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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All the people saying mandatory voting is bad are misinformed. It is essential for democracy, and should be applied everywhere.
Australia has mandatory voter turnout, but you do not need to submit a vote. You just need to show up on polling day.
Everyone has political interests and needs to be politically represented, but some people are too tired after work to take themselves to the polling centre. Others are incarcerated. If anything, those people are more in need of political representatives.
American conservatives spend billions trying to prevent poor overworked people from reaching polling places or exercising their right to vote. Mandatory voting prevents that.
Make no mistake, Australian democracy is healtheir than whatever clusterfuck in going on in the US.
Not only that, but Australia's actual ballot is leagues better, too. Ranked ballots are a great way to weaken (unfortunately not eliminate) the two party system, which is unfortunately also the reason the United States will never see anything like it. (At least not in the foreseeable future.)
Yeah we do have single member seats in the lower house though which is a completely broken system.
Most of Europe recognises that, our frienemies across the ditch recognise that.
Consensus seeking and coalitions are much more representative forms of government than single member winner takes all seats.
Yep, this is why the Senate is much more representative, and why the big parties who control the House of Representatives hate it so much.
Whether mandatory voting is bad or not, certainly it's way better than the American situation, where one particular party's strategy to win elections is to discourage and actively prevent people from voting. In Australia, every political party seeks to win by collecting votes.
Yeah I hate the fact that one party’s strategy is actively invalidating votes for one of the candidates.
I don't pay too much attention to Australian politics, but whenever I see headlines it's always something like "MP literally destroying the barrier reef with his own bare hands" or "Corruption whistleblower sentenced to one thousand years in jail"
The important thing to note is: Australia has a genuinely solid chance of removing the right-wing nutjobs / spineless centrist two-party system BECAUSE of mandatory voting. Young people in USA have appalling voter turn out. But young people in Australia are seriously turning the tides. See the results by age group for the 2019 election. The boomers are still voting in right-wing nutjobs (Liberal party), most groups have strong centrist representation (Labor), and Gen Z are bringing in a third, non-major, left-aligned party (Greens). It brings so much hope for younger generations and the fact that voting doesn't feel futile.
This chart gives me hope.
Things like "MP approves funding for new hospital" don't make headlines. Even moreso for any world headlines to rise above the din of American politics it usually has to be something pretty outrageous.
It’s because you do hear about it. We recently had an mp forced to retire because they could control policy over something his mother has shares in.
So just to clear up a technical misconception here - the wording in the Electoral Act is quite clear. All enrolled electors are legally required to vote. It's only a consequence of the secret ballot that makes this provision unenforceable, so someone can turn up and get their name marked off while not submitting a vote without facing any consequences, but it is technically an illegal act.
If the AEC were to come up with some way to determine that you didn't vote without betraying that secret ballot, they would be within their rights to issue a you a fine.
When you go to vote they check you off on either a physical or digital list - so they can work out who didn't vote. What they can't work out is whether you submitted a legit ballot
I'm using 'didn't vote' to include submitting an empty ballot, which for the purposes of the Electoral Act, is the same thing.
Gotcha
"Should be mandatory everywhere" ima stop you right there, I couldn't give a single flying fuck about politics so having to vote results in me showing up not caring because I don't want a fine and I'll vote for a random candidate which will result in just picking a name out of a hat if an entire country did it
To long didn't read...
You don't have to vote in Australia. You just have to show up so it proves you were able to vote without impediment if you so choose to. You could draw a penis on it if you even could be bothered.
Voting typically takes place over a weekend in Australia and you have plenty of time to do it. You can also postal vote or absentee vote in advance fairly easily if you wish too. Polling places are literally like every school so there's always one nearby too.
Spoiling your ballot is an established and documented form of political protest. Nothing says "fuck all these chumps" like drawing a big cock and balls on the ballot.
If a person is too tired to vote that means resting is more important to them than voting. Forcing that person to vote is invalidating their own prioritization.
We have postal votes, numbnuts
IDGAF if they're so selfish as to prioritize a moment of wellbeing over civic duty. So yeah, I'm invalidating them.
If their civid duty requires them to sacrifice their health, the civic duty is misconstrued.
Are you talking about feeling too tired to spend 20 minutes voting 3 times every 4 years or cutting out your own heart to give to someone?
Cause in the the latter case I agree and in the former I say buck up mate, we live in a society and that means doing stuff for people when we don't always feel like it.
Voting quality doesn’t improve with greater turnout. There’s a duty here, if we declare it to be such, but it yields no benefit.
So firstly that is a non sequitur. Either we are talking about whether the sacrifice demanded is unethically steep or we are talking whether the initiative is ineffective.
Lets put that aside though, just making a note this is a separate point to explore.
I would first ask what you mean by voting quality. Could you explain?
They mean some people shouldn't vote because their opinion is low quality and should be ignored. It's an anti democratic belief that the stupid/misinformed shouldn't vote.
I think we should let people say what they mean themselves if we want to understand each other.
They can stay home if they want. Iirc it's only like a 50 dollar fine I'd you don't vote.