Always hated the point people make that “well what if I don’t want to vote because I hate everyone”?
Solution: Add a box saying none of these candidates. Boom, you get filtered from the lazy ones who let everyone take care of their business for them. It’s literally that simple.
People have died in wars for this right. You don’t get to decide not to exercise it, it is your civic duty, and your duty to respect the people who died for that right to be a reality.
There’s an easier solution in place. Just don’t fill out the paperwork.
You are required to show up at a polling place, you aren’t required to put in a legitimate vote.
This I think is from their previous election: https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/Website/HouseInformalByState-27966.htm
An average of 5.2% (800k votes) not counting - called “informal” in Australia (as it is here in New Zealand), you might also see “spoiled”.
However the question is, with 89.9% turnout and 5.2% spoil, are they still achieving better voter engagement overall than we did in NZ with 78.2% turnout but only 0.6% spoiled?
You could probably argue either way; as some people definitely wouldn’t consider showing up but voting for no-one, will they check a box at random (and does this benefit the first party in the list alphabetically?). I’m sure someone has written a paper on this.
Ballot order is randomised at different polling stations to avoid the issue of the first name on the list having an advantage
If the way you vote is as simple as it is in the UK (bit of paper where literally write a X in the box next to the candidate you like with a pencil) you can literally just write ‘fuck the lot of you’ across the page.
In Australia this is a standard practice. It’s technically an “informal vote” or a “spoiled vote” but its colloquially known as Donkey Voting. The traditional method is to actually just draw a big dick on the paper, though.
And no one has been, or ever will be, fined for this. We don’t even, in practice, have compulsory voting. We have ‘Compulsory Turning Up To Your Opportunity To Vote’.
I’m just imagining trolling this. Doing a couple of the pubes slightly crossed kinda over one of the options so the candidates have to take time discussing whether they think it counts as a vote or not.
Sadly, I think they go with “clear and unambiguous mark only” and “no other marks on the page”.
We have that in Canada too. It’s to prevent vote buying/intimidation. People would mark their ballot to prove they voted for the person they were supposed to.
The people have died is such a bad argument imo. If people died for the freedom to have abortions, that doesn’t mean a pregnant woman has to have an abortion. True freedom means that you can choose whether to vote or not to, and people definitely didn’t die to force everybody to vote, which just results in uninformed and non-caring people to vote for the first candidate that tells easy solutions to everything instead of admitting the complex reality.
I’m just saying, millions of voters stayed home during the U.S. election, and we ended up with someone turning that country into a fascist hellhole as a result of that.
Don’t want to vote? If you fail to vote even with a “void” or “none of the above” option to meet you halfway with your lack of desire to follow the issues, then at that point that’s on you and you deserve to be treated as what you are - someone who allows the country to slip further into the hands of wannabe dictators.
You have the right to choose no candidate for the election much like you have the right not to have an abortion. Not showing up is a different story.
Abortion is just not analogous to voting.
We’re talking about laws so ‘true freedom’ is irrelevant in this context.
But mostly, compulsory voting doesn’t eliminate the freedom to not vote. Just go in and write bart simpson like a certain percent always do.
We need this in the US. Everyone MUST VOTE. I don’t care if you vote for your family dog just send in the goddamn ballot. Or get fined, you lazy bastard.
These should be mailed to every citizen of voting age, postage paid.
But ofc that means the Cons can’t cheat their way into another win so ofc we will never have that in the Fascist US.
Ok, now I want that where I live!
my country does that too.
still always the same shitty politicians end up winning.
Compulsory voting is such an awful idea. In the end, only the populists profit off that, that promise easy solutions to complex problems and sound good for people who aren’t interested in politics and what’s necessary to actually fix stuff. This e.g. largely helped Bolsonaro in Brazil. The reality of people is that some are well-informed and some don’t care about it, and forcing all of them to vote with the same weight is nothing the society benefits from.
As someone who moved from Australia to the US, I can tell you you’re wrong.
Compulsory voting means you can’t win by riling up your base with extremist nonsense to drive up turnout. Everyone is voting anyway, so you have to appeal more widely.
You can’t drive down turnout to get a party with minority support to win, like russia did in the US.
Voter suppression by fascist politicians is much harder when people legally have to vote.
With non compulsory voting, it’s always the working class who have the greatest number of pressures against voting. Compulsory voting corrects the class imbalance at the ballot box.
The idea that the masses are too stupid to be trusted with voting is an elitist lie.
I can see where your concerns come from, but you’re literally posting this the day after Australia just had a huge swing against someone spouting the bullshit you’ve just described. Contrast this with America where it’s not compulsory, and just voted in someone that fits what you’ve just described like a glove.
Bluntly speaking, can’t help but feel the problem is elsewhere.
You couldn’t be more wrong
You could try, but you couldn’t.
It’s true. I’ve voted in a compulsory nation and the shit you hear in the lines is nuts. A very large portion don’t have any idea what’s politically going on, they’re just voting for someone they like the name of so they don’t get fined. My mother used to vote for groups that directly fucked up her industry. She did not know any of this because she never paid any interest, she just heard one of them say they believe in Jesus.
I’ve voted in a compulsory nation and the shit you hear in the lines is nuts.
As opposed to voters in non-compulsory nations like the US…oh wait.
I honestly think you should have to prove that you at least know the basic platforms of the candidates before being allowed to vote.
I know that competency tests have been historically used for racism and bigotry, but it could definitely be done properly.
It might be possible to do it right for a few elections, but something like that would be some ripe for abuse I don’t think we should even have it on the table.
I’ve had similar thoughts about the average voter but imo the costs outweigh the benefits of some kind of competency test.
