This picture, courtesy of our national broadcaster, somehow captures the essence of being Australian. Voting is mandatory for all adults, is always on a Saturday, and can be done on the way to the beach.
🇳🇱
@freemo It's only $AUD20. Mandatory voting does have an upside: it means that everyone votes, not just the politically motivated at either end of the spectrum, and the consequence is that our governments are inevitably centrist, as they have to appeal to the middle (i.e. normal people) to get elected.
It's not all bad. :)
Turns out different things work in diifferent countries, who could have guessed?
Agree that while it may work well in other countries, it wouldn't reap the same benefits here in the States. Our system just runs different lol.
I'm not sure id be a fan of it int he australian system either... That said it clearly would work better in their system than the USA system.
My thought exactly.
@freemo @jasonetheridge the thing is that it's not the well educated that want to vote the most. It's the radicals and overall maniacs, the people convinced The Bads are out to get them and they need to vote for The Goods no matter what. The less someone is fanatic about a party the less motivation they have to vote. It's like a variant of Dunning-Kruger, except on country-wide scale.
We had this problem in Poland for the past two elections. A shitty populist, conservative catholic and nationalistic party was doing more damage to our country over the past 8 years than any other government before it since the fall of socialism combined. (Including their previous ruling period many years ago.) We're talking nearly Hungary level of taking over all branches of government and media and shitting all over the legal system and public institutions. Because the "normal" people stayed at homes while the fanatic and plain stupid who believed their fear mongering and were getting bribed with their own money voted. We just this weekend had (hopefully, right now we just have exit polls results) a revolutionary election where they finally don't have a majority. Because the voter turnout was much higher then previously, because the people who up until now didn't bother to vote finally got fed up and showed up in droves to vote for the opposition.
It's beautiful, but it's sad that they needed that bad of a situation to finally do it. If we had mandatory voting, that shitshow might've never taken place.
Thats fair, that means instead of making people vote, make people need to take a test to vote
Obviously i dont actually like this idea, id rather not do either.. but my point is a test is better than mandatory voting if thats where your going.
@freemo @jasonetheridge it would be a beautiful world if meritocracy worked. Problem is, it doesn't. A test is likely to only make things worse since whoever gets into power will try to manipulate the test to favour their voters. Surely not a better solution than mandatory.
Besides, with a $20 penalty it's more of "encouraged" than "mandatory" lol. Just gives a reason to get off their asses and do their sole democratic obligation.
@freemo @jasonetheridge If you can come up with an electoral system where that actually happens, let me know.
Compulsory voting makes Australia's electoral system one of the most robust of any country, it is very hard to argue that the results are at all unrepresentative, and trying to apply some nebulous bar to who should be able to vote is fundamentally undemocratic.
Since you are claiming that Australia doesn't have a two party system, I'll have to assume you're very uneducated on this issue - we essentially do have a two party system, but not to the grotesque extent the US does.
What's more, we also use significantly more fair electoral systems than the shockingly awful first past the post, which is one of the simplest of all systems to game and make undemocratic (see the US's who history for evidence of this). Our senate system in particular is particularly robust, with its optional preferential vote, where every person's vote will eventually end up going to their most preferred candidate (with the possibility that if they pick a particularly popular candidate, the excess votes will contribute to another less preferential candidate).
It's extremely hard to come up with a reasonable argument for Australia not having one of the strongest electoral systems around, without appealing to nonsense like 'muh freedoms' or 'but the people are too dumb'.
I have certainly not been impressed by australia.. that said it isnt as bad as places like the USA, so I guess there is that...
Sorry too busy to give you the lengthy answer this deserves right now. But thanks for the response. I will try to come back to this if I remember.
@jasonetheridge @freemo No worries, you hit a nerve of mine, as someone with a strong interest in election integrity. I’m very unhappy with the results of this latest referendum, but I do at least know it represents the view of the people of the country (even if that view was stoked by astoundingly stupid misinformation, but that’s a whole other problem to tackle).
I guess thats just it.. I dont **want** a vote to represent everyones view... I want the results of a vote to represent the view of the people passionate about politics, since these are the people talking and thinking about it.
@jasonetheridge @freemo You guys might find it interesting that even in one of the original democracies, classical Athens, it was so difficult to get citizens to vote (both for policies and as jurors in legal cases) because no one wanted to take the economic hit from leaving their market stall, so much so that the leaders were forced to send slaves with a long rope covered in chalk to literally lasso citizens out of the Agora and drag them to the Pnix (where the votes happened). If you arrived covered in chalk everyone knew you had been forced to come and could shame you. It was a common joke at the time that the only citizens who consistently voted were old retirees who liked to vote for outrageous things just for the laughs.
@jasonetheridge
> It's only $AUD20.
Well at least the penalty isnt too crazy.
> Mandatory voting does have an upside: it means that everyone votes
That sounds very much like a down side, not an up side. I want a system that **discourages** people from voting unless they are well educated in politics, and feels they have a candidate that is preferable.
The **last** thing I want is votes that are nearly random because someone cant pick a side being weighted as much as people who are engaged and have researched enough to form an opinion.
> and the consequence is that our governments are inevitably centrist, as they have to appeal to the middle (i.e. normal people) to get elected.
I think this may work more in Australia because you dont have a two party system... Even if we had more centrists voting it wouldnt help in the USA because the two choices you have are always extremists.
Thing is, I can only see this working in a coalition govt if people actually vote at every level, its too late once its a top-tier election.