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. :)
> 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.
@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.