I like the idea of one option always being "No candidate"

A statement that a voter would prefer to go unrepresented in Parliment than be represented by any of the nominated candidates.

An invalid or blank ballot paper does not give that option, it just add's greater weight to the views of those who might have differing views to yourself on which is the lesser of the evils.

Likewise for not being required to give preferences or have them assigned based on party preference deals.

R0bert

I quite like the Abstain/No Candidate suggestion too, but surely the simplest way to overcome antipathy to preferential voting would be to remove the compulsion to vote?

Am I missing something here?

Fifteen hundred words to determine that there is a difference between making a mark on a ballot paper, and leaving it blank.

And having established that there is a legal difference between the two, to point out that this has no impact on the result of the election.

Wow, Helen.

Fortunately, the discussion that followed has ignored the thrust of the article (which was to suggest, I fancy, that someone prosecutes Mark Latham), and turned our attention to the core issue.

Which is why we are forced to vote for something we don't believe in.

Or alternatively, having placed a vote for something we do believe in, have that expression of support transferred, nolens volens, to something we don't.

This election has added another level of iniquity onto an already outrageous situation.

None of the people who voted either for Tony or Julia is now represented in parliament. The majority of Australians has now been disenfranchised.

Which is what I shall point out to the next person who tells me that "Anyone who does an informal vote this weekend should not then complain about who does come into power. You will get what you deserve."

The vast majority of Australians who placed a valid vote this weekend cannot complain that laws will only be passed if the representatives of a tiny minority approve.

Apparently, we got what we deserve.

How does that work, again?

A great many people like to refer to voting as a "right", even an "absolute right"; Ludwig considers the requirement to mark the sheet to be "the pits of antidemocracy".

Helen quoted from John Stuart Mill opposing secret ballots. (And by the way, Mill was not absolutely opposed to secret ballots; he said secret ballots were beneficial whenever there was a real risk of coercion, which he said had included England just thirty years earlier.)

Quoting from the same text http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645r/chapter10.html we can see why voting was made compulsory in Australia; why voting is a duty like jury duty, not a "right"; and why returning a blank paper is not good enough:

"Those who say that the suffrage is not a trust but a right will scarcely accept the conclusions to which their doctrine leads. If it is a right, if it belongs to the voter for his own sake, on what ground can we blame him for selling it, or using it to recommend himself to any one whom it is his interest to please? ... His vote is not a thing in which he has an option; it has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman. It is strictly a matter of duty; he is bound to give it according to his best and most conscientious opinion of the public good."

Democracy is a right, but not in the way most people think. Consider juries: you have a right to a trial by jury if charged with a criminal offence. That doesn't mean you have a right to be on a jury (which would be a strange right with little benefit for you).

In a similar way, you have a right to be ruled by a government fairly elected by all eligible voters marking the page according to their best judgement. If you fail to exercise that judgement, then it is you who are abridging the rights of 22 million other Australians - their democratic right - to be ruled by good and responsible government.

<< A statement that a voter would prefer to go unrepresented in Parliment than be represented by any of the nominated candidates. >>

R0bert, I don’t think too many null voters would prefer to be unrepresented. Not wanting to be represented by any of the nominated candidates does not indicate a preference for non-representation, it indicates a feeling that there is no one on offer that is good enough to be their rep.

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<< …but surely the simplest way to overcome antipathy to preferential voting would be to remove the compulsion to vote? >>

CJ, there is not much antipathy towards preferential voting per se. But there is a growing antipathy towards compulsory preferential voting, as opposed to optional preferential voting.

The solution is dead simple – implement OPV, which is just so profoundly different to CPV in that it IS democratic, IS a true representation of the intention of the voter and does not take your vote ‘nolens volens’ and place it where you don’t want it to count, and IS a perfectly good tried and proven system that has been used in many state elections in Queensland and New South Wales.

Helen Pringle

You say that Latham’s voting blank and the implicating suggestion to others to do likewise is wrong but you certainly mean illegal (unless you are preaching to your readers); as illegal as was Albert Langer’s refusal to vote?

If so why Latham has, so far, not been impounded by the same State’s servants who gave hell to Langer (man who, I am told, still carries a suspended sentence after his jail spell)?

Ms. Pringle, you are of the Castle, as Kafka would say, and we have to hope that you will come out of it and see how voting is surrendering your power to a charlatan, if you are lucky, or an insane criminal, if you are not, who can dictate to you at will and, if the case arises, send your child to be slain in a war.

In a real democracy, the vote, the unit of socio-political power, is in the hand of every citizen not the pockets of criminals, and giving it to anybody, or even lending it, is paramount to refusing your duties towards the community of humans and the rights that go with those duties.

In a democracy there are policemen armed with knowledge and compassion to help people in need and carrying no killing weapons.

When will universities stop being shops for forming people like you and regain the universality and broad vision they had in Galileo’s times when they challenged a state with a servant church?