Thank you for your replies. I'll try to be brief.

@sarnian: The intellectual inequality of voters is a good reason for free speech, universal education, and compulsory voting. Free speech enables analysts to suggest to voters why one government would improve the cost and standard of living better than another; education enables them to read and compare those explanations. That they will do so imperfectly - those who consider themselves brilliant just as much as the unsophisticated - is an argument for spreading the load as widely as possible. The set of voters most able to judge wisely, and the set of those most keen to have their say, have very little in common.

@jimhaz: As CJ Morgan says, my reasoning partly derives from JS Mill, please see http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645r/chapter10.html

@CJ Morgan: "his ideas didn't persuade the parliament of his own country." Actually he did, but not always at home. Britain exported a lot of its best ideas - which were politically problematic in an old country that was set in its ways - to the US, Canada, and Australia where a fresh start was possible.

I'm with federalist on this.
I would as far to posit that a democratic society can't function to its potential without the responsibility of it's citizens to actively participate. The barest minimum is voting.

I agree that the symptoms of poor understanding/competence et al aren't failures of the voting methodologies but of other systems.
I for example abhor the PARTY system in that it disenfranchises the individual.

CJ

Tell me what do you consider your public responsibilities to be?
Currently, I smell a Green party Tribalist.

I mentioned elsewhere that the right to vote should only be given to mature people who are intelligent, politically aware, know the difference between State and Federal issues, and who put their country first.

The election outcome demonstrates they are clearly in the minority, more so than usual.

http://www.dangerouscreation.com

I would agree on the precondition of some political sophistication for voting, to this extent: An elector who cannot even be bothered voting below the line for the Senate, or who when doing so cannot successfully count to thirty or eighty or whatever, is unlikely to understand the purpose of the Senate and should be left to run the risk of having their vote discarded as an informal vote.

Voting on party lines is all very well for the House of Reps - in which, after all, a majority government of some sort needs to form - but I don't see how any mechanism that gives big parties an advantage over small parties or independents plays any useful part in the election of Senators. We have grown too used to opposition leaders saying "we will allow it in the Senate," or "we will block it in the Senate."

How did we allow it to happen, that a member of the Lower House is able to dictate the voting of that House's own supervisor, the Upper House?

I'll try to respond to other points later.

But here is one of the things that perplexes me about what Mark Latham says. Surely if he wants to make an effective protest, he would simply not turn up at a polling place. He would then be sent a "please explain" and the following process would begin: "Initially the Australian Electoral Commission will write to all apparent non-voters requesting that they either provide a reason for their failure to vote or pay a $20 penalty. If, within 21 days, the apparent non-voter fails to reply, cannot provide a valid and sufficient reason or declines to pay the penalty, then prosecution proceedings may be instigated. If the matter is dealt with in court and the person is found guilty, he or she may be fined up to $50 plus court costs."

That way, Latham could have his day in court, explain his reasons for not voting, express his protest publicly -- and pay the penalty/s, or not. Surely there is something of cowardice in "pretending" to vote by submitting a blank ballot. And in what sense is it the "ultimate protest vote", when those counting the votes can't tell what a particular blank ballot actually stands for? Wouldn't it be more courageous not to turn up at the polling place at all, and then to make a public demonstration of one's convictions? My great grandfather and his family were hounded for their conscientious refusal to vote, and while I disagree with their reasons for not voting (and for not doing jury duty or taking oaths or taking up arms for the state), I admire them for their courage and their open defiance.

Helen

@isabelberners - Or to be really courageous, Latham could have risked recommending the more original Charles Waterstreet method of manually inserting a whole new candidate and box to tick. ( http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/danish-turnover-20100821-139ng.html )

"The surprise election of Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark to Prime Minister of Australia and Deputy PM respectively yesterday was the result of one of the cleverest stealth political campaigns since Federation ...
Ordinary Australians wrote Princess Mary and Prince Frederik onto more than 80 per cent of their ballot forms, although there was no box for them ..."