Cornflower:"it should be apparent that their ideal candidate and party might only exist in their dreams"

You're missing my point, which is that the current party system has created a situation in which the actual candidate is irrelevant. Even the Greens, who supposedly value individual conscience, have been telling Bandt who he, as the duly-elected candidate, should support.

So much for representative democracy.

If I am sufficiently adult to vote, I ma sufficiently adult to decline. Hobson's customers always had the option of declining to do business.

federalist, I cannot follow your reasoning that -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.
This really makes very little sense.

Surely if someone has a mental problem or is retarded you would not advocate forcing them to vote especially if they could be in a position where they decide the result of the election?

I do not believe forcing anyone to do anything, makes it more democratic.

Then you go on later to say- 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.

Surely those are the very people who would not bother to vote so it would be self-regulating.

How to you equate democracy with forced voting if the only other country to use it is Russia?

Also as quoted by King Hazza, the rest of the world gets by quite well without compulsory voting especially the father of parliaments England.

You are on solid ground citing Bandt. I haven't looked recently but didn't he only get 20% of the vote and was swept in by preferences from both sides - only allocated to him because that was the least worse alternative than each other?

Then good ol' Bob horned in to speak for him, notwithstanding the minor matter that the fellow had already expressed his opinion. That is love for you.

Added to that is Uncle Bob's assertion that he doesn't do deals, he 'negotiates' (pause for riotous laughter).

However my point is that democracy and any voting system are not ideal, but the present one is about as good as it gets. Could be better with a third mainstream party though and that rules out the Greens, whose very survival depends on never being accountable for any decisions.

There are pros and cons in the party system. If government works as it did under Howard, a small powerful executive that excludes more than it includes and abuses its powerful numbers in the house then yes, we wait until the next election for the system to self-correct.

What I am saying is that parties can forget public opinion and there can be abuses for a time, but the system is eventually self-correcting to a great extent.

Cornflower, you do of course realize that Greens have no compulsory election policy, and that I have spoken to some members, and they either support it, or have no stance?
So how exactly does this factor into their evil plot to nurture a totalitarian society where only Greens voters rule?
You might have to come up with a better "theory" now.

I don't suppose trying to convey a real reason why compulsory voting is BETTER than voluntary, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (or generally, little actual change in governance at all as most countries indicate), as opposed to try to build up a sinister strawman complete with a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy behind it is asking too much?

@sarnian - isabelberners has already corrected you last night about the number of other countries with compulsory voting, which does not include Russia (not that it would prove anything if it did). Here is the highly informative link she provided: http://www.aec.gov.au/pdf/voting/compulsory_voting.pdf

I gather the reason for the 4-posts-in-24-hours rule on this forum (which prevented me replying earlier) is to encourage participants to spend more time reading others' posts than writing their own. Not to do so turns this discussion into a waste of time.

Anyway, that AEC pamphlet isabelberners referred to addresses many of the questions raised here, and even provides a better introduction to the subject of compulsory voting than the above article. I propose that we all read it before continuing.

@King Hazza asks: "So is there any practical hypothesis of WHY compulsory voting is better than NON?"

How about this: the more people vote, the harder it is for lobbyists and demogogues to distort the outcome by bribing or duping blocs of voters.

While most voters may have limited understanding of the effects of economics or law on their standard of living (just as King Hazza has little understanding of the reasons we have trial by jury, or the difference between "social impacts" and moral justice), most people given time to discuss among themselves are pretty good at detecting insincerity, loopiness, habitual lying, and other extremes of bad character which could otherwise play a much bigger role in ruling our lives.

By diluting the effects of voting blocs who may be duped, bribed, or agitated into hysteria, and also by preventing fraudulent votes on behalf of eligible non-voters, the citizen body thus protects us from the worst extremes of demogoguery which we sometimes see in democratic countries with high complacency and low voter participation.

Australia's version of democracy - the best in the world - requires individuals to give up an hour or so of their precious time, once every three years, as a price to pay for being a citizen in a free country.

This is the point at which I find I cannot no longer join the dots...

>>Australia's version of democracy - the best in the world...<<

If this is the case, federalist, what is it about our "version of democracy" that has brought about the current state of affairs, where a generally-accepted poor, and vision-free campaign from both sides leaves us in the hands of a few political fringe-dwellers for the next three years?

When only policies acceptable to the tiny minority who voted Green, will make it through the Senate?

How is that justifiable in "democratic" terms, when their policies were rejected by nearly 90% of voters?

If this is what the best democracy in the world produces, who exactly are you comparing us with?