My youngest son ain't exactly an activist, like his old man. In fact he is pretty scornful of my silly efforts to change the world. That's not surprising - I'm nearly old enough to be his granddad, and anyway, it's his job to be different to me - that's the nature of things.

Yet when his voting enrolment papers arrived on his eighteenth birthday, a slight change came over him. It was like he had been handed the keys to the world. Go-on son, take the wheel. It was palpable.

Now I don't know who he votes for - that's his business - and I don't care, as long as he does it. All I know is that this one tiny social obligation has helped to make a better man of him.

I appreciate your arguments for voluntary voting, but would also add that the US and UK experience suggests that this is one import we could well do without.

I appreciate your dissatisfaction with middle spectrum politics – though there is a reasonable argument that centralisation of policy approximates representation more than diversity of policy. You may like diversity, I may like diversity but does the majority? I guess any view depends on which diversity we’re talking about and what we understand representation to mean.

I applaud your dissatisfaction with the two party domination of Australian politics. But I’m missing the reasoning in your argument to abolish compulsory voting. You named the complaints: 2 party domination and centralised policy; you named the logical suspects: compulsory preferential voting and single member electorates. But then you move on from what might have been an interesting discussion about those topics to call for an end to compulsory voting.

Do you have any evidence that voluntary voting would diminish the two party domination? Do you have any evidence that voluntary voting would produce more representative policy or indeed that centralised policy – whether we like it or not – is unrepresentative? In the US, there is much evidence to support the proposition that voluntary voting produces extremist policy in as much as parties (the two major ones that always gain office) need to inspire potential supporters to get out and vote for them. One way of doing this is to offer policy carrots to the extremists who are most likely to rally to the call to vote. There’s evidence that the US ends up with a range of policies that are representative of small, angry groups of conservatives and oppressive to the more liberal majority who were pehaps too appathetic to think about the consequences of not voting.

So, back to your original points: could we overcome the problems that you (I think rightly) point to by considering the effect of having compulsory preferential voting (or indeed any kind of preferential voting) and would we think about reshaping our lower house electorates making multi-member rather than single member electorates? Like the upper houses.

Maybe if the parties had to give a reason to encourage potential voters out their homes to vote for them we might just end up with a better calibre of politician.

Hmm... this is an issue I'm torn on.

Yes, I want to see more influence given to independents and minor parties, as this would lead to a much healthier democracy.

But I tend to think the best way to do this is to get rid of preferences and preference deals.

If people are forced to vote, and they are disgusted with the major parties, this opens a potential opportunity for the minor parties and independents.

As I grew up, I simply assumed most democracies had compulsory voting. I was quite surprised to find out as a teen that we were the exception to the rule.

However, having thought about it, and having spent a great deal of time watching US politics, I think it is the better way. Whilst there are many practical reasons for this, at the core of this is that as a citizen in a democracy, there is not only a *right*, but a *responsibility* to participate in the democratic process.
It is very true that not all people take an interest in politics, or are apathetic towards the politicians. Whether these people take an active, informed interest in politics or not is beside the point. They still, as citizens require representation and have legitimate political views.
In a non-compulsory system a situation of effective disenfranchisement can be created. For example in the U.S (which has one of the lowest voter turn outs in a liberal democracy) the inner city low income blacks do not have representation. Traditionally, these citizens have a low likeliness of turnout, thus, politicians do not bother to appeal to them. This further justifies the low turnout and so on & so forth. The end result is an entire subset of the population is not represented and never likely to be.

On another angle, compulsory voting has more of a chance to centralise the vote. Since politicians & parties must appeal to an absolute majority, neither can be too far away from the centre or they will alienate too many potential voters. Hopefully, this acts as a bulwark and we end up with a relatively stable government, with only ‘shifts of focus’ instead of massive swings either left or right. Once again, we can turn to the U.S to see, despite the inertia of a large govt, the shift to the far right is quite startling and threatening to their political system.

In the end, I find the threat of an unrepresentative democracy as bad as any other unrepresentative system of government.

Australia doesn't have compulsory voting. This furphy is so old it has a long, grey beard. Australian voters are registered on the electoral roll. They are then required to get their names crossed off the roll when they enter a polling station to indicate they (and nobody impersonating them) have showed up. Then they can go home, do some shopping or make an aeroplane out of the ballot paper. Nobody forces them to vote. And gee, how terrible it is to vote. Lucky North Koreans don't have that arduous duty imposed on them.

Great article. Totally agree.

Compulsory voting encourages our politicians to game the system rather than formulate and deliver policies that they believe in.

Politics in this country lack principle.

Our politicians stand only for one reason, to be elected.

Every aspect of the system from pre-selection branch stacking to strategic allocation of preferences is designed for that purpose. The concept of standing for a set of ideals, principles or convictions is never considered.

Principles and ideals are, if the truth were known, probably a major drawback to any aspiring politician.

I have to confess my own position on this, which is that recently, and for the first time ever in my life I did not register a vote in an election. It was at the recent NSW State election where I recorded a write-in vote for Daffy Duck - a candidate who, if he had been standing, would now be i) elected and b) doing a far better job of management than either of the parties on offer.

In previous lives I have had the option of voting, and I have chosen to do so every time. But that was where I genuinely believed I was being offered a choice. If I chose to vote for the Raving Monster Loony Party, that vote would be recorded as such, and not elided into the bucket of one of the major parties against whom it had clearly been a protest.

How, in this system, apart from spoiling my ballot paper, do I record the fact that I regarded the choice available to be fundamentally deficient?

My vote is instead traded, like every other aspect of this preposterously corrupt system that purports to be a democracy.

Branches are stacked, preference deals are done and factions are endorsed... all behind closed doors.

Voluntary voting? Bring it on.

Democracy? Long overdue.

The closest thing to true democracy is Citizens Initiative Referrendum. This is where the general public get to raise and vote on major issues affecting our nation. I am sure that the system would not be perfect but a lot more representative of peoples views.

In Western Australia we have had a 3 year daylight saving trial forced upon us despite being rejected in a number of referendums. Personally I think daylight saving is a very minor issue but the fact the the State Goverenment totally ignored the wishes of the people leaves me with the conclusion that democracy is really working that well.

It is unfortunate that in Australia politicians tend to be humans rather than angels. Sadly, angels must stand for different electorates so here on planet Earth we have to make do with human beings.

The reason I'm cynical about the "all politicians are corrupt" line is that in a previous job, there was someone on the management committee who would forever spout that line. But then (via tortured logic) he was a fan of Pauline Hanson - one of the most dubious politicians of recent times. So, a belief that all politicians are corrupt doesn't turn you into an anarchist as it logically should. It can turn you towards real shysters who pretend they are untainted by the political mainstream.

Good article - it raised points in the debate I was not aware of. Thanks.

There is one advantage of compulsory voting you do not mention. It is much easier to audit and thereby eliminates entire classes of voting fraud with compulsory voting. In the future we will change over to electronic voting. This changeover in the US have been wrought with difficulties. We should preserve the current system at least until that change is has settled down.

Although I am sceptical of some of the points you make, the one that has obvious merit is the difficulty we have changing the constitution. Even innocuous changes such as the Local Government one don't get through. It would be nice to see what other solutions there are to that particular problem, so we could compare them to yours.

I am neither strongly aposed to nor strongly i favour of compulsory voting. however, i must point out my disatifiction with the recent reinstatement of the Labour party into NSW state politics, with their blatent mishandling of infastructure, economic policy, transportation, and the fact that NSW is in reccesion compared to all other states. A sense of redundancy in compulsory voting, and the idiocy of having dummy voting, becomes apparent.

I find that the greatest irritant in the conduct of elections is the fact that we are not offered the alternative of electronic voting from the comfort of a home or work PC.

The current system is archaic with long polling queues, a huge waste of paper and trees, small print ballot papers that cannot be read if I forgot to bring my reading glasses, and completing huge sheets of paper for upper houses with a blunt pencil brings back memories of primary school tests.

Election security is lax with no indelible ink on a thumb to prevent multiple voting. After the close of polls, we sometimes have to wait days for final results of the poll to be declared, especially in marginal electorates. Surely we can do better in the age of broadband.

I would love to see a much more rigorous voting process as provided to residents with the on-line 2006 census. Advanced societies should be able to offer electors the choice of completing an electronic evaluation of candidates skills, experience and policies before casting their vote electronically. That way, we provide more quality feed-back to our elected representatives than the frustrated messages scrawled on ballots and defaced election posters

i am pleased that our constitution is difficult to change. That is what has saved us from some political extremes in the past.

I do not care much whether we have compulsory voting or not. There is no compelling argument either way. With the federal elections coming up, I am more concerned about compulsory preferential voting.
This is a rort that definately give advantage to the 2 major parties.

If one votes for a minor party or independant, one or other of the major parties end up with his vote, even though he does not wish this to be. The only way a new party can win a seat is to be born full grown.

Perhaps we should look at a proportional representation system where if one party gets,say, 10% of the vote, they get 10% of the seats in parliament.

Bang on! Banjo.
Australia is not a democracy.
Proportional representation is the only way to attain a democracy, and there must be no preferences!
Beware, though, of 'independents!" they are mostly not independent at all. They are the lap-dogs of religion and when religion enters politics, democracy - even the pathetic democracy we have here - evaporates.
Protest by ticking your name off, as a previous writer suggested, then make a paper plane out of the voting paper.
They fine you for not getting your name crossed off - $39.00 - as a friend discovered recently!

Quick response: a vote must be your vote - it can't be bought or coerced. This is why your vote is secret. If it is secret, then you won't be paid for it as the person paying can't be sure you aren't lying. Under the current system you can't be coerced as its pretty hard to coerce somebody in a polling both. Voting at home has neither of these properties.

In our current system you can't vote twice without being detected, as that means you would have to cross another name off as well as your own - at least it will be detected while we have compulsory voting. Yes, you don't have to produce ID. Its makes the system less secure - but not that much less secure while we have compulsory voting, and it speeds the whole process up considerably as no one has to check your ID. It also means we don't have to have a national ID.

There are a lot of good things you can say about how we vote in Australia. Its a better system than most. It will be improved by electronic voting if it is implemented well.

If I was going to change it, the thing I would look most closely at is preferential voting. Its a shadow of its former self given the tinkering we have done with in recent years, and there are new voting systems and practical now we have computers doing the counting. These newer systems, such as Approval voting, are simpler and address some of the concerns in the article.

From reading the other posts I don't think many people understand why compulsory voting has been with us for 80 years and will not be abolished. The reason is that it assists the party in power, and they are the ones that would have to make the change. It assists them because all parties cannot help occasionally annoying their own committed supporters, and although these people would never vote for the opposition, they could just stay at home if voting was not compulsory. When the $2.05 of public funding per vote is considered as well, all parties have a huge vested interest in the current system. I am strongly opposed to public funding, and can usually direct my vote to negate it. If possible I give my first perference vote to some unknown independent, who can be relied on to get less than 4% of the primary vote, and not receive funding. This is always easy to do in the Senate, and occasionally in the Reps. I can only support the calls for citizen initiative referendums, but doubt that we will ever see them. The salaries and expenses of politicians are far too high, and should be reduced to equal the dole. Fat chance.

Every now and then we get some spiv or lazy stooopid coming out with this unimaginative promotion of arguments for the "uninterested, the indifferent, the gullible and ignorant" with a need to consider voluntary voting. Klaas has no class when he is simply and arrogantly promoting apathy because herein we find the crux of the democracy deficit. e.g. Just what does Klaas mean by "the quality of the vote might go up enormously"?

Under compulsory voting, every vote is a quality vote that reflects very much a democratic responsibility and the necessary discipline. Perhaps it is not by accident that Klaas in this article, ignores democratic responsibility and discipline in favour of his dumbo ideas of arrogant manipulation that obvious lead to discrimination, then full blown discrimination, then to the reality that is the US of A with obviously rigged elections.

Australia should export its compulsory pencil and paper ballot system to other countries and first stop would need to be the US of A. The reality there is that without accurate elections, the US of A is not a democracy and nor is it a constitutional republic because each person's vote counts for nothing. When it comes to recounts and checking we see that this cannot be achieved ............. because "counting" is abandoned in favor of "analyzing" with even more room for shenanigans. There is no way of knowing that one's very own vote was recorded properly or switched, the computer system can be easily hacked, there is no means of recounting tight results, there is obvious discrimination and no paper trail therefore no accountability ...... which all means so much "freedom" but no discipline and NO democracy but full blown manipulation and a country run by the mob or by crims or carpetbaggers or religious nuts on a crusade.

To my mind the best solutions is to have optional preferential voting.

In this system the voter can indicate a single preference if they don't want their vote to flow through to a major party. Alternatively, the voter can exhaust all the preferences by numbering all the boxes or just as many as they like.

This, combined with our system of "compulsory turn up on the day and get your name crossed off" voting empowers citizens by allowing maximum choice.

To adopt proportional systems in the lower houses of Westminster based systems is to invite political instability as minority governments form and fall on the whim of minor parties who represent a fraction of the electorate. Our short federal electoral cycle keeps our "majoritarian" governments accountable.

No, the only reform our system needs is to dispense with exhaustive preferential and adopt optional preferential

This un-Australian article is dodgy.

There is no proof that our compulsary voting system causes currupt politicians or causes the two party system to predominate, more than if we didn't have a compulsary voting system.

If anything, the preferential system favours the minor parties as people cannot ignore them when they are giving preferences. Those who would not normally vote usually give protest votes, rarely to the major parties. The NZ or German preferential systems would be even more generous to the minor parties.

In the US and the UK, voting is more of a priveledge than a right. Here it is a responsibility. It is also compulsary to pay taxes: our responsibility.

Australia's compulsary voting system is our well tested secure way to make sure that our voting rights are upheld. How many Australians would rather go to the football? Our founders knew our culture well.

Under current industrial relations, it can more be difficult for employees to find time to vote. This is not good for democracy.

When there's no obligation, you cannot insist on the time. Now that we have a casualised employment base, few can plan ahead to make postal votes. Who is that organised? At the moment, most employers at least understand that it is a legal obligation for their employees to vote. It is an obligation, not a priveledge and that is a big difference.

Two things we invented in Australia:

1. The secret ballot (QLD). It is now standard around the world.
2. Compulsary voting (SA). Other countries want to import it for good reasons. It works.

Australia has no interest in "exporting" its voting system. If other countries choose our voting system, then that is their choice.

The writer is barking up the wrong tram.

It is not our complsary voting system that causes the strength of a two party parliament. The concept that we want to "push" our voting system as an export is equally ridiculous.

How on earth did this writer manage to pass year 10 at High School?

An expert at what?

“To my mind the best solution is to have optional preferential voting.”

YES, travellingnorth!

This is perhaps the biggest factor in this debate… and something that the author fails to even mention.

Our disgustingly antidemocratic compulsory preferential (exhaustive preferential or two-party-preferred) voting system has facilitated the two-peas-in-a-pod political setup and the suppression of minor parties.

How can we possibly condone a voting system that can and very often does steal your vote and make it count where you have on intention of it counting?? ??

For example, if you vote Green and list your preferences as Democrat, Independent, One Nation, Family First, Liberal, Labor, your vote will most likely end up counting for Liberal, as the preferences will filter down. But you specifically put Liberal and Labor on the bottom because you didn’t want to vote for them!

I am flabbergasted by the existence of this system at our federal level and in two states: WA and Vic. And just as flabbergasted by the lack of outrage expressed over it, even amongst the good thinking people on this forum.

I believe that we should have compulsory voting. Every member of society of voting age should be required to contribute to our democracy at least at this most basic level, unless they have a very good reason not to.

But we MUST implement the optional preferential system across the board…with one change: a box for ‘no candidate’, so that voters can legally vote for no one if they feel that none deserve their vote.

This would effectively mean that voting is optional. But at least everyone would be required to go to a polling booth and have their name ticked off. If they are required to do that, they will at least think about their vote, rather than a large portion of people just not bothering at all if they didn’t have to turn up. I think this is a good compromise optional and compulsory voting.

I've always been ambivalent about the issue of compulsory voting. On the one hand, it's true that enrolled voters are not required actually to vote, but are rather required to attend a polling booth and have their name crossed off. Like Pericles, this is exactly what I did in the last Qld State election (and also for the first time ever, in my case because I only had a choice between a Labor nobody and the hopeless Nationals incumbent.

On the other hand, I'm always appalled at the level of ignorance displayed by many voters, both about the Australian electoral system and about the salient issues of the day.

Personally, I'd rather see the introduction of some kind of test of electoral competence before people are allowed to vote - e.g. a short multiple choice questionnaire on civics and current affairs, administered prior to voting in any given election. Not that this is ever likely to happen, but it would certainly increase the quality of electoral outcomes (IMHO).

The myth of democracy lies in 2 things. One, the lack of an easily accessable wide range of views and analyses apon which conclusions can be drawn. Secondly the lack of ability of an elected government to deliver what the people want. That is to say the groups paying the bills for election get preference. Until these points are addressed there will be no meaningful democracy.
If one is to give up compulsary voting one should also have a rule that any seat in which the vote drops below 66% should be declared null and void and a by election called. However, the combatants of he previous election should be barred from rerunning on the grounds that they are far too boring. If they can't do what we want they should at lest keep us amused.

There are some really good ideas here.

To satisfy the "everyone should continue to be obliged to vote" brigade, Ludwig offers the "no candidate" option.

How simple. How elegant.

Most seem to agree that the most undemocratic part of the process is the exhaustive preferential vote that effectively limits our choice to one of the two major parties. By allowing the voters to allocate their own preferences within the ballot paper - and by allowing that preference to go to "no candidate" - we resolve that problem too.

And if we then combine that with Whispering Ted's proposal that should the winner be "no candidate", then a re-election has to be held in that constituency. To expand on this a little, we might also insist that a year elapses before the next poll, during which time that electorate will not be represented in Parliament. This would obviously be an additional incentive for the voter to pick a real candidate if one was available, but would also be an incentive for the party in power to stick to their election promises for a little while longer.

By retaining the compulsory nature of the vote, we make sure that our citizens fulfil their democratic responsibilities.

By having the right to control our preferences, we eliminate the backroom deals between parties that the voter is not aware of.

By having the right to reject all the candidates offered, we send a message to the parties that they have to do better, and provide us with credible options.

Now, that would be a system worth exporting.

Hey, great idea. Then all those that vote for the minors could opt out of voting at all. Excellent. Might as well just have 2 names on each ballot paper,right?

We could have a minority electing our government from candidates the majority don't want. I suppose it's no different really is it. That's what we've had for many years already. No wonder the unwanted elected don't do anything for the people, they know most didn't vote for them at all.

Democracy doesn't exist here alright but this is ridiculous.

The only other choice you give minor party supporters (Note the majority of Ozzies don't want either major in recent polls in NSW) is revolution. Coup. Sounds damn good to me.

Compulsory Voting is a necessary part of ensuring that Australia continues to be represented by individuals that the majority of people approve of.

I understand that this is exactly what this article is claiming is not occurring. Preferential voting is an Australian tradition, and it successfully operates to choose a candidate which the majority of people are content with. It may not be everyone's first choice, but the preferential system allows everyone to decide who they prefer. To my mind, this is far more favourable than a first past the post system, where the winner often has a rather small minority of the overall vote.

One side-effect of this that the article successfully identifies is that major parties get a big piece of the pie, but this is just the nature of democracy - that most people preference middle of the road parties over radical ones.

As much as our system has its flaws, the alternative is a UK or US style system where optional voting means that more people vote for Big Brother than for their Member of Parliament. If only 40% of the population vote, and therefore a majority of those (say 21%) vote for the government in power, how can we call that representative democracy?

One final point is that optional voting creates a non-representative outcome. Radicals who desperately want wide social change will exercise their right to vote, but average everyday Australians, apathetic about politics do not exercise their right to vote for the middle of the road parties. Hence, we form radical government.

RobH - Law 101, I am not sure that you have quite grasped the issues here.

>>Preferential voting is an Australian tradition, and it successfully operates to choose a candidate which the majority of people are content with<<

That is exactly what I suggest is not occurring, in that it is entirely possible to object to being represented by either major party, only to see your vote disappear into the pocket of one or the other - without you even knowing, ahead of time, which.

How can you assume, given this is our only means to express our intention, that it produces a result that "the majority of people are content with"?

Where's your evidence? Because logic is against you.

>>this is far more favourable than a first past the post system, where the winner often has a rather small minority of the overall vote.<<

True, but at least those votes were intentionally cast in that direction.

>>As much as our system has its flaws, the alternative is a UK or US style system where optional voting means that more people vote for Big Brother than for their Member of Parliament<<

This is utter nonsense.

"According to programme-makers Endemol, there were 6,363,325 votes cast during the 2004 live final of Big Brother 5. There were 27,128,130 votes cast in total the 2005 general election."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4586995.stm

>>If only 40% of the population vote, and therefore a majority of those (say 21%) vote for the government in power, how can we call that representative democracy?<<

But if our vote is taken away from our preferred candidate and given to another whose views we might violently disagree with, how does that differ from a rigged third-world election?

>>optional voting creates a non-representative outcome [and would] form radical government.<<

Where, for example? Name one.

I find it interesting that when people want to claim superiority of our system over other forms of democracy, two nations (of dozens) keep popping up. You know, Finland is also a democracy.

Also, just because a lot of Americans don't vote doesn't mean they're stupid or ignorant, or that they have been manipulated or excluded. Maybe they just choose to live their own lives and have no desire to hold sway over others (although groups like the Free State Project initially plan to use democracy against itself in achieving such aims http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project or http://www.freestateproject.org/).

To those casting an informal vote, do you realise that, 1) you're still endorsing the system by turning up, 2) even if only one person votes properly, a candidate can/will be elected? Resistance is futile within the system.

I have my reservations about our system of voting, or the candidates, but that's not why I don't vote at all, and why I'm not enrolled on the electoral roll (which is an extremely futile gesture, I know). It's because I don't believe in democracy. It's two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. It basically means that two idiots can tell one genius how to live and run his own life. I find something ironic about compelling people to vote.

It doesn't come from any desire to hold a revolution (since all revolutions are doomed to failure). It doesn't come out of ignorance or apathy. It just comes out of the realisation that I don't agree with the system, but I won't change it, so I try to live between the gaps as much as possible. Crazy, I know.

I am embarrassed when I tell friends in America and Britain that voting is compulsory here. It makes us seem like a third world dictatorship.

Freedom to vote also means freedom NOT to vote.

I probably will continue to vote, but when a $150 fine hangs over my head, like the sword of Damacles, then I really feel like my government does not have my best interests at heart.

I feel more like putting in an informal vote when it is compulsory, simply to express my freedom.

Do it, Tassie.

We don't have compulsory voting - we have "compulsory turn up on the day and get your name crossed off". After you've performed this "duty" you can do what you like with the ballot paper.

If you're really passionate, don't go - just cop the fine as the cost of principled action. It's only fifty bucks. Cheap protest if you ask me.

You could go even further. Non payment of the fine should attract the attention of the authorities. You can protest loudly to the media, get people onside, form an anti-compulsory voting party, run a campaign and then people can maybe exercise their compulsory vote in your favour and you can change the system.

Step Up!

Nice one, Shorbe.
Is there any way I can get off the Voting Register now I'm on it -- apart from dying?
At the risk of boring people, I repeat my warning about "Independent" candidates. 90% are front men and women for religious fundies... be aware!
As for paying the fine as a protest. You'd be protesting to a computer-generated form; probably not very productive. I like the idea of a large group not attending, not paying the fine, then having their day in court surrounded by media frenzy -- except that having only two and a half newspapers in the country both run by people with vested interests in maintaing the status quo, you'd be lucky to be reported on page 12.

Shorbe, you say you are not enrolled on the electoral roll because you don't believe in democracy. Well, just what do you believe in then, if I may enquire? Do you believe in obligations and are you a citizen? Do you believe in paying taxes, using some social services, accept a certain freedom of speech and indulge in community participation like serve on juries and send children to school? Since all citizens receive - directly and indirectly - so many benefits from the collective act of voting, don't you feel a responsibility to participate? Perhaps you belong to some exclusive religious sect .... who knows? Strikes me that you are somewhat a confused individual.

Must say that TTiger sounds extinct when he says he gets "embarrassed" when he "tells friends in America and Britain that voting is compulsory here" because he feels strongly that "Freedom to vote also means freedom NOT to vote". Perhaps TTiger is already reduced to slave status where for him, like in the US of A, many would say "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose" in the home of the unthinking slave... where this notion of an unconnected freedom is about the worst sucker bait.

May I suggest that "to do nothing is to live in denial and accept the lie of our "existence". To sit in silent complacency is to welcome the domination over our lives. The failure to act is an act in failure, and a warm embrace to an unmitigated corruption befalling humankind."

Keiran, have the rights of the individual been usurped by the collective to enslave the individual to the will of the collective?
Australian democracy in action. I must vote for A team or B team. If A team wins B team then does every thing in it's power to stop A team from accomplishing the very reasons A team was elected. Which every member who barracked and voted for B team but lost, thinks is clever and a creditable way to govern a country. Reversing the roles makes no difference and hasn't.

Paying taxes and voting isn't a pride of citizenship under this type of governing. It's paying taxes and voting according to a scripted role that lost it's value when the loosing party and their media found they could still influence society on the other teams ticket while frustrating that teams commitment to the policies they were elected to make real for the people.
It isn't about the care and maintenance of society any more. It's a endless tug of war that accomplishes very little of the commitments made to the people who pay taxes in the name of party partizsanship and media point making. Jersey knitting.

Chris Shaw. What are your activities re changing the world please? Might like to help out mate. Does it involve a coup as yet? Ballarat and Bendigo all over again?

TRTL, for once I agree with you. It does give minors some hope if we are forced to turn up, vote or not at least we may tick a box right?

DavidJS. Pedantic and dumb comment mate. If you bother turning up why informal? Have the guts to stick to your principles and face a fine. Mostly it never happens anyway. We do have compulsory voting.

Pericles. How does voluntary voting help democracy at all? Voluntary obviously favours the big two. As it does in the US where they drive buses around buying votes for $1, as per the Governor of California. Democracy? I don't think so.

Quick response. Sorry, electonic voting just needs a good hacker and all elections are over before they start. Paper voting gives some chance of honesty through the numbers involved.

RStuart. Good comments but I'd prefer to know if Cronulla will win today. A little naive re voting more than once though. Ever heard the expression vote early and vote often? It doesn't come from nowhere and is still practised here and everywhere.

Something is wrong here. I agree mainly with Aqvarivs as well.

Is there a consensus that we all don't want the majors? If so then you must vote, compulsory or voluntary, just put these two last so the $2.10 per vote goes to a minor or independent. The $ per vote is CPI'd and outstrips inflation as such.

When we are discussing compulsory voting, we are largely ignoring European and North American democracies. Instead we are copying draconian third world models like those of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Paraguay and Turkey. These are the kinds of countries that impose compulsory voting. Our oppressive law is not like that in most of Europe and North America? It simply needs to be scrapped.

Agreed, voting isnt compulsory.

Just the signing up to and attending periodic role call bit is.

Neat little trick.

Its nice to have someone knocking on my door every now and then, checking up, taking roll call. Armed with boxes to tick and threats to make. Its nice to live in a free democrazy.

A woman was imprisoned a few yrs ago for refusing to enrol. Sherrifs turned up and hauled her off to the lock up. They dont have day care in those places so she had to leave the kids behind. She relented in the end.

The complusory bit about role call is the problem.

Big call, RobbyH

>>How does voluntary voting help democracy at all? Voluntary obviously favours the big two. As it does in the US where they drive buses around buying votes for $1, as per the Governor of California. Democracy? I don't think so.<<

You are - probably deliberately - confusing two lines of thought here.

There is nothing about voluntary voting that specifically favours the "big two" as you call them. However, there is everything about our form of preferential voting that specifically favours the major parties - i.e. the practice of making deals to allocate preferences.

This system ensures that your vote ends up in the bucket of one of the two main parties.

But you don't know ahead of time, which direction it will go. So, not only has your vote for a minor party or independent become meaningless, but it has been allocated, without your agreement, to one or other of the parties that you voted against.

How can that be described as democratic?

But back to your points about non-compulsory voting favouring the big two parties...

>>As it does in the US where they drive buses around buying votes for $1<<

All this does is to ensure that the voter reaches the ballot box. When I was young, this was a standard activity - volunteers would door-knock the neighbourhood ahead of time, asking "can we count on your vote?" - and if the answer was yes, they would then ask "can we give you a lift to the polling station?" to ensure a maximum turnout for their party.

But even then they couldn't be sure that the voter was actually placing the vote where they said they would - it being a secret ballot and all - maybe they just wanted a ride to the polling booth.

Compulsory voting is disguising the level of distrust of our political system, and our politicians, within the electorate.

When turnouts become painfully low, is it the politicians' fault, or the citizens'?

Part 1

People are confusing issues here.

The system(s) that favour the major parties are those which are based on single member electorates. This includes both first past the post and preferential. Such systems allow only one winner per electorate - a winner takes all approach. FPP is worst of all (UK & US) because votes for similar parties can be split, allowing an "unprefered" party to win (think National and Liberal votes - these could be split allowing the ALP to win the seat). Additionally, candidates can win with less than 50% of the vote in a three corner contest. At least preferential prevents these outcomes.

Only proportional systems (STV, party list etc) allow minors to actually win seats. They do this by having multi-member electorates. If a party wins 20& of the vote, it gets 20% of the seats in that electorate. Sound great. Problem is it leads to endless unstable minority governments held to ransom by small parties.

Part 2

Australia has a "balanced system".

We use single member majoritarian preferential in the lower house. This is the best of the single member systems and it delivers a stable majority in the house of government (in Westminster systems where the government must hold the confidence of the house to govern). Here we get a "preferred" major party as the government. Even if they they won't win a seat, the minors get a look in in the preference deals too, they get to influence major party policy by preferencing or otherwise one or other of the major parties.

Australia then balances this strongly majoritarian system by using the STV proportional system in the Senate. Here majorities are unimportant to the formation of stable government. The fact that more viewpoints get represented in the Senate suits its purpose as a house of review. It promotes balance of power Senates, which can act to check the government, which the captive lower house is unable to do effectively.

The essence of the Australian electoral systems is "two houses, two systems". Use one to offset the flaws of the other. Match each system the purpose of each house.

There is not such thing as a perfect electoral system. There is no better alternative to democracy. As Churchill said "its the least worst" of all the systems of government. It is imperfect, messy and inefficient. But that is the best we've got and Australia does it better than almost anyone else.

Travelingnorth,
Found your post interesting. However there are two things you did not mention. One is, as I mentioned in past post, the advantages the major parties get with compulsory preferential voting. I think optional preferential is fairer, and two, Would not the implementation of Citizens Initiated Referenda (CIR) be democratic as it would make Governments more considerate of the feelings of the electorate. Sometimes Governments believe they have a mandate to do whatever they wish and disregard the electorate until the next election.

Would you comment on these two issues?

In trying to sort out the different arguments, travellingnorth, you have managed to obscure some, and to introduce a new topic.

>>[with] a winner takes all approach... candidates can win with less than 50% of the vote in a three corner contest. At least preferential prevents these outcomes<<

Not so.

A significant number of candidates win a seat with fewer than 50% of the primary vote. It is only after the allocation of preferences that this number passes the 50% mark.

In our "blind" system, if candidate A receives 35% of the vote, candidate B 33% and candidate C 32%, the entire election hangs upon which of A and B receives C's preferences. If those preferences remained the prerogative of the voter, the voter would still have a modicum of control, but none at all if he objected to both A and B.

Where's the fairness in that?

>>Even if they they won't win a seat, the minors get a look in in the preference deals too<<

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the allocation of preferences performed constituency by constituency? Also, how does the individual voter discover, ahead of time, where his preferences are headed? It would appear that the beneficiary of this process is the major party, not the voter.

>>in the Senate... majorities are unimportant to the formation of stable government. The fact that more viewpoints get represented in the Senate suits its purpose as a house of review<<

Ho ho ho.

For as long as I can remember the Senate has been held hostage to the most rabid fringe parties on the entire Australian political landscape, as they hold the real (balance of) power.

Stable government via the Senate?

GST. Telstra. Just to mention two of the more expensive of their faction-ridden, behind-closed-door deals that royally screwed the Australian people.

The arguements are going all over the place and people believe what they want. If people don't vote and don't want their voices to be heard when it counts, that is, in an election, then they are wasting their time here.

Why would anyone give a toss them if they don't vote? They are no threat to anyone as they shriek around like angry drag queens that have just castrated thmneselves. The liberals tell them to cut their balls off, so they do. Fantastic.

I'm glad that some are refusing to vote. Now the views of responsible people will gain power. The winjers no longer have any relevance, and frankly, I don't see why they bother voicing their opinion at all. If they don't vote, they are irrelevant to opinion polling. They have removed themselves from democracy.

Australia has our own way of doing things as we are a unique country.

The truth is, it is all sour grapes because Howard cannot win the next election. If the Liberals can't win, their lobbyests push to change the rules. A pathetic attempt.

Keiran: In a sense, I don't believe in anything because I know idealism (in this case, libertarianism/classical liberalism) is pointless. By that I mean that regardless of how I would like things to be, they won't turn out that way.

However, I don't believe government is a force for good (all the serial killers, mass murderers and terrorists haven't got a patch on the wanton destruction of most governments). I also don't believe I should have to pay taxes for services I won't use. Those that I will use I can pay for privately. However, I do still pay these taxes because, amongst other things, the government threatens me with kidnapping if I don't. If anyone else did this, we'd call them organised crime. I don't care if they're trying to "help" me. What if I don't want to be "helped"?

Also, you try to make it out like the only way we can have anything we like in society (be it services or civil liberties) is if we unquestioningly hand over all of our power (and a good chunk of money) and then, if government deems itself gracious enough, to wait for these things to be given back to us. I believe people are born free, they're not granted these things by others (be they politicians or other citizens). It seems you and I are coming from completely opposite directions on this, but just because I don't toe the official nanny state line doesn't make me confused. I'm very definite about these things.

saintfletcher: Of course, some who don't vote also find ways to avoid paying taxes too. They just find ways of doing their own thing.

Having said that, practically, it's a waste of time not voting. However, there's something to be said about a society that makes decisions without consent for people who are otherwise minding their own business.

On a related topic, it's interesting that the Federal government has recently legislated to disenfrachise large numbers of Australians:

"The Federal Government has passed extraordinary legislation that will close the rolls for new voters at 8pm on the very night the election is officially called. Last Federal Election, the AEC received a total of 423,975 enrolment cards in the week between the announcement and the close of rolls. 78,816 of those were new enrolments. But this time people won't get that chance."

Now, without necessarily resorting to conspiracy theories, one wonders why Howard & Co would utilise their temporary dominance of both Houses to push such undemocratic legislation through?

For further information, and the source of the above quotation, go to http://www.getup.org.au/campaign.asp?campaign_id=75 .

saintfletcher, you are becoming increasing nasty and vituperative... go see a shrink.
Shorbe, I agree wholeheartedly with your opinions and sentiments regarding governments. Democracy only lasts until the first politician opens his/her mouth, then it becomes a demagoguery. As the election approcahes, so do the Labor and the coalition until by election day they will be indistinguishable.
Unfortunately, because of compulsory voting, it is illegal for me to publicly advocate writing on voting papers... "I will not vote until we have proportional representation" because I will be asking people to break the law... so that is another reason compulsory voting is anti freedom, anti individual - it cannot be changed except by illegal activity. But within 15 years it will all become irrelevant as billions of climate change refugees roam the world, starving and dieing of thirst, thanks to the ability of democratic governments to ride rough-shod over common sense.

Banjo

I agree with your comment about optional preferential, indeed I mentioned it early in the Forum.

I like the idea of CIR's but I fear that in practice they would be little more than dressed up mob rule. No, I think a government campaigns on its policies and earns a mandate to implement them. A way to increase the input of citizens into "non-mandated" policy (i.e. things that come up between elections and need a legislative or executive response) should be to allow MPs a free vote on such issues. In other words, the parties should relax discipline and let the parliament act as the representative body it was always supposed to be. MPs would have to act as delegates or trustees of their constituents or face the electoral consequences next time around. The "party line" should only extend as far as policies that the people voted on in the last election.

Pericles

I argued earlier for optional preferential voting. This system preserves a "modicum of control" for the voter.

Secondly, preference deals modify major party policy prior to the election. If the ALP wants Greens' preferences they need to beef up the environment credibility of their policies. Anyway, the voter is in total control of the destination of their own preferences - they fill in the boxes and don't have to follow any "how to vote" card.

I take your point about the Senate. Perhaps the German idea of a 5% minimum threshold vote before a party can a seat could keep the crazies out.

If the idea of free MP votes on non-mandated policy legislation could break the executive hold on the lower house, allowing it to fulfil its role of keeping the government accountable, we might be able to do away with an upper house altogether. Breaking party disciple is the key.

Two points.

Firstly - there's nothing wrong with parties needing to capture centrist voters. In fact, it seems more likely (on common sense reasoning) that extreme views are both risky economically and likely to discourage investment. Evolutionary changes are safer.

My second observation is that when I was at uni, most students didn't vote for their representatives. At the same time, the student council was somewhat disliked and was full of radicals of all types. Who was responsible? Probably those same students who didn't bother to vote.

Klaas Woldring says "We need an urgent renewal of the Australian political system and the Constitution. Compulsory voting is one big hindrance to achieving that." Klaas clearly states where he is coming from.

In the tenth post in this thread rstuart prudently states "There is one advantage of compulsory voting you do not mention. It is much easier to audit and thereby eliminates entire classes of voting fraud with compulsory voting." In the 15th post, rstuart also says, "In our current system you can't vote twice without being detected, ....". This last may, however, no longer be true.

Whereas once more than one vote claim in any one name on an electoral roll would have been detected by human scrutiny in a room full of witnesses when compiling the mark-back roll, these days we are all dependent upon the output of an optical mark reading computer program for the compilation of the mark-back roll and for the detection of such multiple vote claims. If this program was to be written or hacked in such a way as to fail to fully report apparent multiple vote claims, then the only indication of this abuse occurring would be if in total there had been more vote claims made than there were names on the roll.

A change to non-compulsory voting accompanied by reduced voter turnout at any election would offer greater scope for potentially undetected multiple vote claims in single names without crossing the threshold of credibility that is constituted by vote claims exceeding total enrolments.

A hint as to how a combination of outsourcing, and an ongoing Australian Electoral Commission security breach, may have created an opportunity for the use of a rogue program is given in this post: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5477#70863 .

Klaas asks: "Could Australia finally wake up politically?". Good question. Could it be that widespread dissatisfaction with the political system has come about because it has responded as much to fraudulently distorted results since Federation, as to genuine majority views? Distortion about to get worse under voluntary voting?

I am of the opinion that democracy is somewhat of a manufactured fantacy. The 2 party system suits those powers that wish to have more than one vote. Whith the ABC emmasculated and other media under the control of of the previledged few any thought of free elections is illogical. First one party is allowed to win then the other. Just for the illustion of choice. Any challenge will be punished as was Pauline Hanson. As it happened I bought my fish burgers from Pauline and we talked a lot whilst they were being cooked. She was reflecting the views of many Ipswich people. People who believed that if they worked hard and did the right thing there would be jobs and a good life for them and their kids. Someone changed the contract without telling them and they were not well pleased. Pauline inadvertently touched apon a hot bed of dissent so she had to be crushed.
I can't say I agreed with Paulines idea's, they are in my view simplistic but they were, and are valid views. Actually I prefer her honesty to a lying hobgoblin that would do or say anything to keep his arse on the seat.
What is it we are voting for?

Shorbe, I certainly am coming from an opposite direction to yourself because for starters, we are not born free as you say. Surely you'd agree that we are born totally dependent on just about everything and are deemed a dependant. Any freedom we want comes from a wealth of learning, interaction, experience and discipline in an interconnected environment.

However, when people discuss any issue like freedom for example, they are likely to do so through different ..... even mutually exclusive ..... a priori sets of assumptions or beliefs about the nature of reality and the human place in it. For all perceptual, emotional, and behavioral purposes, people in fact can live in quite different realities. With such species dissociation, it is not unusual for different groups to be psychologically unable to draw compatible conclusions from the same fact. How do people then cope with this situation? Democratically and inclusively, perhaps? How else but through consensus?

The measure of a society in anyone's value system would place significant emphasis on the core public institutions; public transport and infrastructure; public health; public schooling, education, museums, galleries, libraries; public places, spaces, parks, reserves, beaches, sporting fields, and so on. Then there are public procedures and processes important for maintaining and deepening public trust for ensuring active, participatory democracy that enrich our public life at the local, national and global levels.

Shorbe, when you say about public services .."those that I will use I can pay for privately" are you not hinting at an Australia as a value free nation of renters who live in gated communities? Well I do not doubt that there are plenty of "champs" out there in our mis-leader Howard's Australia that would love this trophy life style .....but ..... The difference between champ and chump is U.

Woldring states that the introduction of voluntary voting in Australia would increase the quality of the vote. This is a generalisation and does not outweigh the negative consequences of having less than half the population vote and does not take into account the fact that, with voluntary voting, many poor people would be less inclined to vote, as happens in other countries, not because they are disinterested, but because they would find it very difficult to get to a polling booth.

Woldring also states that compulsory voting forces the major parties’ policy programs to the centre of the spectrum and this has helped make them become look-alike parties. Forcing the major parties' policy programs to the centre is actually a positive, as it highlights their policies and forces them to be scrutinised. A danger the ALP faces in the run up to this year's Federal election is strong scrutiny of their policies. Many commentators are saying that, while the ALP's primary vote is high at the moment, it is still to be really tested, and many voters are still undecided about whether or not the ALP would make a credible alternative government.

In the end, we are talking about democracy, that is, government for the people and by the people. In most countries, voluntary voting means that at least half the population do not turn up to vote, as mentioned by Woldring. When so few people turn up to vote, as a result of voluntary voting, we are making a mockery of democracy. If we take the 2000 US election as an example, we had a situation, in a country with voluntary voting, where, George W Bush received approximately half of the popular vote. The voter turnout for that election was about 50%. Rather than voter quality increasing in that election, we had a situation where they now have a President who was elected by, at most, a quarter of the eligible voting population, and they call that democracy. Let us not take that route and damage the integrity of democracy in this country.

All well and good Nils but, don't call it democracy.
Those persons who come out to vote in a free vote democratic system and those that don't both make a statement to the electorate. "There is something wrong with the way things stand now. One, I am voting freely in hopes that this next person has the scrota to effect the change necessary, or two, I refuse to vote in support of the continuation of a poor prognosis and hope that my protest is of note and promotes recovery of efficient government."
Those that have to vote by law, are not participating in democracy per se. They're following a law. If the law was rescinded and only 50% came out to vote wouldn't that send an immediate message to the countries leadership, or would everyone just pass it off as typical of fat a$$ lazy Ozzies.

This may seem like a silly question, but it occurred to me while reading back over this thread:

What's to stop somebody who knows my name and address voting at several booths? Given that there is no ID requirement, anybody could walk up to any polling booth and say that the're CJ Morgan and quote my address. What happens when that occcurs - as it surely has (at least to someone)?

Does the Electoral Commission have some process for dealing with that kind of fraud, not to mention others?

I ask these questions seriously, because I'm buggered if I know what processes are actually in place to prevent electoral fraud in Australia.

C J Morgan,
I suppose there is a first time for everything. I agree with you.

There is nothing to stop a person impersonating you or me at a polling place and several times over, at different booths. This has been known to happen and the CEO has to count all the votes as there is no way of checking or knowing which is fraudulent.

It also has been known for someones cat to be registered to vote and other ficticious names registered. One needs more indentifacion to open a bank account that to register to vote.

The whole system is open for abuse. The reason for the earlier cut off date for registration is so CEO staff can check the validity of new registrations, addresses and so on.

If we had an identifacation card it would help a lot. I think all eligible voters currently would have a Medicare card or Tax File Number so I ask why not use one of these for voting identifacation.

Probably the only thing I find myself in agreement with John Howard about.

I strongly believe that people should vote but laws to compel them to do so are silly.

Keiran: Obviously, babies aren't free. I meant in a philosophical sense, ie. that our rights are inherent to us as human beings, not granted to us by others (namely the state), that it all comes from an internal, not external, source. That's when I'm being idealistic. The rest of the time, I realise that the only rights anyone has are those they can take, defend, or inflict upon others.

CJ Morgan ,I agree .

I think Howard and the Nationals would love to have the large number of the young ,the indifferent ,the uneducated Australian Labour voters and others who have to vote, but don't trust him and yet would rather put their feet up, watch the footy or head to the beach, "off the books".

By all means make the system work better but not at the expense of responsible compulsory voting .It helps focus the political mind, if for some, only fleetingly .

"If you don't vote mate, you're a bloody idiot!" should be the catchcry,right throughout the Land .

In view that I refused to vote in the purported 10 November 2001 federal election and in the purported 9 October 2004 federal election, even so having been a candidate, and was convicted for FAILING TO VOTE on 17 November 2005 only then on appeal succeeded in the appeals in which I claimed that constitutionally no one can be forced to vote and section 245 of the CEA is unconstitutional.
since then on 28 March 2007 I published a book detailing matters;

INSPECTOR-RIKATI® & How to lawfully avoid voting
A book about Australia’s federal election issues & rights
ISBN 978-0-9751760-3-0 was ISBN 0-9751760-3-X (Book)
ISBN 978-0-9751760-4-7 was ISBN 0-9751760-4-8 (CD)

See also my website http://www.schorel-hlavka.com

As such, I do not vote and proved to do so lawfully.

For the record, next month I am due to publish one of my other books;

INSPECTOR-RIKATI® on IR WorkChoices legislation
A book about the validity of the High Courts 14-11-2006 decision

This book will set out what, so to say, is the black hole in the High Court of Australia judgment, and why its decision was constitutionally floored.

As a constitutionalist I look for what the High Court of Australia didn't address but at the very least should have included in its judgment!

It is regrettable that so many people in the meantime are suffering, as reported many loosing their homes due to lost of earning to pay mortages and this where it all could have been avoided had matters been conducted in a proper constitutional manner.

As my forthcoming book will expose, any Member of Parliament could have on his/her own have prevented WorkChoices legislation to have passed through the Parliament had they used the correct procedure and appropriate constitutional grounds for this, as unbeknwn to most people and even parliamentarians there is a constitutional manner to do this regardless if all other members of Parliament desired to vote in favour of a Bill! The fact they ignored it may underline we do not have proper representation!

See also http://www.schorel-hlavka.com and my blog http://au.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-ijpxwMQ4dbXm0BMADq1lv8AYHknTV_QH

CJ spots a flaw. There are many more CJ, keep looking mate.

CJMorgan, in the 43rd post on this topic, attempts an interesting connection of compulsory voting with a claimed disfranchisement of around 400,000 electors at the upcoming Federal elections, as a consequence of recent changes to electoral legislation by the Federal government. A very useful observation.

Another OLO contributor, KAEP, has provided in a different context an observation upon the current state of NSW (and Australia's) polity, which states (seemingly speaking of influences behind the scenes) "....they have a real dictatorship that on the surface still seems to be a benign Democracy. Its a megalomaniac's dream not seen since the technological revolutions of the early 1930's. It has been enabled by the unbridled rise in IT technology whose protected high end use to sequester power and wealth....." This is the link to that post: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5551#72933 .

This "unbridled rise in IT technology" began to adversely affect Australia's electoral processes not later than 1983. By the time of the 1987 Federal elections, electoral roll maintainance had been both computerized and unlawfully centralized. Changes to electoral legislation in 1983 had, for the first time, prescribed a seven day period between the issue of the writs and the closure of the rolls. The upshot of this was that at the 1987 elections a net increase of around 230,000 enrolments occurred.

The problem is that there are indications this surge of enrolments in 1987 was somehow already in the now-computerized electoral rolls BEFORE the announcement of the elections which had been touted as the reason for the surge! These indications are largely as good as buried. This link may be of interest, however, to those of a forensic accountancy bent. http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/em/elect04/subs.htm The link gives a list of submissions; the one to click on is number 161, a 1.6 MB PDF. It seems this document did not come to light until 2005.

It looks like compulsory enrolment and voting may be a crime scene: don't touch anything!

It seems Kartiya Jim believes that the introduction of voluntary voting would favour the Coalition. Yet in a general discussion titled "Want a change of Government?...try casting a vote...might work?", started by holyshadow on Wednesday, 6 December 2006 at 10:54:40 AM, regular OLO contributor Steve Madden made the following comment: "Your arrogance about abolition of compulsory voting giving the coalition an advantage is breath taking. It is the other way around, ....... the evidence is out there, the abolition of compulsory voting would decrease the coalition vote by 1.8%". See http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=292#5148 .

Putting digressions in the current thread critical of preferential voting into perspective, Steve's comment in the link given above "What seat at the last election was not won by the person who got the most votes before preferences? Rhetorical question. None, Zip, Zero." should perhaps be borne in mind.

Steve Madden generally tends to have authoritative statistics to back him up when he makes statements like this. It would be interesting to know the source for his specific figure of 1.8%.

Later in the same discussion, Steve made the statement "Given that only 75% of eligable voters cast a valid vote under compulsory voting in the last election and that 36% stated they had no interest in politics it means that only about 50% of voters even care who is elected." I hesitate to say outright that Steve is wrong, but the official AEC figures for the 2004 Federal elections show that 94.82% of names on the rolls had votes claimed against them. See http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/What/voting/turnout/index.htm . Turnout has been in the mid 90s as a percentage at almost all Federal elections since 1925. The informal vote for Australia at large in 2004 was 5.18% of the vote cast. See http://results.aec.gov.au/12246/results/HouseInformalByState-12246.htm . By my reckoning that means around 90% of enrolled electors cast a valid vote under compulsory voting, and nearly 95% claimed a vote.

You guys can butter it up any way you want but FREEDOM means FREEDOM, not government BULLYING and THREATENING if we personally choose that we don't like to nor want to vote. I want to live in a FREE COUNTRY, where I am free TO VOTE OR NOT, whether I want, when I want, not at the whims of some OVERBEARING GOVERNMENT.

The SHEER idiocy of claiming that America or Europe are less free because they do not have our STUPID mandatory voting laws is PURE NONSENSE. We are not BETTER, but WORSE because of this GOVERNMENT BULLYING, and the sooner it is eliminated the FREER we'll be.

The idea that our political parties are better because our government BULLIES and THREATENS us into voting is totally illogical.

I always find it amusing when a labor or democrat party member bangs on about the importance of maintaining the compulsory vote so that the lower socio-economic & minority groups have representation. When all they’re really saying is that they think their supporters are simpletons that without coercion would fail to participate .
Not just an insult to those sectors of the electorate but an expression of their "We know what’s best for you" attitude .
The compulsory vote guarantees the numbers & compulsory preferencing guarantees where the votes go .
The argument about multiple voting or rigging always comes up .How ?
What’s wrong with electronic name entry by a booth attendant ? Or maybe an ink stamp on the hand ? That’d be to easy for Oz wouldn’t it .
Election rigging/fixing happens all the time now , simply by fiddling with electoral boundaries . Whenever an annoying fly drops in the ointment (usually an independent that won’t be bought ) we just study the results by booth & shift a boundary or split the electorate by creating a new one . Of course this practice is only effective thanks to coerced participation .
The worst effect of the compulsory vote is the effect on policy implementation . At the moment it’s quite ok to disregard a minority group when creating new laws so long as the mindless mob don’t feel affected . On the other hand if voting was voluntary , The prospect that many of the unaffected may not turn out but those who are irked are likely to be out for a bit of justice would encourage the seeking out of more loserless solutions than as occurs now .

I believe that the only way I could support non-compulsory voting would be if we had a compulsory 2 years of political science in schools in years 10 and 12.

Ideally this could be done by the election of a "parliament" in each school advised by a group of independent "public servants" .

This would be with the aim of producing a more responsible public .

To Tassie Tiger : The "freedom" that you crave, along with a lack of voter knowledge and curiosity , led to the extinction of a very interesting animal down in Tasmania

Bad logic.

Klaas concludes his article with an exhortation "..... could the political scientists of this country start educating the voters rather than recommending the export of an inappropriate template?".

Klaas has missed a step in his exhortation of the political scientists. Some political scientists need to be exhorted to first educate themselves with respect to the history of, and statistics relating to, compulsory voting, enrolment, and turnout since Federation, before they are called upon to educate voters about electoral matters! 'Gaming of the system', as Pericles describes it, has not been the sole preserve of politicians.

In order to illustrate what lies behind this general criticism of some political scientists, to beat the word limit I am going to have to give links to other posts I have made on other threads related to compulsory voting.

Re knowledge of turnout levels prior to 1922: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=208#3943 and http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=208#3995 .

Re knowledge of enrolment levels prior to 1922: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=208#4002 and http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=208#4014 and http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=208#4024 .

Now you would think, would you not, that political scientists would have commented had past referendum results been mis-calculated or mis-stated. What therefore is to be made of this: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5062#61428 ? And political scientists are the people upon whom we should rely for leadership and guidance in matters electoral?

No, Klaas, too many anomalies are now coming to light in respect to Australia's electoral history. Compulsory voting and enrolment may have had a role to play in concealing such anomalies and their implications from public view. It is not in the interests of Australian electors to sweep all this accumulated evidence, unanalysed, under the carpet by suddenly changing the system. And yes, Klaas, I agree with you that leadership from political scientists has been painfully absent, but not just for a generation. Try since Federation!

Forrest Gumpp: you quote a lot of figures and give references to back them up. It is a delight to see. However I still have not figured out the point you are trying to make.

And I am dammed if I can see the evidence in what you quote for the conclusions you do draw. Eg where is the support for: "Compulsory voting and enrolment may have had a role to play in concealing such anomalies and their implications from public view", or "This 'unbridled rise in IT technology' began to adversely affect Australia's electoral processes".

Are you saying that it is somehow easier to fake an electoral enrolment (and hence the associated vote), then it is just to fake the just vote at polling time? I can't see how that could be so. For one thing there is far more time available during to do checks and correlate the results. Also the rolls are public - unlike votes, so it is easy for anyone to verify them.

You don't happen to live in "Dog Trap Road", do you?

Participating in democracy should not be optional and is essential for a democracy and especially in life. Government is not an option either but people who see freedom as a disconnect or as an escape from life or as some Teddy (god) given right, do not understand that freedom does not equal free. In our infinite material universe there is an inseparable quantum inter-connectedness as reality where we cannot ignore this world with all constituents pushing one and another. It's a world full of pushers giving this process occurring at all times with respect to each electron, atom, cell, organ, organism, species, ecosystem, planet, and galaxy. Our unique individuality not only pushes but in the process gets shaped and here is where there are real enticement rules that you do get to vote on at all times. When this process stops then you are probably dead and obviously free.

Government is not an option, education and self discipline are not an option, and voting at all times is not an option. Of course everyone has the freedom to control their own thoughts, which can never be taken away, however freedom in the context of society has to be balanced with order, requiring discipline, learning and responsibility.

Your stance seems remarkably totalitarian, Keiran - was that your intention?

My irony-detector may be past its use-by date, or else it has been rendered inactive by prolonged interaction with OLO, but just in case you were being serious...

>>Participating in democracy should not be optional<<

Hooo-boy. That's a big call.

If the state were to enforce this rule, we would be but one jackbooted step away from the single-choice election and the three o'clock doorknock. Even as it is at the moment, we are faced with a non-choice of assorted apparatchiks when we go to the polls, and instructed to place a vote for one faceless lickspittle or the other.

Why not take it to the obvious next stage, and present us with a "choice" from the single party (United Australia Party?) and celebrate a 100% yes vote from 100% of the population, just like those wonderful communists used to do?

>>Government is not an option, education and self discipline are not an option<<

You have no disagreement from me on that. But unfortunately, governments are rapidly eroding the basis for their very existence by outsourcing their responsibilities to the private sector, one responsibility at a time.

Who is "responsible" for our education in this country? Who is "responsible" for our transport infrastructure? Who is "responsible" for our communications infrastructure? Who is "responsible" for our health service? Who is "responsible" for power generation and distribution?

Once upon a time, these were universally identifiable as the elements in our society that we wished to place under communal supervision, subject to our will and direction as expressed through the ballot box.

It is beginning to become apparent that the only wholly-owned government activity is the armed forces - who, incredibly, are exactly the people that a totalitarian state needs to keep control over.

Coincidence? I think not...

An excellent and damning piece, Pericles. Very much to the point. In 10 or 15 years when all the infrastructure you mention falls apart due to global chaos engendered by climate change, most righteous citizen anger will be directed at private corporations, not the government, and the army will be essential to ensure the survival of politicians.
As a callow youth reading Neville Shute's On the Beach, I thought it might be exciting to experience 'the end of civilization.' Now, I know it is going to be much worse than anything I could imagine, and I do not want to be here.
If we had had proportional representation in government over the last fifty years, we would not be in Iraq, we would not have denuded the old growth forests, we would not have run out of water, we would not be overpopulated, because governments would have had to take account of a diversity of opinions. Morally, I cannot do anything but render my vote informal at elections, to do otherwise is to endoesr the present corrupt system.

rstuart,

Yes, that it has been very easy to 'fake' an enrolment is exactly what I am saying. That fact has undoubtedly been behind the recent changes to the Electoral Act requiring identification upon enrolment or change of address for all electors. These changes come into effect on Monday 16 April 2007. See http://www.aec.gov.au and click on the news item to do with identification on enrolment. It will take you to another page upon which one of the links is to an FAQ on the subject.

The point about 'faking' an enrolment is that it can be the basis of an essentially undetectable fraudulent vote claim, because there has historically been no requirement for identification of persons claiming a vote at any election. All an electoral rorter has had to be able to do is recite a name and address on the roll when they rock up to vote. If the name they have emplaced is the one they claim a vote in, it is unlikely anyone else will have already voted in that name. It is also unlikely that anyone else will attempt to use that name subsequently. There will thus unlikely be multiple vote claims made in any one name that might otherwise be subsequently detected, thereby alerting electoral officials to the possibility of fraud, for what little could be done about it in any event at that election.

As for an electoral roll being easy to verify, the last time that changes to the roll were even partially identifiable to members of the public was in 1982-83, the last occasions that a 'mid-term' roll and subsequent supplementary list were ever printed. See this link for more detail http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5521#71436 .

As for what point I am making, nothing more than that of RobbyH earlier in this thread "Something is wrong here.". The following link may help. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5496#71549 and following post.

I'm afraid your question about Dog Trap Road escapes me. What am I missing?

Forrest Gumpp: You lost me with "There will thus unlikely be multiple vote claims made in any one name that might otherwise be subsequently detected". None of your previous points support this. One of the main reasons for having compulsory voting is that it is easy to detect this type of thing. And they obviously do check. They have to levy those fines everybody hates.

It has been so long since I enrolled that I don't recall the details. By the look of the FAQ you pointed me to it I agree it has been a little lax. It is nice to see it is being corrected now.

Be that as it may, enrolling multiple times would be a painful way to perpetrate voting fraud. You have to enrol before you know for certain what districts require your vote in order to change the outcome, and then you have to keep voting in every election until you arrange for your fake identities to die. In the short term it might work. Avoiding detecting in the long term would be hard. Doing it on a massive scale required to change the outcome of an election would I suspect be well neigh impossible.

Pericles, I respect your opinion but there is no irony intended and no unrealistic totalitarian idea promoted. Compulsory pencil and paper voting for democratic representation may seem to be some sort of entrapment which of itself should be seen not exactly as bad because if you escape from it you are simply entrapped somewhere else which may be even less appealing. However, the compulsory voter is still unconstrained in the ballot zone in that no matter what presents, a voter can still change their thoughts and vote accordingly.

Participating in democracy should not be optional because the alternative, based on an overwhelming accumulation of statistical, anecdotal and circumstantial evidence, can only lead to perceptions that democratic protections and processes do not apply to everyone. It then is an easy step to divisive social, political and moral issues with charming practices like vote suppression through voter intimidation and deception. The US of A has an unaudited voting system with full on manipulation where purged voter lists, an intimidated media and no paper trail are just the beginning of this hokey-pokey dance.

The hokey-pokey may derive from the phrase 'hocus pocus', leading on to the expression "hanky panky" or from the nineteenth-century expression 'holus bolus', meaning 'all at once'. ... and all relevant to the US of A.
e.g.
You put your vote in,
Someone you don't even know pulls your vote out,
They then put their vote for you in,
And they shake it all about,

They do the hokey pokey
and they turn themselves around
AND that is what it's all about.

The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt.

Nice one Kieran... however, there
should be a box called "I don't like any of the candidates"
and another labeled. "I want Proportional Representation"

rstuart,

I owe it to Klaas to return to the topic of his article, compulsory voting. Yet I want to give reasons why your reservations with respect to the possibility of electoral fraud may not be soundly based. I shall attempt both.

You say ".... You have to enrol before you know for certain what districts require your vote in order to change the outcome, ....", and "Doing it on a massive scale required to change the outcome of an election would I suspect be well nigh impossible." I say, in regard to the first point, 'not necessarily', and with respect to the second point, 'why?'

Submission 161, to which I provided a link, contends that of the order of 200,000 enrolments may have been moved around as between States and electoral divisions just before the 1987 Federal elections. These enrolments, when they manifested themselves, seemed to possess characteristics of transfers of existing enrolments, rather than of new enrolments. Perhaps they were being tranferred at the last minute to where they were seen to be most useful. That submission also contends that a comparable discrepancy existed in the enrolment accountancy at around that time. If so, there is cause for concern, as with enrolment-based fraud there need exist no other evidence of its commision.

It is officially maintained that there has been little evidence found indicative of widespread electoral fraud. That may well be correct, but under the compulsory voting regime a mechanism may well have been emplaced that could be used to conceal yet to be perpetrated fraudulent claiming of votes. It is of the nature of an institutionlized security breach in the handling of voting records, and an outline of it is contained within this post: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5477#70863 .

Should voting become voluntary, and turnout decline significantly at future elections, this security breach could be taken advantage of in the commission of much more brazen and simply executed personation-style fraud to remove any documentary evidence thereof.

Abolition of compulsion, while attractive, may not be a good idea at this time.

The result of an election is important ONLY if the government governs with the consent of the governed but there is no way of checking this fundamental objective of democracy in non-compulsory elections. In compulsory voting elections as here, the government elected is presumed to have a specific mandate but recently at least we have seen how easy it is to poison the channels of public information. I see this as a major problem but not one relating specifically to compulsory voting as such.

The democratic deficit can be easily measured if we find that public procedures and processes important for maintaining and deepening public trust in a government were ignored. We can apply this to all the topical issues ..... water, energy, mass immigration, education, health, infrastructure, etc. With a fascist the problem has never been how best to present the truth to the public. Instead it is spin and how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

An example of this hollowing out of the central processes of democratic life can be found in NSW recently with the appointment of the new Director General of Education without any public process of gazetting and interviewing for the position. The Education minister, Della Bosca just trotted in one of his mates, Mr Coutts-Trotter a former "spin doctor", a man married to federal Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek, a man with no formal educationalist background and one who could never qualify as a school teacher because of his earlier criminal background and gaol for using and selling heroin. This newly elected Iemma government did not receive a mandate to destroy recognised public processes and our trust.

This is where we should reward those rare journalists, if you can find them, who see through the spin doctoring by daring to identify and report these crucial issues. We will never have politicians of substance, integrity and intellect unless the public have the same.

In the last State election in Victoria I attended to the table and announced to the woman my identity and that I refused to vote on constitutional grounds. Nevertheless she put a line through my name and sought to hand over the ballot papers to me. I refused to touch them and repeated the same objection and then went over waiting for my wife to complete her voting. I walked out of the room and looked through the glass window observing the woman to hand the ballot papers I had refused to accept, to the electoral officer in charge and he subsequently deposited the form in their relevant ballot boxes. I immediately confronted him that his conduct was in my view illegal and tampering with election and asked his details. This he gave. I made a formal complaint directly to the Premier, and weeks later repeated the same but no response. The manual for electoral officer prohibit them to put any ballot papers, not being their own off course, in a ballot box. Till it does occur (as I expected) and nothing is being done about it.
In the past, some years ago, Curacao Cat was found to be a registered voter where its owner had it registered for voting! It was a CAT!

Not only is compulsory voting unconstitutional, but also the association to pay $1.95 per primary vote to a candidate means that the major getting more then 41 million dollars and use this for their advertising campaigns, etc. meaning that Jo Blow, an INDEPENDENT has hope in hell to get heard lacking such fast amounts of moneys.
As I also made clear in Court, why as an INDEPENDENT candidate should I vote for my opponents, as even if I were to vote for myself by the distributing of preferences my vote will go to other candidates I stand against. That is like going for a job interview and the prospective employer ask you to do preference voting for other aspirant workers and he then will give the job to the one who gets the most votes.

An interesting counter to the potential disfranchisement mentioned by CJMorgan earlier in this thread is revealed when you visit the Australian Electoral Commission website. The FAQ about Proof of Identity, see http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/What/enrolment/faq_poi.htm , in answer to its very first question " What is the Proof of Identity (POI) scheme for enrolment?" says:

"The POI scheme for federal electoral enrolment comes into effect throughout Australia on Monday 16 April 2007. From this date all eligible electors, that is Australian citizens aged 17 years and above, will need to prove their identity when enrolling for the first time, re-enrolling to get back on the roll or updating their enrolment because they have moved or changed name. POI for enrolment was introduced by the Commonwealth Parliament, as part of a package of changes to electoral law that was passed in June 2006."

Sneaky. Very sneaky.

The Federal government has apparently, very quietly, lowered the voting age to 17!

With enrolment and voting being compulsory, this notoriously tight-fisted government may just have found a way to off-load a substantial part of the cost of at least one election directly onto electors. Just about the ultimate in 'user (or more correctly, non-user) pays'. By not openly announcing the change, there will be a very large number of 17 year olds who will, as things stand, incur not just one, but possibly two fines after the next elections. One for failing to enroll, and another for failing to vote. And Mum and Dad will stand surety for the payment of the fines, you may depend.

Who do we blame, Abbot, or Costello? Or should we suspect bad karma, and blame Turnbull?

The 17 year old cohort in the population numbers around 250,000 persons, Australia-wide. The majority of these will be Australian citizens. At $50 per head per offence, the potential fine revenue could be of the order of $25M for just one election. Good one.

And I wonder how many others may be caught not having enrolled?

Forrest Gumpp,
You can check this with the AEC. I was of the opinion that a 17 year old could register to vote but not be eligible until 18. Bit like someone applying for the age pension before they turned 65. I may well be wrong.

I also wonder how much proof of idenity one needs to register to vote. Still does not overcome impersonation of voters by others at polling places.

Hansard 3-3-1898 Official Record of the Debates of the National Australasian Convention (Chapter 33 of the CD)
Mr. BARTON (New South Wales).-The suggested amendment would simply go to this extent: That if the Parliament of the Commonwealth wish to make a uniform suffrage, it would be of necessity that that suffrage should be an adult suffrage-that is to say, that it should include womanhood suffrage-and that, until the Parliament of the Commonwealth so legislated, the existing legislation of any colony would be preserved, together with such extension, but not beyond adult suffrage, as might be established. I think, on the whole, that I might consent to that amendment. I therefore withdraw my own amendment and accept this.
And
Mr. BARTON.-Is not the right process to alter the word "qualification" to "right"?
Mr. KINGSTON.-Qualification means registration.
Mr. BARTON.-If the person has a legal right, he has to retain that legal right. Supposing he lost the legal right, but in some mysterious way retained the qualification, it is not intended that the law should help him? It is only intended that the law should help him if he has a legal right. I should say that, unless there is some reason given for what we did in Adelaide, which I do not recollect at this moment, the word "right" would be the proper word to use.
Mr. ISAACS (Victoria).-In our Electoral Act a difference exists between the right to vote and the qualification. A man is qualified to become an elector.
Mr. KINGSTON.-This is a limitation on the right to vote

Mr. ISAACS.-A man is qualified to become an elector. He has not the right to vote until certain conditions are fulfilled; he may have to register, or be may be struck off the roll through some accident. His right to vote is gone through some accident, but his qualification continues. He is a person whose right would not be preserved under this clause, because it applies to the individual-the elector.
Mr. BARTON.-If he loses the right in his own state by his own negligence, is it not right that he should lose the right also in the Commonwealth?
Mr. ISAACS.-He may lose it without negligence; he may lose it without any fault of his own. That has been the case with tens of thousands in Victoria.
Mr. DOBSON (Tasmania).-I was going to put the converse case. In Tasmania, and I suppose in every colony at every election, there are a number of persons whose names are on the roll, but who have lost their qualification. As our Electoral Act makes the roll the evidence of the qualification, you find a number of men who have sold their property to somebody else whose names remain on the roll, but who have lost their qualification, while the name of a man who has bought a property just after the roll has been made up, although he has the qualification, is not on the roll. I think we ought to consider whether the word "qualification" is to remain in the clause, because you may have a number of persons on the state rolls who have lost their qualifications, and who therefore, under this clause as it stands, would not be able to vote in the Commonwealth, but they would have a vote in the state. You will have a roll which governs all state elections, but which does not apply to Commonwealth elections, and you will have to direct an officer to go through the different state rolls, and see whether a man is entitled to vote for the Commonwealth, if you keep in the word "qualification.

I thought this was interesting. It would be good to see it on our ballots with mandatory voting. It would give a value to a vote other than withholding or choosing one of several evils. :-)

http://www.local6.com/problemsolvers/12933300/detail.html

Might even get the politicians asking questions concerning their own behavior? Maybe? :-)