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!