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.