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