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