“Compulsory voting does not just mean a duty to attend a polling booth but, more so, it also implies a moral duty to cast an informed vote. Voting is a precious right that is the basis of democracy but needs to be exercised thoughtfully to be really effective.”

Absabloodylootely!!

Voting should be compulsory. And every voter should be required to have a minimum knowledge of what they are voting about.

I’ve discussed this on other threads on this forum, such as; http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=208.

Various reforms are needed. Just a couple are;

the change from compulsory preferential voting to optional preferential, so that the voter can declare their preferences entirely as they see fit, instead of being forced to mark every box,

and the formalisation of a null vote by way of every ballot paper having a box for ‘no candidate’, so that the voter can exercise their choice to vote for none of them if they feel that none deserves their vote.

An excellent article Klaas. But I do take issue with one thing:

“What an amazingly opportunistic reversal while we should all be searching for forms of effective decentralisation in Australia to spread the population and develop this great land. Why should we allow this madness to add to the growing problems of pollution, congestion and people concentration in Australian capital cities?”

Decentralisation is not the answer. It could be part of an overall strategy, but the most important thing is a cap to population growth and a paradigm shift away from continuous expansionism and onto a genuine sustainability platform.

For all the blather about climate change and other environmental issues, the current political setup absolutely promulgates never-ending enlargement of economy, resource consumption, pressure on our environment and in short, the race towards the precipice of enormous economic and social upheaval, and keeps the minor parties (which used to have some sense of sustainability) effectively out of the picture.

This is surely the greatest flaw of our current system.

I agree that the nation needs electoral and constitutional change, however, one of the obstacles to the implementation of any reforms is surely compulsory voting, where the ignorant and apathetic are compelled to vote. A necessary condition for reform in Australia is the abolition of compulsory voting.

Not sure how you arrive at conclusion that the Constitution is out-dated then say what a good job the Senate has done up to 2004 election (that being an indicator of a healthy constitution I would have thought) however, let's look at the nub of your article - the need for people to take voting seriously.

If you care to consider why 96% of voters chose to abrogate their voting responsibility in the Senate poll in 2004 you might just start to uncover the real cause of voter apathy - enforced compulsory preferential voting.

Twist a little bit of Party political self-interest into the mix and you have a voting system that (i) forces people to cast a vote for people they loathe and then (ii) gives them a simple way to abrogate responsibility for doing so by letting a political party choose how to distribute their preferences for them.

I would argue that since the group ticketing system commenced in 1983 there has not been a representative Senate elected in this country in the sense contemplated in section 7 of the Constitution.

I would also argue that forcing people to cast a vote is bad enough without then denying them the power to limit distribution of their preferences.

Anyone who wants to take the matter up with their local MP should go to www.myspace.com/savethesenate and check out the lobbying kit.

the right to vote is trivial. the important thing is deciding what to do. in oz, you get only one vote to express your feeling about who will best manage all the major functions of society. the result is voting to protect one's income by most of the electorate.

in a democratic society, the important questions would be decided separately, by direct election of ministers or citizen initiative. we don't have these powers, and until ozzies realize they don't have democracy, they can't strive to get it.

so don't refer to oz as a democracy, it's a parliamentary society, run by pollie gangsters. say so.

C’mon Klaus. You say “The dominance of the major parties is a curse on the body politic reinforced by compulsory voting” and then you imply C.V. is a good thing. Maybe on the planet Jupiter one might believe that everyone will spend hours at the local library researching the socio-political-economic system because ‘Gee! I have to vote anyway so I better go bone up on all the ramifications of my vote’ but back here on planet earth, the best bet is that someone who doesn’t care and doesn’t know before the election will, by the time of the election only have learnt that he still resents as much as ever having to act in what he sees as a charade.

Also, how can something that is a “precious right” also be a “duty”? Aren’t the two concepts contradictory. A right is something you can arbitrarily indulge in while a duty is something you cannot refrain from.
www.compulsoryvoting.org

Edward

This is an interesting forum. I agree that the right to vote is a valuable priviledge that few of us can afford to 'throw away' so I was quite surprised when I came across an article yesterday where a chap is selling his 'Federal vote' on Ebay ! (http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22601398-5001028,00.html Since this article was published, the link to the actual ebay item is broken, but if you do a search on ebay, some other Federal Votes are on offer).

Does anybody know if this is a criminal offense under the state gov. or a Federal/Commonwealth offence ?

Thanks in advance :)

Peterg78