Very well said, Jason.

However, there is very little reason for the politicians to go into any discussion of their party platforms. This would only confuse the general electorate - you know - the ones who think it is cool to have your prime minister hanging out in a strip club.

The biggest inhibitor we have to any meaningful discussion of party platforms or requiring politicians to backup their wildest assertions is the mandatory vote.

If we eliminated the mandatory voting requirement only those who care and are interested would vote. Of course we would loose from 35% to 60% of the voters but these are the donkey voters anyway. This is the uncaring, uninterested, and uneducated that give our current pollies so much pleasure because they never pose hard questions nor do they demand the truth. They want only to hear what may affect them directly such as a swing set in the playground and lower taxes on beer.

Elimination of the mandatory vote would give much more strength to the caring, educated and interested voters. These are the voters that would demand an explanation and public debate of the party platforms. They would demand thought out public policy statements. And they would demand significantly more intelligent questioning by the press.

if only we were to get the democratic features of california politics...

as you perhaps don't know, citizens of california can vote directly for senior officers of state, can demand accounting of their activities, can vote on current referenda bi-annually, can initiate referenda, and can fire officers that are not performing through recall referenda. this political structure is commonly called "democracy", and the resemblance to californian democracy of any australian state is currently: zip.

because oz voters have no substantive power, the chattering class must talk about superficial matters, or be silent. as there is no reward in silence, we get articles like this.

Adding to what Bruce has commented, it is my belief that the removal of mandatory voting would also minimise the intense pork-barrelling of so-called marginal electorates. It would be particularly good to see all pollies having to get out into their electorates and door-knock voters to try to ensure that people would actually get out the door and into a polling booth on election day.

There is another issue that really concerns and annoys me, and that is the media management ("spin") that takes place where the media are fed carefully hoarded media releases at the last minute, usually just after being bussed to a stage-managed photo-op. There is little chance for searching questions being prepared when the journalists are not even allowed to know where they are being taken or what the purpose of the "event" even is.

Good point Bruce. Sadly the majority of Australians firmly believe that madatory voting is a benefit, not a hinderance to true democracy.

How democratic is it to compel your citizens to vote? Never mind its corrosive effect on politics itself.

To Bruce and jimoctec,

I first came accross the idea of mandatory and non-mandatory voting in a first year political science class. Till then I didn't really think about different types of democracy - like Democratic Elitism (USA) or Participatory Democracy (Aust). While both have their pro's and con's, knowing more about the political process with age and experience I'm not convinced non mandatory voting would provide more benifits.

I don't see how it would stop pork barrelling and while it may give "caring, educated and interested voters" a little more clout it would also lead to more influence for specialised lobby groups that campaign and marginalise voters according to their issue of choice (eg. abortion?). Lobby groups fuction better with organisation and money - so those with more money would be in a better position to take advantage of such a system.

Mandatory voting forces people to at least engage for a moment in the process, and can be seen as a hand brake on political apathy and cynisism which is far too prevelent in many democratic countries.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious - and glaring - flaw in the article's title, DEMOS. If we did have the political structure of California, and its ability to elect leaders of vision and credibility, (and un-elect the gross failures, through grass-roots activism), we would indeed be blessed. We don't. So we aren't.

And Hotrod...

>>Mandatory voting forces people to at least engage for a moment in the process, and can be seen as a hand brake on political apathy and cynisism which is far too prevalent in many democratic countries<<

I disagree.

All that mandatory voting achieves is the magnification of the lowest common denominator, where actual "engagement for a moment in the process" simply amounts to hearing a series of sound-alike sound-bites.

The only process we were allowed to engage in was the physical placement of our pencil-mark on the ballot paper.

Mental engagement was simply not a requirement. In fact, for our troubles, we were allowed even less "engagement with the process" than we would have on a normal slow-news Wednesday.

Forcing people to make a choice between a smiling, new absence-of-policies and a grim, over-the-hill absence-of-policies should not be what democracy is all about.