First matey the Meeja always pick some absolute knob to give a skewed view of their own. Second if you don't like Australia go elsewhere.
The fact is the preferential voting system is now being gamed by the right as well as the left and so the lefties cry foul!
As pointed out you do not have to vote just attend the polling station. Personally I think we should fine anyone who repeats "We have to vote" it would get some tax at least.

Mikk, the general understanding that most voters have is that they are required to cast a vote and therefore mark their ballot paper, and that they have to mark every square to make it legitimate.

The implication is that if you lodge a blank ballot paper or deliberately illegitimise it by not marking every square, then you are doing something dodgy, irresponsible and technically illegal.

Yes of course we have the democratic right to lodge a blank or annulled ballot paper.

Although I’m not so sure that we actually have the legal right to do that.

If we really wanted to exercise our democratic responsibilities at election time, we’d lodge a blank ballot paper… well…. not quite blank…. covered with obscenities, objecting to the DESPICABLY antidemocratic Compulsory Preferential Voting system.

We wouldn’t vote for any minor candidates that we might like, because our vote would very often filter down and end up counting for a party that we specifically wanted to vote against !! !! !!

Sheesh, we are incredibly hypocritical here in OZ. We promote democracy in places like Afghanistan, and yet our form of democracy is based on the most utterly undemocratic counterintuitive voting system you could ever get.

We look at all the problems with free and fair elections in many countries around the world. We hold ourselves up as being totally above all of that. But we don’t see just how rank our voting system is, directly due to CPV.

Ludwig "For the last several elections I have voted for no candidate/party, as none has deserved my vote."

As far as I am concerned, anyone who does a donkey vote has no right to comment on the results of an election, because they did not participate in that election.

< As far as I am concerned, anyone who does a donkey vote has no right to comment on the results of an election, because they did not participate in that election. >

There's no Anarchy selection on the ballot paper so who am I suppose to vote for?

Just because I didn't vote doesn't mean I can bitch like everyone else. I still have to follow the rules laid down by the percentage that voted against me.

What makes me laugh is all those that think democracy is the way to go. In a democracy, 49% of people in a country of 23 million is 11.4 million people totally jacked! That's a lot of pissed off people! Is it any wonder we constantly hear whaling?

Democracy is a joke! And if voting worked, they'd ban it!

Suse,
I've found that for the most part the people casting informal ballots are more aware of the various party platforms and the issues pressing on society. Informal votes are counted in the final tally so the informal voter has actually participated in the electoral process, again, democracy is the rule of the mob (or the rule of the streets), not the rule of the voter, the politician or the party.
An example of vestigal democracy as practiced in the Australia of 2014 would be the endless Twitter and Facebook campaigns used to bully and intimidate businesses and individuals into political correctness or the Occupy and Sea Shepherd provocations.
Like most of the formerly powerful institutions in our society, religion, art, science etc democracy is just a stump of what it once was. It's such a novelty that the Occupy thugs and Twitter bullies thing that they're "starting something" when in reality 100 years ago political meetings regularly descended into chaotic melee and political disputes were settled with fists, boots and bludgeons.

Suse, that’s terrible!

There’s a whole bunch of things fundamentally wrong with that.

1. It is our democratic right to vote for no candidate. If we choose to do so in a considered way, then we are undertaking our democratic duty just as fully as we would if we were voting for any candidate in a considered way…. and more fully than voting in an ill-considered manner, which many if not the vast majority of voters do.

2. When you look at the politics of the Libs, Labs, Groans and others, you could very easily find that you have significant disagreement with their policies and legitimately not want to vote for any of them.

3. When you look at how the compulsory preferential voting system works, you will see that even if you do vote for a minor candidate, and wish to put the big parties last and second last, your vote will probably end up counting for the one you put second last after your preferences have filtered down. How can anyone who gives a damn possibly be party to that sort of incredibly antidemocratic VOTE-STEALING voting system? It is surely your democratic DUTY to NOT be a part of such a disgusting perversion of democracy!

4. Most people vote for the candidate they dislike the least. It is not a matter for them of voting for someone or some party that they really endorse. So how does this fit with democracy, and the right to comment on elections? Suse, do you think we should vote for a candidate/party that we really strongly don’t like, simply because we dislike the alternatives even more?

5. In saying that you think I shouldn’t have the right to comment on elections, you are violating the fundamental principle of free speech. So, do you extend that sort of thinking to other things? If someone does something wrong or something you disagree with, do you think that they should forego their rights to voice an opinion on anything related to the particular issue?