Why not just limit polls to the official ones in the polling booth? We have the right to a secret ballot. I feel that all polls except the one in the polling booth are violations of the secret ballot. I refuse to respond to any polls except the one ordained by law. I think many other people feel the same way. That might be the reason polls except for the ones ordained by law will continue to be inaccurate. Which candidates I favour and which candidates I will vote for or have voted for is nobody else’s business. I hope more people will refuse to cooperate with the pollsters.

Its my opinion that opinion polls do not reflect peoples opinions. They should be called some other kind of poll, a maybe opinion poll, but not opinion poll, but I don't have an opinion on that one way or the other, so the opinion is 50% agree, 50% disagree and 100% are undecided. Therefore allowing for the margin of error of 100% the opinion is two prefer cats, three prefer dogs, and one wants an ice-cream twice on Sundays.

I once got suckered into doing a "survey" into men's shoes. This guy in a shopping centre car park asked if I could spare a "few minutes" to step into his long van and do this bloody survey. Well, it started off having me rate shoes out of 10, for colour, style etc etc, this guy had lots of shoes, and lots of questions. After about 20 minutes and my umteeth shoe, looking at yet another shoe, sick of the sight of shoes, as I was, "6 for style, 4 for colour, he jumps in and says "at number four station, you said this shoe was 8 for style, and 6 for colour". With that I lost it; note this on your bloody clip board I said; "Black shoes ok, brown ones fair, white ones crap!" "What are we doing here, curing cancer, No". With that, I jumped up and left!

I am not sure about the legal technicality, but the right for a secret ballot is there for a reason - there is some philosophy behind, which is to avoid situations where people are intimidated or ashamed to have their true beliefs exposed to family, friends, employers, authorities, etc. While this is pretty unlikely to actually occur in Australia, secret ballots are an important safeguard.

Now what are the risks for this to occur in informal polls/surveys? What if the boss is looking over one's shoulder and expects certain answers? The worst result would be incorrect poll-results, not a big deal, then how many people actually answer surveys with someone looking over their shoulder? I think it is quite rare.

Personal/party-preference polls that mimic elections are silly, but more important are surveys about particular policies. Hopefully politicians will take note and try to please potential voters with agreeable policies: we should not miss this opportunity to influence by throwing the baby away with the bath-water.

The secret ballot makes it virtually impossible to buy votes for a simple cash payment or to confer favours with any certainty that the recipient will vote the way the payer/conferrer wants.

"The 1843 Legislative Council election in New South Wales was the first of its kind in Australia. Elections were rough and tumble exercises run along similar lines to those in England — where ballots were cast in full view of the assembled crowds.

The only people allowed to vote were men who owned land worth £200 or more or who rented a dwelling for £20 or more a year.

Alcohol, bribery, coercion and violence were intrinsic to the process, and elections at this time often ended in riots resulting in many injuries. In 1843 two men were shot — one in Sydney and another in Melbourne. As the Irish journalist William Kelly said of the early Victorian polls, they were, ‘nothing more or less than pantomime in a frenzy’."

The Secret Ballot bears little resemblance to Opinion Polls.

Issy, do you prefer the Shooters and Hooters method; a shoot out at ten paces?

"The secret ballot makes it virtually impossible to buy votes" Nah! there's 100 voters, you pay off 51, after the ballot you lost 100 blot. Your know which 51 you need to rub out!

I'd like to see a survey on 'should Public Servants be banned from voting" !