LafariWhy is Australia the only "core anglosphere" country where voting is mandatory?
In order words, why is voting mandatory in Australia, but not UK, US, Canada or New Zealand?
The idea gets raised periodically here, especially since the huge drop in turnout in 1997.
There’s a Research Briefing on it in the Commons Library.
I haven’t read it but it’s a terrible idea. Just another way for the parties to avoid having to offer anything worth voting for.
⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻Not really. Plus we have alot more independents/minor parties due to our preferential voting system that people can vote for. What it does is forces people to are more about politics and policy
I think it forces a lot of idiots to just pick a box when they aren’t informed on politics at all. Probably skews the numbers a bit tbh.
Or they get fined if they can’t get to a polling booth due to disability and poor disability access, or circumstances.
There are allowances for that
Idiots are citizens too unfortunately, and their opinions matter. There are no fines for submitting an invalid vote (or if they exist they aren’t enforceable due to the anonymity of the ballot)
I haven’t read it but it’s a terrible idea.
“Yeah sure I don’t know what I’m talking about, but here’s my strong opinion anyways”
I haven’t read this specific report, that doesn’t mean I’m making shit up on the spot.
No one has yet explained why Australia has a far-right party called Liberal and a centre-right party called Labor. Compulsory voting is why, IMO.
spittingimageMaybe it should be mandatory in the US. It would make voter suppression harder, if not impossible.
roofuskitAnother way for conservatives to warehouse people who voted against them in prisons? I’m surprised it’s not already law.
Mandatory voting would include prisoners.
Not in the US, conservatives would make not voting a felony and use it disenfranchise people, otherwise it would never become law to begin with.
Guess why it’s not a law already.
Follow-up question: If voting is mandatory, but you don’t want to vote for any of the parties, what are you expected to do?
This issue for me personally is that it’s still a choice between a douche and turd sandwich. I don’t think our political system is anything to write home about.
But to answer this, I have to go to the polling station, get my name marked off a list by some delusional person, go into a booth and hope that someone appreciates the quality of the veiny dick and balls improving over the years when they unwrap the origami that is my ballot paper.
Nice South Park reference! I guess you probably haven’t been penalised in any way or you’d know, so you can probably get away with that. But isn’t it technically illegal to not cast a proper vote in Australia? (I think compulsory voting is stupid so I don’t blame you btw)
You’re probably right and I assume the same. And as you can tell, I’m not invested enough in our system to go look up any particulars. If they could find me out without compromising the system I’m sure I’d be hit with the fine. Of course, plenty of ballots aren’t counted because they are not marked correctly. I doubt I’ll ever read a news story about someone being fined because they couldn’t follow the ballot instruction.
When they move to electronic voting systems only all I’ll be able to do is be caught fucking it. 😞
The lengths they have me go… I tell you!!
Hahah!!
You go to vote and invalidate the ballot. Mark none or all of the boxes or write ‘fu’ on it. It’s not that hard.
Isn’t that illegal? I think it’s legal in the UK though, someone told me it’s tradition to draw a big cross on the whole ballot paper and they actually count no-votes as distinct from non-votes, or something like that.
How do you think they would verify or sanction an invalid ballot? Given that voting is secret and therefore there’s logically no personal information on the ballot, this would be rather tricky - or extremely worrisome for democracy. ;) So no, it’s definitely not illegal in any somewhat democratic nation. And yes, most countries do count invalid votes separately. This can be an important indicator that something went wrong. Eg if suddenly all districts report much higher numbers of invalid ballots, something might have gone wrong in the counting process or just the ballot design might be too confusing. Definitely worth looking into, though. And if a single district shows an unusual count of invalid ballots compared to others, that also is worth looking into.
Many that intentionally vote invalid claim to do so to show their frustration with all party options. However, this hurts democracy. Even if do not love or even like any of the parties/candidates, you still should vote.
Vote for the “least of the bad”. A vote for a democratic candidate that has a boring mix of policies planned that you don’t fully support is still a lot better than anything on the other end of the spectrum, with radical extremists working to undermine society or democracy itself. By voting invalid, your missing vote ends up being “shared” by everyone, and I’m certain there’s some on the list that you really don’t want to even have the tiniest shred of your vote.
Because FREEDOM!
Eagle screams in the background
FYI: eagles don’t really scream. That fake scream from movies/tv, etc. is from a red tailed hawk.
I know, but I had to be as stereotypical as possible.
Not enough guns and yeehaw noises. 3 out of 10.
Valid criticism.
ALQThat response loses you another point. Should’ve threatened to bring in the cavalry!
I’m too Canadian for this, sorry!
It’s easier to get a recording of a hawk that never shuts up. Eagles let out a screech too, but not often. Try stealing a fish from a bald eagle. Bring a tape recorder…and some bandages.
NOT_RICKFound this online:
According to the Australian Electoral Commission, the decline in voter turnout was the driving force behind the introduction of mandatory voting. It said that voter turnout dropped from 71 per cent in the 1919 election to less than 60 per cent in the 1922 elections.
In order to address the problem, a private member’s bill to amend the Electoral Act was introduced in the Senate in 1924. At the time, it was only the third private member’s bill to be passed into law since 1901.
As a result of the law, the voter turnout at the 1925 election rose to over 91 per cent.
Gradually, states across the country introduced compulsory voting starting from Victoria in 1926, New South Wales and Tasmania in 1928, Western Australia in 1936 and South Australia in 1942.
When enrollment and voting at federal elections was introduced for Australian Aborigines in 1949 it was voluntary, and continued to be so until 1984 when enrollment and voting became compulsory for all eligible electors.
Oh wow here in America we have party that banks on reducing turnout
Because it’s a terrible idea? Elections are already heavily weighted towards name recognition. What are people who can’t even be bothered to go out to vote going to offer to the process?
GiganThat’s true, you can require them to vote, but you can’t require them to be informed.
magnetosphereThat’s a very good argument.
Bad news though. Almost none of today’s voters are properly informed either.
But at least with volunteer voting, you get some correlation between someone being informed and their likelihood of voting.
I disagree. You would see a correlation between those people who think they are informed and those who vote.
And unfortunately, people who are smart enough to know they aren’t informed are probably the ones who should be voting. Forcing them to do so will cause some portion to read.
People who are SURE they are informed are either the very well informed, or the idiots who don’t know any better, but who will happily vote for whoever they are told.
And this is the real heart of the problem. I would love to see a ban on all political advertising while providing an easily accessible source to read the policies of each party. Without the branding and cults of personality we could have a system that actually makes decision based on policy
I’m pretty sure in Australia you can just turn in a blank ballot. But yeah, compulsory voting is kind of odd.
It’s the simplest solution to fight voter disenfranchisement. It stops parties from trying to play that particular stupid game.
ParadoxvoidIt forces politics to the centre. Parties put a huge amount of effort into ‘bringing out the vote’, and do things to appeal to the fringe which is how you get characters like Trump finding success. When this isn’t a concern, parties can focus on policies that appeal to the majority of people rather than fringe groups that they can use to guarantee voter turnout.
We get the option to vote by mail for free weeks in advance.
You don’t even have to get off your fat arse.
The alternative is voter suppression, which leads to unequal access. Also, given that more passionate individuals are gonna seek out a ballot vs. others, the result is going to be skewed in favor of those passionate people regardless of their understanding of reality or truthfullness.
I admit it might help the current problem, since people less passionate about the issues might be less inclined to vote for reactionaries, but I don’t think the result would be better representation. Most likely the result would be a system that leans even heavier on marketing to get brand recognition for the party to the most people
We already have a system like that in the US. Whoever has a wider reach and/or higher budget gets more turnout. A big reason why Obama won was because of his presence on social media, and Trump won because of the insane amount of media coverage he has. The current system gives prederence to voters who treat elections like simple popularity contests, whereas mandatory voting would force people who somewhat pay attention to current events and not to campaigns to be counted.
Motivating people to vote, in the US at least, seems like a process of whipping up fear and anger. I would argue that taking away the need to motivate people in tbis way is a positive for everyone. It also results in a more representative and legitimate government.
The fear and anger is to get people to vote for them. That wouldn’t go away under mandatory voting. Unfortunately, unless we can find a way to resolve the culture war that has spread globally now, that will always be an easy exploit
All the people saying mandatory voting is bad are misinformed. It is essential for democracy, and should be applied everywhere.
Australia has mandatory voter turnout, but you do not need to submit a vote. You just need to show up on polling day.
Everyone has political interests and needs to be politically represented, but some people are too tired after work to take themselves to the polling centre. Others are incarcerated. If anything, those people are more in need of political representatives.
American conservatives spend billions trying to prevent poor overworked people from reaching polling places or exercising their right to vote. Mandatory voting prevents that.
Make no mistake, Australian democracy is healtheir than whatever clusterfuck in going on in the US.
Whether mandatory voting is bad or not, certainly it’s way better than the American situation, where one particular party’s strategy to win elections is to discourage and actively prevent people from voting. In Australia, every political party seeks to win by collecting votes.
Yeah I hate the fact that one party’s strategy is actively invalidating votes for one of the candidates.
JusticeForPorygonNot only that, but Australia’s actual ballot is leagues better, too. Ranked ballots are a great way to weaken (unfortunately not eliminate) the two party system, which is unfortunately also the reason the United States will never see anything like it. (At least not in the foreseeable future.)
naevaTheRatYeah we do have single member seats in the lower house though which is a completely broken system.
Most of Europe recognises that, our frienemies across the ditch recognise that.
Consensus seeking and coalitions are much more representative forms of government than single member winner takes all seats.
Yep, this is why the Senate is much more representative, and why the big parties who control the House of Representatives hate it so much.
touristI don’t pay too much attention to Australian politics, but whenever I see headlines it’s always something like “MP literally destroying the barrier reef with his own bare hands” or “Corruption whistleblower sentenced to one thousand years in jail”
Things like “MP approves funding for new hospital” don’t make headlines. Even moreso for any world headlines to rise above the din of American politics it usually has to be something pretty outrageous.
It’s because you do hear about it. We recently had an mp forced to retire because they could control policy over something his mother has shares in.
The important thing to note is: Australia has a genuinely solid chance of removing the right-wing nutjobs / spineless centrist two-party system BECAUSE of mandatory voting. Young people in USA have appalling voter turn out. But young people in Australia are seriously turning the tides. See the results by age group for the 2019 election. The boomers are still voting in right-wing nutjobs (Liberal party), most groups have strong centrist representation (Labor), and Gen Z are bringing in a third, non-major, left-aligned party (Greens). It brings so much hope for younger generations and the fact that voting doesn’t feel futile.
ddhThis chart gives me hope.
Australia has mandatory voter turnout, but you do not need to submit a vote. You just need to show up on polling day.
So just to clear up a technical misconception here - the wording in the Electoral Act is quite clear. All enrolled electors are legally required to vote. It’s only a consequence of the secret ballot that makes this provision unenforceable, so someone can turn up and get their name marked off while not submitting a vote without facing any consequences, but it is technically an illegal act.
If the AEC were to come up with some way to determine that you didn’t vote without betraying that secret ballot, they would be within their rights to issue a you a fine.
When you go to vote they check you off on either a physical or digital list - so they can work out who didn’t vote. What they can’t work out is whether you submitted a legit ballot