Comment on ABC 2025 Election Watch Party
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 day agoWell, put it this way, whats harder?
Everybody of voting age has to vote.
Or (for example),
Number the candidates in order of most preferred. (Ranked Choice)
I think the first one is simpler to communicate than the second, and in an electoral reform decision like this simplicity of communication is very important.
But thats my point, not that IRV or MMP, et al, are uniquely hard or complicated to understand.
gedhrel@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A solution to “people feel disempowered” isn’t “force them to express an opinion”. If turnout is low then give the lie to “my vote doesn’t matter”.
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 day ago
“Forcing” by essentially hitting people on the head with Parsley isn’t exactly the same as the sentiment in your comment.
If people really don’t want to vote in Australia, they don’t vote, theres fines sure, but they’re not big, and i’d be surprised if they chase people for it.
But theres more people than you’d think who never enrolled to vote, thereby never getting a fine, and also never voting. I’s listening to a podcast, i think it was Ben Raue’s, where they demonstrated that the participation rate is actually probably lower than reported due to non-enrolled people not voting. So in percentage terms its maybe high eighties, still good… but… So the rosy picture sold by the media isn’t quite on the money.
This is a consumerist centric view to take. People have self regard for themselves and their immediates above others. I’m not saying some neo-lib greed is good shit, we humans can just find it difficult to see much further past our immediate priorities.
Parties, and Governments aren’t a mall filled with products for casual perusal, they’re a tool we’ve collectively come up with to deliver a greater vision for the tribe’s success in general. But these tools need feedback, and they need energy to function properly.
They only work if theres participation. If people don’t want to bother with that, then they’ll find sooner or later an even less generally amenable decision making system will guide the future of their tribe.
Its the same as the old Bread and Circuses saying, distracting the masses and suppressing their voice makes it easier to seize more control.
gedhrel@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’d say “democratic” rather than “consumerist”; that’s a really odd choice of term (and a poor one I think). I live in a ward that’s solidly single-party in an FPTP system. Whether I vote or not is strictly irrelevant and always will be. There is no incentive for my representative to be anything other than a party cypher.
I’d rather see a PR system in place (STV by preference, but we’d probably end up with AMS so that party sinecures are still possible). For single-seat wards, I’d sooner have ranked-choice, because at the moment people have to thread a needle in order to attempt to stave off the headbanger candidates.
Mandatory voting I’d be less keen on unless it came with a “reopen nominations” but the issue with that is that that option would win by a landslide.
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 day ago
No i meant consumerist.
The carelessly detached mindset that is promoted by my vote doesn’t matter so you give me the lie to it leads to a benign indolence of voters, making them just like shoppers listlessly wandering around a mall, being mildly entertained for a few moments by some trinket.
Also, i want to be clear, I’s clearly stating Mandatory voting as a first step, not an only step. Lots more could be done, someboptions are as you highlight. Lots more can be done is Aus to, we are far from as effective democratically as we could be.