Compulsory is such a good system. It doesn’t take long. It’s on a weekend so it’s not inconvenient. You get a sausage at the sausage sizzle and you do your vote. There’s a real holiday atmosphere. And it produces much more representative results. Brexit wouldn’t have happened if they had compulsory voting so there’s no denying it’s valuable.
To be clear, I am asking why the “push” is for compulsory and not optional, given there is likely to be stronger opposition to the former. Either will give a voice to those who want one, but on paper optional would seem to be a more realistic goal and therefore makes more sense to advocate for. Advocating for compulsory kind of feels like letting perfect be the enemy of good, so to speak.
Changing the voting age is one change, but making voting non compulsory for some voters starts to get messy. It would also be an easy thing for a government to tweak to reduce youth voter turnout by shifting that number around.
The push is to lower the voting age to 16. Voting is compulsory, hence the headline. Plus, I doubt making it optional until 18 would change many people’s minds on whether or not we should lower the voting age.
zik@aussie.zone 2 months ago
Compulsory is such a good system. It doesn’t take long. It’s on a weekend so it’s not inconvenient. You get a sausage at the sausage sizzle and you do your vote. There’s a real holiday atmosphere. And it produces much more representative results. Brexit wouldn’t have happened if they had compulsory voting so there’s no denying it’s valuable.
BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“you get a sausage at the sausage sizzle” is going to be my phrase of the week, thank you!
Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 months ago
Urgh. Tell that to ECQ at last month’s council elections. Absolute fucking farcical job they did running those elections.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So you’re saying we should be Straya?
Ilandar@aussie.zone 2 months ago
To be clear, I am asking why the “push” is for compulsory and not optional, given there is likely to be stronger opposition to the former. Either will give a voice to those who want one, but on paper optional would seem to be a more realistic goal and therefore makes more sense to advocate for. Advocating for compulsory kind of feels like letting perfect be the enemy of good, so to speak.
zik@aussie.zone 2 months ago
Why not start them off in the way you mean to continue? It’s not like there are any significant downsides.
Ilandar@aussie.zone 2 months ago
Increased opposition is a significant downside.
irasponsible@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Changing the voting age is one change, but making voting non compulsory for some voters starts to get messy. It would also be an easy thing for a government to tweak to reduce youth voter turnout by shifting that number around.
jagungal@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The push is to lower the voting age to 16. Voting is compulsory, hence the headline. Plus, I doubt making it optional until 18 would change many people’s minds on whether or not we should lower the voting age.