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Comment on Compulsory voting in Australia is 100 years old. We should celebrate how special it makes our democracy

For decades I thought cumpolsory voting was a good idea, the nit pick bad faith argiment about only having to have your name ticked off is a distraction.

Until I heard t single counter argument that they don’t want people who are angry with that cumpolsory voting system to vote.

And that changed my mind, I do’t want angry people who do not want to be there voting, I want people who want to me there

I am pro euthenasia as I am against cumpolsory voting for much the the same reason, that should be something beyond the states control.

Aside from the freedom to choose your own death if you wish, the freedom to vote should be inalienable right granted every citizen in a democracy.

I heard from many folk that they’d rather have the Jacinta Arden led Labour government then ScoMo and yet NZ voting isn’t cumpolsory.

There’s something else afoot, self absorbed, greedy people electing appalling politcans is de rigeur, a cumpolsory voting system doesn’t stop it, nor does ranked choice (preferential) voting. We have incredibly toxic politcans amongst us, I could name a dozen or more.

I don’t think one is better then the other. I dont think what we have is the best way, it’s incredibly corrupt and the older I get the more disillusioned I become with voters (not with politcans, they’re like flies to shit, so I blame the shit, not the flies) we are constantly offered different parts and refuse to tale them, what we have is nothing to celebrate IMO.

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stepchook@mastodon.au ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
@hanrahan @Ilandar
Contrast this with the old world where historically in britain, there were centuries when only landowners were allowed to vote. The industrial revolution saw new laws that allowed those with a certain acreage OR enough cash could vote. The system was horrifically skewed towards the wealthy. I can completely understand early Australian insistence that all adults vote and then extending it to include Aboriginal people in 1967. Nobody is excluded from contributing to legislation. At least we must all chose a party every four years. On the other hand- in the age of the internet - Why we aren't voting online over party membership, platform and policy decisions beggars belief. There are attempts to make a difference. Both by direct action (XR as example) and indirect pressure https://ccl.org.au/
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- eureka@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  On the other hand- in the age of the internet - Why we aren’t voting online over party membership, platform and policy decisions beggars belief.
  
  Direct democracy is a neat area of exploration, and there’s been great theory on how to securely and anonymously implement verifiable voting systems. There are some major implementation problems with online voting whatsoever from a security perspective, but nonetheless I think direct democracy a good system to aim for, especially seeing the gap in (e.g.) the Labor Party policy internally between the members and the leadership.
  
  Nobody is excluded from contributing to legislation. At least we must all chose a party every four years.
  
  In a way, yes, although I also believe that contribution is extremely limited and astronomically overshadowed by capital (see things like lobbying and mass media bias) making direct action and indirect pressure necessary to represent the worker class.
  
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eureka@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There’s also a idealistic argument that making voting compulsory forces people to care. Ask anyone who counts votes whether everyone cares or not. Drawings of penises, scrawled messages, blank ballots and donkey votes aren’t rare. In local elections, my friend processed a blank ballot with “STOP OVERDEVELOPMENT!” written on it, instead of voting for either of the independents whose entire platform was “Let’s stop over development!”.

One of the upsides of compulsory voting is that it forces people to be able to vote. Look at horror stories in the US to see what I mean, where some people can’t leave work to vote, are omitted from the voting roll for garbage reasons, that kind of broken system. But obviously compulsory voting isn’t necessary to make voting availability a priority! So it’s hardly an argument for preserving it.

My attitude (and this stems from having managed and been involved in democratic organizations myself) is that the ideal democratic decision-making process is to get as many informed voters as possible. Consider Condorcet’s jury theorem - having 100 decently-informed voters is better than 5 experts voting, but 100 or even 1000 un-informed voters is worse than both! Participation alone is not valuable. Forcing people to vote is useless from a decision-making perspective, nor is it enough to encourage people to become informed and involved. I’d rather only 1 million people vote with actual reasons than 25 million just pick the team they’ve always voted for, or based on media misconceptions, or just tick a box and not mean it. I think it’s not hard to become decently informed either, but nonetheless, there should be serious effort to create an informed population if we’re going to use a democratic system of governance.

Does anyone think its “Democratic” for Tasmania to have the same number of senators as NSW ?

Are you therefore suggesting a [federal] democracy should have all votes be equal? Or, to phrase that another way, “Would you think it’s “Democratic” for the entire Northern Territory to be have the same number of ministers as the ACT, or as two-and-a-half inner-Sydney electorates?” The issue there being, major issues affecting a huge part of the country would get dismal representation, and urban issues would get all the expertise. Neither popular representation or regional representation alone is considered adequate representation, so we have a Senate focused on regional representation and the HoR for popular representation. It’s a compromise, because both extremes have serious flaws ruining representative democracy’s aim.

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Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I thought i’d put this response separately to the other to break the topics up.

the freedom to vote should be inalienable right granted every citizen in a democracy.

Its more like a duty with a nudge (being a letter and a small fine).

Seeing everything through the lense of an individual’s inalienable rights is problematic. This individualist, or libertarian creed promulgated by the success of US culture has made the atomisation of the cultural and public sphere seem ‘the only way of things’.

But a Country where individuals have rights gives rise to a duty upon the rest. Its essential for the assertion of rights that the rest have agreed to uphold that standard in solidarity with the individual. So the individual still relies on the collectives consent, implied or explicit.

When considered its obvious of course, even in the US this of course occurs. But its easily forgotten when reversed, and the needs of the many come to the doorstep of the individual in the course of their lives.

We all have a tendency to self regard, just like the ‘angry at compulsory voting voter’ but at times, inconvenient or not, we have a duty to take account of others needs. In that case the rest need the individual’s vote to ensure democracy remains legitimate, and holds from sliding into autocracy or worse.

The example of euthanasia is interesting, related is Voluntary Assisted Dying. This is actually a case where the collective is quietly recognising a duty to help a person in permanent pain and suffering end their own life on their own terms. So, this is a right for the individual, but their recently recognised right is giving rise to our duty.

People in a well functioning democracy have a well balanced mix of rights and duties, explicit or implied. For democracy to work we need the people to be engaged in these. The higher the rate of engagement the better. This doesn’t mean everybody voting on every minute decision; there are many ways to participate in democracy.

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Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Does anyone think its “Democratic” for Tasmania to have the same number of senators as NSW ?

It is democratic, as it is still “representative” rule by the people. But as you suggest it is unequal per-person representation. There are reasons for and against this. You’ve highlighted the against argument well.

The ‘for’ argument, which has prevailed so far is, without the levelling power of the Senate, the Commonwealth of Australia will be dominated by the larger populations of Victoria and NSW. In a place as sparse, and with as diverse needs as Australia the ignorance of a central power base to the needs and aspirations of periphery populations will lead to animosity and disunity, thereby inhibiting and hurting the centre and periphery more than any disfunction caused by equalised numbers of Senators.

Basically its a mechanism forcing us to listen and value, in substantive terms, each other in our geographic locations.

Also, this ‘for’ view of the value of the Senate’s equal representives, to my mind, makes the idea of equalising the number of Senators from NT and ACT with the States an uncontroversial and desirable proposal.

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Pregnenolone@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The people who are “angry” is minuscule on the actual day. It’s very much statistical minority and we shouldn’t be pandering to them

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