Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 16:20:44 +0000 From: Justin <justin-cypherpunks@soze.net> Subject: Re: Fact checking

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Australia has mandatory voting. I think that's what you're arguing against

I'm arguing against any sort of coercion - whether it's a loss of rights, being stuffed in a prison, or being beaten with a stick. You consider voting in Australia to be mandatory? The punishment is a fine, different from loss of suffrage but not necessarily more serious.

I'm not in favor of compulsory voting, but you wont have to pay the small fine unless you're too lazy to think of an excuse. Last time I got off by claiming my foot was too sore to walk to the polling station. In practice it's only compulsory to either apply for an absentee vote or attend a polling station on election day and get your name crossed off a list. You can bin the pieces of paper the official gives you. The effect is that about 70% of voters just turn up and vote the way "their" party tells them to vote. This number is in secular decline. I think what's needed is a "None of the above" option on the ballot. If "None of the above" won a majority then the office would be left vacant. (We actually had this system for student elections at my alma mater) Non-voters obviously aren't sufficiently attracted to any of the candidates to bother voting, so they should be counted as votes for "None of the above" (but not this part -- they were doing well to get a 10% turn-out for a student election). Pretty soon we'd have no government. cheers, Tim