Right – there are a lot of Australians who treat Saturday as the Sabbath, including Jews and Seventh Day Adventists.
Who can all easily pre-poll/postal vote if they wish to avoid voting on the Saturday.
An option might be to vote for" none of the above". We should have that box available. Write ins are very difficult in our locale. There should be a blank spot and a pen .
For information, the Australian Electoral Commission summarises the arguments for and against compulsory voting here:
For
Against
NB “Donkey votes” are those where the voter simply numbers his preferences 1, 2, 3…down the list of candidates.
I have said for years that this needs to be an option. If “none of the above” wins, they either have to re-do the election with different candidates, or the position is eliminated from government.
Yup, time to come in and do damage control.
Dad, apparently, types with his forhead. I know this because I hear the loud “clang! clang!” when the keyboard tray snaps back up against the underside of the desk.
In any case, I don’t think voting should be mandatory. I’d like to see people vote, and I think that, in order to keep our status as “democracy”, we need to get more people voting, but if people don’t care, they don’t care. You can’t make people care and you can’t bribe them to care.
What’s the answer? FuckifIknow. Any big, fun fix would require an outpouring of voters that are fed up. It hasn’t happened for a while and it won’t happen in this current political climate.
…maybe I should introduce dad to The Google spellchecker…
I think the rest of the America should adopt Oregon’s method. First off, we have “motor voter” which means you’re automatically registered when you get your driver’s license or ID card, and the information is updated if you change your address or something–no need to separately reregister to vote if you move. We can also register to vote right up to the deadline, which is something like a week before the elections. Ballots are mailed out to every registered voter, and can be mailed or dropped off at the library, post office or one of bazillions of other spots. If you don’t trust the mail or drop off, you can go to your polling place on election day and stand in line–your choice.
We also have a nifty law that says any measure that requires a tax hike or (I believe) changes the state constitution automatically fails if fewer than 50% of registered voters actually cast a ballot. Therefore, if you’re apathetic about everything BUT a tax hike bill, just don’t vote and it means you’ve voted against.
We have a paper trail, documented proof of our ballots and it works really well–so many people turn in their ballots ahead of time it makes the count go pretty fast… We don’t get “Diebold victories” here!
I tellya what, this is the first election day aftermath in like ten years that I haven’t felt like a multiple anal rape victim–our state measures went well and all the stupid/venal/assholish ones failed resoundingly. It restores my faith in human nature and the goodwill of my neighbors at least a bit. 
A few years ago a California initiative failed trying to insert this option. It was championed by someone who managed (or maybe it was almost managed) to get her dog on a local ballot race. It failed due to a significant dual effort from the two major parties.
And that i think is the crux of the matter. Why the hell force people to vote when they have no understanding of what they are voting for?
I’d hazard a guess that the vast (and i mean absolutely vast) majority of people that do vote don’t have the first idea how their votes will actually impact their nation, state or whatever. Why add even more?
I believe in democracy 100% (or maybe not at all, who knows) but i firmly believe that having uneducated idiots (by that i mean in the subject area, not that every voter is actually stupid) make decisions on who is best suited to make their decisions for them is utter bollocks.
Doesn’t it mostly boil down to who has had the best marketing campaign? What good would more voters do? It’s a lottery anyway so why would more voters make any difference?
Rather than enforce mandatory voting, i’d go for the opposite. Stop people voting unless they can prove they actually understand enough to have a right to vote*
rs
*been reading a lot of talk about trolls on SDMB recently, hope the fact that this may be a controversial statement isn’t taken as inflammatory just for the hell of it. I’m no troll; i’d really like a reasoned debate about this point, if anyone is interested maybe start a new thread?
When voters are spurred to vote on the basis of a single issue, they are bad voters. But vote they do. Groups will get more power and claim than their positions actually merit. They become big fish in an incomplete pool. I think if 35 other countries have gone that way,suggests we should carefully see if the results can be fathomed. Does it just make a bigger pool with essentially the same results or does it impact the election.
I’ve advocated for mandatory voting in other threads. We are not exempt from paying taxes just because we do not like where the money is going, so nor should we be exempt from voting just because we do not like the candidates or issues. I see it as part of being a citizen, and not just a consumer.
But I also want to see a mail-in voting system like that enacted in Oregon (described by SmartAleq above). The optical/electronic Diebold-type machines are the biggest, needless BS I’ve ever seen. I would rather see this enacted first, since it would probably increase voter turnout enough to make elections truly meaningful again and negate the need to make it mandatory.
Yeah… I mean, sure voting tests were used to discriminate and disenfranchise people in the past, but now that we’ve evolved past all forms of racial and economic prejudice, there’s no way it would be a problem.
If we don’t like the candidates or the issues, what purpose does voting serve?
I would say that mandatory voting would at least force us to look at the candidates and issue to decide if we do not like them or not, rather than completely ignore them as most non-voters appear to do.
I forgot to add above that I support the NOTA ideas presented also, or ballots must have some minimum number of votes cast on it to be valid, i.e. vote for the local candidates you like and not vote on the national candidates, or vice versa. I dont know of any ballot requirement that says one has to vote for every item listed.
SmartAleq, do you know the requirements for Oregon?
Well, you said ‘we don’t like the candidates or the issues.’ That implies some level of knowledge.
True, I think I got a bit ahead of myself there. Mea culpa.
Where do you read this? I’ve lived and voted here all my life and never heard of this exemption.
No-one has to actually vote here. What is compulsory is turning up to a polling place and getting your name crossed off, or submitting a postal vote. You can leave the ballot blank if you like, no-one will know.
I disagree. Mandatory voting will force people to show up to vote when they haven’t considered the candidates or issues at all. You can force someone to cast a vote, but you can’t force them to be informed about it. I’m all for making it easier for people to vote and easier for people to find out where candidates stand on issues. I do not want people casting uninformed votes just because they’re told they must vote.
But ,wouldn’t it wind up being a better representation of the country. They are out there. To,be ignored if not active. Is that fair?
I cannot determine any method that would allow anyone to figure out if a vote is informed or uninformed under the current system. I do not how one would be able to determine if the percentage would increase under a mandatory voting system, or by how much, but I honestly think that most citizens would decide to become informed voters if they were required to vote, rather than just draw names out of a hat.
On that note though, I thought I would start on thread on elections were the electorate definitely did not understand the issues under consideration. If there are enough data points, I may have to reconsider my position.
I think you underestimate the laziness of the average person. Which is easier: looking at the candidates and figuring out which ones you like, or just picking them randomly/by party?