Is it true Australians get fined if they do not vote? If so, generally how much?
BTW, the linked letter from that article gives the fine as Australian dollars ($20) and the article presumably gives it in US dollars ($15), if you were wondering about the discrepancy.
That article says:
I guess Brazil is still a gawky adolescent.
Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Switzerland and Venezuela are also given as countries with mandatory voting laws. Their extent, and to what extent they are enforced, I don’t know. Mexico has recently instituted mandatory REGISTRATION - I don’t know that the measure actually forces their citizens to go to the polls. Italy’s law is unenforced, and apparently ignored by many Italians.
the reasoning was that since 60,000 Australians had died in WW1 to defend democracy, voters should be compelled to participate in it. The compulsion is not really an issue in Australian politics, though occasional lone voices are heard suggesting it be dropped.
Registration is compulsory in the U.K., though widely evaded as people fear (with reason) that the rolls will be used to check whether you are paying your local property taxes.
What if the candidates on the ballot are no good, can you do a write in, or MUST you vote for who’s ever listed on the ballot?
[it’s easy enough to spoil your paper or scribble abuse on it, if you must. Some people just rank the candidates in preferential order straight from the top to the bottom of the paper, this is known as the ‘donkey vote’.
That is pretty interstesting - here in the states a “donkey vote” would be choosing all Democrats. 
Nobody is obliged to vote. You’re obliged to enrol to vote and, except for a bunch of exceptions, you are obliged to turn up at the polling booth and have your name crossed off the register but you don’t need to actually write anything on the ballot. If you don’t, you have to hand the ballot papers back to an AEC official or just stick them in the box unmarked because it’s illegal to remove voting materials from the polling station.
If you don’t vote, you might receive a letter asking why. No reasonable excuse will cost you $20. Take it to court and lose and it will cost $50.
Common wisdom, at least when I was in Australia studying politics at school, was that compulsory voting favoured the Labor Party as they represented working class people who were surely to apathetic too bother voting unless prodded. It was funny (but not ha ha) to come back after eight years abroad to find the situation reversed.
You’re right Gest. Because it’s a secret ballot then in practice you can choose not to write anything on the ballot paper and put it into the ballot box completely unmarked. However, if you do that you’re still technically in breach of section 245(1) of the *Commonwealth Electoral Act * 1918, which states “it shall be the duty of every elector to vote at each election”.
The Slate article cited above makes the point that 5% of the Australian ballots cast are spoiled and invalid.
The proportion varies from election to election. From my observcations over many years of ballot papers in Australia, a lot are blank, or otherwise deliverately informal, while some informal ballot paper may be trying to express some kind of choice.
However, over the years, laws have changed in Australia to make it easier to cast formal votes. It used to be necessary, in an election where there can be hundreds of candidates, for voters to number ALL the candidates in order of preference. However, voters now have an option of voting only for a few candidates, or marking the ballot paper so that the vote follows a party’s list of preferences. These changes have reduced the informal votes that to to express a choice, but make a mistake of some kind; but that won’t reduce the deliberately infornal vote.
My understanding is it was more to do with the then Labor government wanting to get their guys out to vote more than they were, as fewer of the poorer folks tended to get out and vote. It was only introduced in national elections in 1924 , so not likely to be directly to do with WW I. This page says it was first advocated at the turn of the century, so well before WWI.
That same page lists 19 other countries with some form of compulsory voting, so we’re hardly alone in this.
The Australian system seems to make it easier to spoil your ballot paper, particularly if there are a great many candidates, even if you intended to cast a legitimate vote.
You must vote for every candidate in order of preference, marking them 1, 2, 3 etc. (I’m sure there’s a technical name for it.)
Usually, the major parties work out the best combination - the numbers ascending according to how close the other candidates are to their position - and simply hand out leaflets to voters as they go into the polling station, so that all the voter needs to do is copy it down onto the voting paper.
Problems can arise if you choose to ignore these handy hints and try to work it out for yourself. With, say 20 candidates, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that you could put down the same number twice or fail to put a number against a candidate, thus spoiling it.
Or at least that was the system for the general election of 1987, which I followed closely. Maybe it has changed since then!
Not quite. What we are talking about is the Senate where a ballot paper might have 70 boxes with candidate names. Certainly, you can number each one and this must be done properly or else it voids the ballot. The alternative, for those who have trouble with simple things like this, not terribly interested or have complete faith in their chosen party, can put a single figure 1 in their party’s box in a separate section of the paper. There is no need to copy out the How to Vote Cards you referred to as this second option automatically does this for you if you are so inclined. In either case, it is preferential voting.
In the Lower House, you must number all the boxes, again following the How to Vote Card if you wish, but there are usually only 6 or 7 choices here and therefore difficult to fuck up.
You can’t always use ideology as a guide to how the parties will want you to order them though. It gets a little sleazy here and there is much room for frivolity and dodginess. Sometimes a party will shaft an ideologically similar rival as they are competing for votes, not necessarily trying to advance their goals by helping up like-minded parties.