In latest news, Queensland's idiot premiere thinks that it's a good idea to review mandatory state voting turnout. I used to agree, due to "democratic priciples", but after doing some :learnreading: I have shifted my opinion.
I wrote a terrible effortpost about compulsory voting for another forum in the wake of the American election since a whole bunch of annoying people were talking about how compulsory voting would destroy their democratic rights. So, presented without editing, and fully aware it may make me look like an idiot -
Let's look at the Australian system and why it is better in every way than the American system, of which "compulsory voting" is a significant part. If I could change one thing about the American system it would be to institute compulsory voting as there are a bunch of run on effects and requisite structural changes that are required to make it functional.
The parts in total are:
Compulsory voting.
Preferential voting.
Australian Electoral Commission.
Voting infrastructure.
Pen & paper voting.
Before we begin you also have to understand that in Australia you don't vote for the head office. You vote for a local representative and if the party that representative is in wins the most seats the representatives vote for the Prime Minister. Technically. In practice most people vote for/against the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition, with little attention to local representatives.
But, and this is important, it means that the Prime Minister actually has to win their local electorate. If people seriously hated Barack Obama, under this system, it would be possible for the Democrats to win the election but for him to lose his electorate, and thusly be ineligible for the top job. The closest we have come to this is the 2007 election where the leader of the losing party - who had been prime minister for 11 years - lost his seat whilst his party also lost the election.
Compulsory Voting
Firstly, and let me make this clear, Australia in no way has actual mandatory voting. This is because your ballot is secret. Indeed, if you put any identifying information on your ballot it will be deemed "informal", which is the AEC's way of saying they won't count it.
You are obliged to get your name ticked off a list, and you are obliged to fold a piece of paper in half and put it in a box. If you do not do these things you get a $70 fine. At no point are you required to lodge a "formal" ballot.
That is the extent to which you are obliged to engage with the system. If you wish to "protest" through non-engagement and pretend that that somehow makes a difference, by all means do so. You can even get yourself declared unfit by the court and never have to vote again. The Australian system has other means of protest that I believe to be superior though. I will get to these over the course of this wall of text, but the first is thus: Informal votes are tallied.
If you want to write "DEATH TO ALL CAPITALISTS" on your ballot while leaving the rest blank, go for it, it will be tallied by the AEC. They break down informal votes in to the following categories by the AEC:
Blanks: where a ballot paper is completely blank
Number '1' only: where the figure '1' occurs but no other preferences
Ticks and crosses: where a tick or a cross has been used. This may be used by itself or with numbers
Langer style: where a ballot paper contains repeating numbers such as 1,2,3,3,3
Non sequential: where a ballot papers contains non-sequential numbers such as 1,2,3,6,7
Voter identified: where markings such as signatures can identify the voter
Marks: where a ballot paper is blank but contains marks, graffiti, slogans etc.
Slogans making numbering illegible where a ballot paper contains numbering but other marks on the paper overwrite the numbering making it illegible
Other: this category contains ballot papers that do not fulfil the above criterion. A large majority of these are where more than one preference on the ballot paper has been left blank. Other ballot papers in the group include ballot papers not authenticated and ballot papers issued for the wrong division.
This is done for quality assurance (making sure voters are clear on how to vote), but also means that a protest vote is actually examined. In the last Federal election we had about 4.4% informal votes, and about 95% attendance, so around 91% of Australians lodged formal ballots.
If you're going to have compulsory voting it means a gloriously large amount of data, so you count every vote, even the informal ones.
Preferential Voting
In Australia you number the candidates in the order you prefer them. I start by putting the right wing crazy people dead last and the Greens party first. Hence Australian candidates having "Vote 1 Kodos!" on a bunch of posters. If no party attains 50% of the vote, the party with the lowest number of 1st preferences is dropped, and those ballots are redistributed to their second preferences. So on, and so forth.
This means that you can never throw your vote away on a third party candidate, or an independent. You can vote for your actual favourite candidate who cares about the issues you care about without having to worry that you should have chosen the lesser of two evils and stopped the conservative shitheel. As such most of my ballots end up looking like
1 - Greens / Actual left leaning independent / Etc
2 - Ostensibly left wing party which has proven to be largely ineffectual, but who I greatly prefer to
3 - Right wing party which has decided that the American Republicans are awesome and we should copy their playbook
4 - "Family First" / "One Nation" / Other similarly pleasantly named yet horrifyingly right wing parties.
Now, the Greens are unlikely to win in my electorate, but whoever DOES win can still see how many votes were preferenced to them This is the second form of protest. You can actually vote for the protest candidate, and the candidate who won can see how preferences flowed from that candidate. So the Ostensibly Left party might win 50% of the vote on the second round, but 20% of that has been redistributed from the Greens candidate. This means they actually have a better idea of where their electorate sits, and the electorate can vote largely with their conscience.
This also has an additional benefit, and another form of protest - For every first preference that a party receives, they also receive $2 in funding. By voting you can essentially donate money to the candidate and party of your choice.
Hell, think of it like tipping. I know you Americans love tipping.
In the end if you're going to have compulsory voting, you should make sure people can vote for who they want.
Australian Electoral Commission
The best thing.
Australia has a fiercely independent federal electoral commission which operates all elections - and I mean all elections - from federal, to state, to local council, even down to union elections for the larger unions. This is not mandated anywhere, I don't believe, it's just a massively convenient efficiency of scale to have one body whose job it is to make elections work. There is no partisanship in their approach, the rules are the same everywhere, and they conduct things extremely smoothly.
In fact on the most recent American election day the AEC was inundated with messages of appreciation to the extent they issued a statement thanking Australian's for their support. We love our AEC.
But, this means there's no bullshit like in Florida, or other voter suppression in general, and I'm pretty sure they handle redistricting so there's no gerrymandering like gave the Republicans control of the house.
If you're going to have compulsory voting it makes sense to make sure you take advantage of the massive economy of scale that provides.
Voting Infrastructure
I have voted seven times in my life so far. I have spent, maybe, an hour at polling places. Total. Over almost 10 years.
This is because if you have compulsory voting, and you will fine people if they don't vote, you'd better make sure everyone can vote and vote easily or you will have a shitstorm on your hands. This is the single biggest advantage of compulsory voting.
In Australia every government primary school is a polling place. This means I have three polling places within walking distance of my house, and I can go to any of them. I can go to any polling place in the state, in fact, to lodge my vote. I have on a number of occasions gone out to lunch and "popped in to vote" on my way home.
The schools typically also use it as an opportunity to run a bake sale or a BBQ, which is nice. "Democracy Sausage" is a (tongue in cheek) thing.
If I am not near a polling place I can get an absentee postal ballot from any polling station in the country, or I can get one ahead of time and mail it in. If I am overseas I can get a postal ballot from the AEC, or I can vote at (almost) any Consulate. I say almost because I know our Afghanistan consulate is in a secret location, so I might not be able to find it D:.
If it is a compulsory council election they will mail me my ballot without me even having to ask for it.
Voting is really easy. And a big reason for that is because it has to be, because of compulsory voting. You can't suppress the vote.
Pen and Paper
Well, technically, pencil and paper. I'm not aware of any voting machines being used in Australia. There are no private companies bidding to get involved in our electoral process. No local state representative looking for some extra cash for reelection. No hanging chads, no poorly designed weird ballots. The AEC does it all, and does it manually.
If all electricity was cut out in the country on election day we could still vote. If a hurricane hit Brisbane, they could still vote.
Again, if you have compulsory voting, you have to make sure everyone can vote. The best way to do that is to be as low tech as possible.
Tangental Advantages and Disadvantages
These are all very mechanical reasons for compulsory voting (as well as other things), but there are some more obtuse ones.
A lot of people in this thread have been calling for a day off for voting - and it doesn't amaze me that America doesn't have one because, well, then poor people might vote - so I think it's important to point out that Australia does not have a day off for voting. We do it on a Saturday. Even the orthodox Jewish community. But, again, voting is so easy that you can easily fit in five minutes of your day to do it. If America is somehow married to the idea of doing it on a Tuesday for some dumb reason then yeah, day off would be good. In Victoria we had Tuesday the 6th as a public holiday for a horse race of all things.
Compulsory voting biases the middle, voluntary voting exaggerates the fringe. This is a blessing and a curse. In a voluntary system the most motivated fringe groups have disproportionate power because their percentage of the vote is far higher than their percentage of the population. In a compulsory system their percentage of the vote is much closer to their percentage of the population. There is a gigantic seething mass in the middle who bias the status quo. Which is good because it makes it hard for something like the Tea Party to take hold, but is bad because it makes it harder for something like Marriage Equality to take hold. Overall, though, this is a slight point in favour of compulsory voting since it also means that the middle class is accurately represented, so "tax cuts to millionaires" isn't that much of a thing here (for example), and as the middle class changes demographically to be more multicultural so too will the strategies of the major parties have to change to adapt. Change is a bit slower but without the constant danger of sliding back.
It provides an incentive to engage. This is a consumer behaviour sort of response, but it is relevant. A lot of people in this thread are worried about "uninformed voters" as if any voter can ever actually be fully informed. Compulsory voting provides a moment every three to four years (in Australia) that triggers people to at least have an incentive to look at the political spectrum. If they decide not to, fine, but it means there will be more "informed" voters out there. Think of it like having to walk through the gift shop on your way out of a museum; not everyone will buy something, no, but it increases your chances of someone engaging with what's there.
A lot of the things above could fall to the wayside if we had voluntary voting. It would be easier to reduce the number of polling stations, it would be easier to try to seek private investment, it would be easier to start moving away from preferential voting, or to stop counting before all the votes have been properly tallied, or to make it hard for certain demographics to vote. Basically it would be easy to turn into a third world country / American style election.
If you're one of those "BUT MY RIGHTS" people, shut up and spend five minutes of your life to just put in a blank ballot. It's fine. The government will pretend you don't exist and you can go back to your unabomber style shack and pretend they don't exist.
If you're one of those "BUT I DON'T WANT TO ENGAGE WITH THE SYSTEM THAT IS CORRUPT" or "I DON'T LIKE ANY OF THESE CANDIDATES" people, stop being such a selfish little child. Vote to support the minority. Vote to support the candidates that will push marriage equality, or to ensure reproductive rights, or tax reform, or gambling reform, or who isn't a complete corporate shill, or the one who opposes treating the aboriginal population like children, or whatever. You're a citizen, that's a privilege, it means you have some power, inform yourself and actually use that privilege and responsibility for good instead of whining about it.
I wrote a terrible effortpost about compulsory voting for another forum in the wake of the American election since a whole bunch of annoying people were talking about how compulsory voting would destroy their democratic rights. So, presented without editing, and fully aware it may make me look like an idiot -
Let's look at the Australian system and why it is better in every way than the American system, of which "compulsory voting" is a significant part. If I could change one thing about the American system it would be to institute compulsory voting as there are a bunch of run on effects and requisite structural changes that are required to make it functional.
The parts in total are:
Compulsory voting.
Preferential voting.
Australian Electoral Commission.
Voting infrastructure.
Pen & paper voting.
Before we begin you also have to understand that in Australia you don't vote for the head office. You vote for a local representative and if the party that representative is in wins the most seats the representatives vote for the Prime Minister. Technically. In practice most people vote for/against the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition, with little attention to local representatives.
But, and this is important, it means that the Prime Minister actually has to win their local electorate. If people seriously hated Barack Obama, under this system, it would be possible for the Democrats to win the election but for him to lose his electorate, and thusly be ineligible for the top job. The closest we have come to this is the 2007 election where the leader of the losing party - who had been prime minister for 11 years - lost his seat whilst his party also lost the election.
Compulsory Voting
Firstly, and let me make this clear, Australia in no way has actual mandatory voting. This is because your ballot is secret. Indeed, if you put any identifying information on your ballot it will be deemed "informal", which is the AEC's way of saying they won't count it.
You are obliged to get your name ticked off a list, and you are obliged to fold a piece of paper in half and put it in a box. If you do not do these things you get a $70 fine. At no point are you required to lodge a "formal" ballot.
That is the extent to which you are obliged to engage with the system. If you wish to "protest" through non-engagement and pretend that that somehow makes a difference, by all means do so. You can even get yourself declared unfit by the court and never have to vote again. The Australian system has other means of protest that I believe to be superior though. I will get to these over the course of this wall of text, but the first is thus: Informal votes are tallied.
If you want to write "DEATH TO ALL CAPITALISTS" on your ballot while leaving the rest blank, go for it, it will be tallied by the AEC. They break down informal votes in to the following categories by the AEC:
Blanks: where a ballot paper is completely blank
Number '1' only: where the figure '1' occurs but no other preferences
Ticks and crosses: where a tick or a cross has been used. This may be used by itself or with numbers
Langer style: where a ballot paper contains repeating numbers such as 1,2,3,3,3
Non sequential: where a ballot papers contains non-sequential numbers such as 1,2,3,6,7
Voter identified: where markings such as signatures can identify the voter
Marks: where a ballot paper is blank but contains marks, graffiti, slogans etc.
Slogans making numbering illegible where a ballot paper contains numbering but other marks on the paper overwrite the numbering making it illegible
Other: this category contains ballot papers that do not fulfil the above criterion. A large majority of these are where more than one preference on the ballot paper has been left blank. Other ballot papers in the group include ballot papers not authenticated and ballot papers issued for the wrong division.
This is done for quality assurance (making sure voters are clear on how to vote), but also means that a protest vote is actually examined. In the last Federal election we had about 4.4% informal votes, and about 95% attendance, so around 91% of Australians lodged formal ballots.
If you're going to have compulsory voting it means a gloriously large amount of data, so you count every vote, even the informal ones.
Preferential Voting
In Australia you number the candidates in the order you prefer them. I start by putting the right wing crazy people dead last and the Greens party first. Hence Australian candidates having "Vote 1 Kodos!" on a bunch of posters. If no party attains 50% of the vote, the party with the lowest number of 1st preferences is dropped, and those ballots are redistributed to their second preferences. So on, and so forth.
This means that you can never throw your vote away on a third party candidate, or an independent. You can vote for your actual favourite candidate who cares about the issues you care about without having to worry that you should have chosen the lesser of two evils and stopped the conservative shitheel. As such most of my ballots end up looking like
1 - Greens / Actual left leaning independent / Etc
2 - Ostensibly left wing party which has proven to be largely ineffectual, but who I greatly prefer to
3 - Right wing party which has decided that the American Republicans are awesome and we should copy their playbook
4 - "Family First" / "One Nation" / Other similarly pleasantly named yet horrifyingly right wing parties.
Now, the Greens are unlikely to win in my electorate, but whoever DOES win can still see how many votes were preferenced to them This is the second form of protest. You can actually vote for the protest candidate, and the candidate who won can see how preferences flowed from that candidate. So the Ostensibly Left party might win 50% of the vote on the second round, but 20% of that has been redistributed from the Greens candidate. This means they actually have a better idea of where their electorate sits, and the electorate can vote largely with their conscience.
This also has an additional benefit, and another form of protest - For every first preference that a party receives, they also receive $2 in funding. By voting you can essentially donate money to the candidate and party of your choice.
Hell, think of it like tipping. I know you Americans love tipping.
In the end if you're going to have compulsory voting, you should make sure people can vote for who they want.
Australian Electoral Commission
The best thing.
Australia has a fiercely independent federal electoral commission which operates all elections - and I mean all elections - from federal, to state, to local council, even down to union elections for the larger unions. This is not mandated anywhere, I don't believe, it's just a massively convenient efficiency of scale to have one body whose job it is to make elections work. There is no partisanship in their approach, the rules are the same everywhere, and they conduct things extremely smoothly.
In fact on the most recent American election day the AEC was inundated with messages of appreciation to the extent they issued a statement thanking Australian's for their support. We love our AEC.
But, this means there's no bullshit like in Florida, or other voter suppression in general, and I'm pretty sure they handle redistricting so there's no gerrymandering like gave the Republicans control of the house.
If you're going to have compulsory voting it makes sense to make sure you take advantage of the massive economy of scale that provides.
Voting Infrastructure
I have voted seven times in my life so far. I have spent, maybe, an hour at polling places. Total. Over almost 10 years.
This is because if you have compulsory voting, and you will fine people if they don't vote, you'd better make sure everyone can vote and vote easily or you will have a shitstorm on your hands. This is the single biggest advantage of compulsory voting.
In Australia every government primary school is a polling place. This means I have three polling places within walking distance of my house, and I can go to any of them. I can go to any polling place in the state, in fact, to lodge my vote. I have on a number of occasions gone out to lunch and "popped in to vote" on my way home.
The schools typically also use it as an opportunity to run a bake sale or a BBQ, which is nice. "Democracy Sausage" is a (tongue in cheek) thing.
If I am not near a polling place I can get an absentee postal ballot from any polling station in the country, or I can get one ahead of time and mail it in. If I am overseas I can get a postal ballot from the AEC, or I can vote at (almost) any Consulate. I say almost because I know our Afghanistan consulate is in a secret location, so I might not be able to find it D:.
If it is a compulsory council election they will mail me my ballot without me even having to ask for it.
Voting is really easy. And a big reason for that is because it has to be, because of compulsory voting. You can't suppress the vote.
Pen and Paper
Well, technically, pencil and paper. I'm not aware of any voting machines being used in Australia. There are no private companies bidding to get involved in our electoral process. No local state representative looking for some extra cash for reelection. No hanging chads, no poorly designed weird ballots. The AEC does it all, and does it manually.
If all electricity was cut out in the country on election day we could still vote. If a hurricane hit Brisbane, they could still vote.
Again, if you have compulsory voting, you have to make sure everyone can vote. The best way to do that is to be as low tech as possible.
Tangental Advantages and Disadvantages
These are all very mechanical reasons for compulsory voting (as well as other things), but there are some more obtuse ones.
A lot of people in this thread have been calling for a day off for voting - and it doesn't amaze me that America doesn't have one because, well, then poor people might vote - so I think it's important to point out that Australia does not have a day off for voting. We do it on a Saturday. Even the orthodox Jewish community. But, again, voting is so easy that you can easily fit in five minutes of your day to do it. If America is somehow married to the idea of doing it on a Tuesday for some dumb reason then yeah, day off would be good. In Victoria we had Tuesday the 6th as a public holiday for a horse race of all things.
Compulsory voting biases the middle, voluntary voting exaggerates the fringe. This is a blessing and a curse. In a voluntary system the most motivated fringe groups have disproportionate power because their percentage of the vote is far higher than their percentage of the population. In a compulsory system their percentage of the vote is much closer to their percentage of the population. There is a gigantic seething mass in the middle who bias the status quo. Which is good because it makes it hard for something like the Tea Party to take hold, but is bad because it makes it harder for something like Marriage Equality to take hold. Overall, though, this is a slight point in favour of compulsory voting since it also means that the middle class is accurately represented, so "tax cuts to millionaires" isn't that much of a thing here (for example), and as the middle class changes demographically to be more multicultural so too will the strategies of the major parties have to change to adapt. Change is a bit slower but without the constant danger of sliding back.
It provides an incentive to engage. This is a consumer behaviour sort of response, but it is relevant. A lot of people in this thread are worried about "uninformed voters" as if any voter can ever actually be fully informed. Compulsory voting provides a moment every three to four years (in Australia) that triggers people to at least have an incentive to look at the political spectrum. If they decide not to, fine, but it means there will be more "informed" voters out there. Think of it like having to walk through the gift shop on your way out of a museum; not everyone will buy something, no, but it increases your chances of someone engaging with what's there.
A lot of the things above could fall to the wayside if we had voluntary voting. It would be easier to reduce the number of polling stations, it would be easier to try to seek private investment, it would be easier to start moving away from preferential voting, or to stop counting before all the votes have been properly tallied, or to make it hard for certain demographics to vote. Basically it would be easy to turn into a third world country / American style election.
If you're one of those "BUT MY RIGHTS" people, shut up and spend five minutes of your life to just put in a blank ballot. It's fine. The government will pretend you don't exist and you can go back to your unabomber style shack and pretend they don't exist.
If you're one of those "BUT I DON'T WANT TO ENGAGE WITH THE SYSTEM THAT IS CORRUPT" or "I DON'T LIKE ANY OF THESE CANDIDATES" people, stop being such a selfish little child. Vote to support the minority. Vote to support the candidates that will push marriage equality, or to ensure reproductive rights, or tax reform, or gambling reform, or who isn't a complete corporate shill, or the one who opposes treating the aboriginal population like children, or whatever. You're a citizen, that's a privilege, it means you have some power, inform yourself and actually use that privilege and responsibility for good instead of whining about it.