Always hated the point people make that “well what if I don’t want to vote because I hate everyone”?
Solution: Add a box saying none of these candidates. Boom, you get filtered from the lazy ones who let everyone take care of their business for them. It’s literally that simple.
People have died in wars for this right. You don’t get to decide not to exercise it, it is your civic duty, and your duty to respect the people who died for that right to be a reality.
An average of 5.2% (800k votes) not counting - called “informal” in Australia (as it is here in New Zealand), you might also see “spoiled”.
However the question is, with 89.9% turnout and 5.2% spoil, are they still achieving better voter engagement overall than we did in NZ with 78.2% turnout but only 0.6% spoiled?
You could probably argue either way; as some people definitely wouldn’t consider showing up but voting for no-one, will they check a box at random (and does this benefit the first party in the list alphabetically?). I’m sure someone has written a paper on this.
If the way you vote is as simple as it is in the UK (bit of paper where literally write a X in the box next to the candidate you like with a pencil) you can literally just write ‘fuck the lot of you’ across the page.
In Australia this is a standard practice. It’s technically an “informal vote” or a “spoiled vote” but its colloquially known as Donkey Voting. The traditional method is to actually just draw a big dick on the paper, though.
And no one has been, or ever will be, fined for this. We don’t even, in practice, have compulsory voting. We have ‘Compulsory Turning Up To Your Opportunity To Vote’.
I’m just imagining trolling this. Doing a couple of the pubes slightly crossed kinda over one of the options so the candidates have to take time discussing whether they think it counts as a vote or not.
We have that in Canada too. It’s to prevent vote buying/intimidation. People would mark their ballot to prove they voted for the person they were supposed to.
The people have died is such a bad argument imo. If people died for the freedom to have abortions, that doesn’t mean a pregnant woman has to have an abortion. True freedom means that you can choose whether to vote or not to, and people definitely didn’t die to force everybody to vote, which just results in uninformed and non-caring people to vote for the first candidate that tells easy solutions to everything instead of admitting the complex reality.
I’m just saying, millions of voters stayed home during the U.S. election, and we ended up with someone turning that country into a fascist hellhole as a result of that.
Don’t want to vote? If you fail to vote even with a “void” or “none of the above” option to meet you halfway with your lack of desire to follow the issues, then at that point that’s on you and you deserve to be treated as what you are - someone who allows the country to slip further into the hands of wannabe dictators.
You have the right to choose no candidate for the election much like you have the right not to have an abortion. Not showing up is a different story.
Always hated the point people make that “well what if I don’t want to vote because I hate everyone”?
Solution: Add a box saying none of these candidates. Boom, you get filtered from the lazy ones who let everyone take care of their business for them. It’s literally that simple.
People have died in wars for this right. You don’t get to decide not to exercise it, it is your civic duty, and your duty to respect the people who died for that right to be a reality.
There’s an easier solution in place. Just don’t fill out the paperwork.
You are required to show up at a polling place, you aren’t required to put in a legitimate vote.
This I think is from their previous election: https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/Website/HouseInformalByState-27966.htm
An average of 5.2% (800k votes) not counting - called “informal” in Australia (as it is here in New Zealand), you might also see “spoiled”.
However the question is, with 89.9% turnout and 5.2% spoil, are they still achieving better voter engagement overall than we did in NZ with 78.2% turnout but only 0.6% spoiled?
You could probably argue either way; as some people definitely wouldn’t consider showing up but voting for no-one, will they check a box at random (and does this benefit the first party in the list alphabetically?). I’m sure someone has written a paper on this.
Ballot order is randomised at different polling stations to avoid the issue of the first name on the list having an advantage
If the way you vote is as simple as it is in the UK (bit of paper where literally write a X in the box next to the candidate you like with a pencil) you can literally just write ‘fuck the lot of you’ across the page.
In Australia this is a standard practice. It’s technically an “informal vote” or a “spoiled vote” but its colloquially known as Donkey Voting. The traditional method is to actually just draw a big dick on the paper, though.
And no one has been, or ever will be, fined for this. We don’t even, in practice, have compulsory voting. We have ‘Compulsory Turning Up To Your Opportunity To Vote’.
I’m just imagining trolling this. Doing a couple of the pubes slightly crossed kinda over one of the options so the candidates have to take time discussing whether they think it counts as a vote or not.
Sadly, I think they go with “clear and unambiguous mark only” and “no other marks on the page”.
We have that in Canada too. It’s to prevent vote buying/intimidation. People would mark their ballot to prove they voted for the person they were supposed to.
The people have died is such a bad argument imo. If people died for the freedom to have abortions, that doesn’t mean a pregnant woman has to have an abortion. True freedom means that you can choose whether to vote or not to, and people definitely didn’t die to force everybody to vote, which just results in uninformed and non-caring people to vote for the first candidate that tells easy solutions to everything instead of admitting the complex reality.
I’m just saying, millions of voters stayed home during the U.S. election, and we ended up with someone turning that country into a fascist hellhole as a result of that.
Don’t want to vote? If you fail to vote even with a “void” or “none of the above” option to meet you halfway with your lack of desire to follow the issues, then at that point that’s on you and you deserve to be treated as what you are - someone who allows the country to slip further into the hands of wannabe dictators.
You have the right to choose no candidate for the election much like you have the right not to have an abortion. Not showing up is a different story.
Abortion is just not analogous to voting.
We’re talking about laws so ‘true freedom’ is irrelevant in this context.
But mostly, compulsory voting doesn’t eliminate the freedom to not vote. Just go in and write bart simpson like a certain percent always do.