Comment by layoric | Hacker News Reader

Comment by layoric | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Born in AU so bias is to stay, which leads me to push more for political change required to try to address these problems. Most of your 10 years has been under a particularly bad (and honestly corrupt) federal gov.

Country has a large state capture problem from largely mining companies but also other special interests that have lobbied and . Anything that might threaten those interests is being pretty heavily targeted, including action on climate[0] (See "Gas led recovery", and the use of funds intended to renewables used for things like CCS/CCUS and "blue" hydrogen.). And this is bleeding into laws and enforcement.

Then there is the constant resistance to a federal anti-corruption agency as well as reducing the influence of money on federal politicians (see backbencher/ministers resolving door with lobbying firms).

The conclusion I've (sadly) come to, is that (in the short term at least) more money needs to be thrown at smaller parties and independents to try to combat this. Unlike the USA, Australia has precedent of minority governments and compulsory voting combined with a preference system means that gaining even a small number of lower house/senate seats can make a disproportional impact to the policies being set around Australia. Both major parties are so similar but just switching from Blue to Red is unlikely to result significant change in policies for some of the issues you've raised.

[0] https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-cou...

> compulsory voting

This always seemed like madness to me. You can force someone to vote, but you cannot force them to vote responsibly. They may just vote "screw you" just for revenge.

The right to vote includes the right to abstain from voting when one does not care.

Forced voting sounds like a recipe for bad election results. I would expect the same from paying people to vote.

I think that I would be okay with compulsory voting if there was a 'none of the above' option on the ballot. If "none of the above" wins the vote then all the people on that ballot are disqualified from running in any election for a period of time, say 10 years and there is a do-over on that particular electoral district election. I'd like to hope that would clean up politics real quick.

In fact, you are not compelled to _vote_.

You must show up at a polling place (either prior to the election or on election day), and you must identify yourself to the polling officer, and receive a ballot paper.

You do NOT have to complete the paper: you can put it in the box untouched, you can write "screw you all" on it, etc.

So ... yeah, you are obliged to show up, but you don't have to actually vote.

This is an option, it’s called an informal vote, and it’s counted towards the tally

Rather than a “None of the above” option (though I do find your disqualification concept interesting) I prefer an “I abstain” option. Food requires a small amount of effort but an effort nonetheless. Every time a voter picks up the ballot, you hey are faced with the question “do I really have nothing to contribute here?”

Yeah, that happens. One of my close friends is disillusioned with the government, and usually just uses the ballot paper as a way to "politely share his thoughts on the matter" with whoever is unfortunate enough to read it. They don't verify that a vote was cast, just that you showed up.

>Forced voting sounds like a recipe for bad election results.

The previous conservative, neoliberal PM, John Howard, said the same thing. Rationally, it doesn't make sense.

However, even he admitted that empirical, historical evidence has shown it to be a good thing that prevents either major political party from catering too hard to the extremes.

On balance, I think it's better, because systems where voting is voluntary seem to really encourage voter disenfranchisement. Also, the system means that the logistics must be in place for the system to be able to handle everybody turning up to vote, so it would be very unusual (in my experience) having to wait in line for more than 20 minutes or so. As opposed to stories we saw in the US of voters having to wait hours to vote.

As others have said, it's an option to just submit a blank paper.

This is an often-overlooked point: if you make it compulsory to vote, you have to make it easy to vote.

I never used a voting machine: do they allow the equivalent of a blank paper?

We don't have voting machines in Australia. You write on paper with a pencil (I believe you can bring a representative with you if you're vision impaired and things like that).

We definitely have voting machines [0] that started being trialed back in 2007, and more widely in recent years.

The process I experienced last time I voted in local elections was you validated where you lived and were given a one use barcode/qrcode (can't remember) which you scanned at the machine, made your selections and dropped the barcode paper in specific bins.

[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...

You can just submit a blank ballot.

https://www.quora.com/As-voting-is-compulsory-in-Australia-a...

I don’t see this as anywhere near the same thing though. These so called ‘donkey votes’ are derided, and categorised as together with voting errors and other invalid voting forms. The right to withhold your vote is as fundamental as the right to withold your labour. Voter turnout is an important metric in its own right, and is observed tactically in, say, the UK. Compulsory voting simplifies competition, and destroys some forms of it. In particular, the ‘mandate’

I highly doubt most non-voters are intentionally "witholding" their vote. I think it's more often just laziness or lack of access (voting during work day etc.).

It has to be incredibly more meaningful to have statistics on how many people intentionally said "screw you" with a vote for "ficus" or w/e.

A donkey vote isn't a blank ballot.

It's a ballot that's just been numbered unthinkingly from top to bottom.

Are they counted as votes? That would mean the person at the top of the ballot have an advantage because of these donkey votes.

Yes, they are counted, because it is a perfectly valid vote.

This does indeed advantage the candidate who draws the top spot on the ballot (the positions are randomly assigned). In a preferential system it advantages the candidate in the final two that drew the higher position - it seems to be worth about 0.7% ( https://www.crikey.com.au/2010/08/02/whats-the-donkey-worth-... ).

> In particular, the ‘mandate’

The amount of electorates that swung, and the percentages that the winning representative (and party) received mean that's not true at all, in my opinion anyway. Happy to be convinced otherwise, but the "mandate" still exists.

And in democracies like the UK, people who don’t vote are disregarded as lazy and ignored too.

I agree, you should be able to withhold as a protest, in practice it’s 100% meaningless.

They aren’t ignored - parties try to woo them over.

In a system where there are many more parties, and ballots can still be spoiled, I don't see how that would be different.

It’s not “forced” it’s “your responsibility in a democracy”.

We have preferential voting here, and plenty of minor parties to vote for, so your vote isn’t “wasted”. Living in a democracy means participating in voting to help decide what the country does, and honestly it’s a pretty minor requirement: the actual act is quick and easy, it’s on a weekend and anyone who has to work at is given the opportunity and the results are usually mostly finalised by the end of the day.

> Living in a democracy means participating in voting

I think living in a democracy means the right to peacefully decline to take part.

If people don’t want to vote you should reflect on why, not use force against them.

I strongly disagree. There is already informal voting (aka donkey vote), people who want to use their vote as a "screw you" have to choose between a number of candidates/parties, so who they are "screwing" is pretty hard to tell.

I actually think compulsory voting brings forward the importance of thinking about the consequences of voting, and voting for candidates that have the same values. Granted this can be manipulated (and is) with ads etc but getting people use to being involved I think is far better than making it optional and creating people that either never vote or a population that does when things are "bad" and an apathetic group when things are "good".

To clarify, donkey votes are perfectly valid. This is where the voter simply fills the boxes the same as they are displayed (first presented candidate gets number 1, second gets 2, etc.). A donkey vote is a formal vote, just one typically driven by the same factors that would drive an intentionally informal one. An example of an informal vote that I encountered during scrutineering a local council election is when one voter drew their own box, labelled it "Tony Abbott", and voted for that.

Thanks for that, my mistake.

Voting is not compulsory. It is a myth. What is compulsory is visit the polling booth and scratch your name on the electoral roll to record your attendance. You DON'T have to actually vote.

> The right to vote includes the right to abstain from voting when one does not care. Forced voting sounds like a recipe for bad election results. I would expect the same from paying people to vote

I've gone in a bit of a voting system rabbit hole recently, and this depends on the system of voting. There are some systems where abstaining from an election can help a voter's preferred choice win: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_criterion

So I think depending on the election system, it could make sense to have compulsory voting, even if the person voting simply puts all candidates at equal preference.

Mandating voting certainly seems better than the US system of trying to make it illegal for anyone you don't like to vote.

Australia feels culturally like the closest country to the US, though, so this particular political difference is being canceled out by other things.

> I would expect the same from paying people to vote.

That's already the case pretty much everywhere since populists promise benefits to whoever elects them. So de facto you are getting paid for your vote if you are in a special interest group.

There are pros and cons to either approach. I've been wondering recently if voluntary voting in the US is partially responsible for the tribal political atmosphere? As I understand it, one of the big challenges both major parties face in the US is how to motivate their voting bases to actually turn up to vote at all. And as social media has shown us, there's nothing more engaging and motivating than outrage.

So both sides of US politics, and their surrogates in the media, are incentivised to stir up outrage against their opponent, leading to a more divided country in the long run.

Tribalism in Australian politics might not be quite at the levels it is in the US, but it's certainly a factor.

Politicians and parties still attempt to create outrage as a way of attracting or sustaining attention, and diminishing their opponents.

I agree that a lot of effort goes into getting out the vote in the US, and that's much less a factor here, but the same tactics still tend to be used.

Whilst officially Australia has compulsory voting, unofficially you merely have to sign your name off. If you fail to have your name signed off, the fine is $20 (for federal elections, $55 for the state of NSW). Voter turnout is still a way of measuring disengagement, as well as measuring the number of informal votes, and more importantly, the nature of the informal votes. You can write whatever you like on the ballot paper at the end of the day, so if voters feel that no party represents them, you can fill in nothing. If you do not like any party, you can submit a blank ballot, which does represent a decent percentage of informal votes - but I think that given you're already there, most people have some idea of who they like _less_ or _more_.

I think the cultural aspect of the _appearance_ of compulsory voting is important: not voting because it's raining and you'd rather stay in bed is very different to abstaining based on your political beliefs, and compulsory voting (in Australia) means you are less likely to encounter the former whilst still enabling the other. I would argue that this makes abstaining for political reasons a bit more explicit than non-compulsory voting (technically you can even write your reasons for not voting on the ballot paper, which would officially mean nothing but would certainly be evaluated in research on informal voting), but I do concede that this feels a bit disingenuous: the system works because you're told to vote even though you kinda don't really have to vote, but make sure you jump through the hoops to make it look like you voted.

It can't be any worse than what we have in the USA. I mean for god sakes, Trump actually won the presidency. Something is definitely broken in the US system (primarily voter suppression, legal corporate bribery, and gerrymandering is my theory)

I think those are all significant.

I would say the current party dynamics are a big problem, both the symptom and cause of other problems.

One party fights for total control, with near total resistance to the other party, playing a negative sum game in order to maintain power despite demographic disadvantages.

The other party has a wider spectrum of views, and is more open to bipartisanship. But it has difficulty strategically unifying when it would make the most difference. So it often negotiates from weakness despite having demographic advantages.

As far as I can tell, this dynamic is getting even worse and infecting most people and many institutions that would be much better not being politicized.

It would, IMO, help to make third parties viable by getting rid of First Past the Post voting.

There's no way Biden won the last election without manipulating mail in ballots. We all know big tech and the media helped Biden out big time.

This has been proven to be false repeatedly, yet people still claim it.

> They may just vote "screw you" just for revenge.

Sure, but how is that worse than them not turning up at all?

> The right to vote includes the right to abstain from voting when one does not care.

And you're free to cast an invalid vote.

> Forced voting sounds like a recipe for bad election results.

Forced voting eliminates some variables from elections, including:

* inequality regarding who can afford to take the time to vote.

* which parties can rile up the most people so that they're actually motivated to vote.

* to some extent, the ability to disenfranchise groups of people who tend to vote against you.

I'm curious as to how it'd make the election results worse.

Mandatory voting means it is mostly a logistical exercise.

"You participated in the process."

Like building Ikea furniture, you now think that the process is better and more valid. Less civil unrest that way. Of course, you are still allowed to say whatever you like about how stupid any politician is in any role - even the PM. But you are more likely to accept the authority invested in them by the process when you are part of it.

Thirdly, you can still donkey vote if you are desperate to make your vote meaningless.

You can force someone to vote, but you cannot force them to vote responsibly.

How does this not also apply to similar civic obligations, like jury duty?

(I've always mentally put compulsory voting in the same box as compulsory jury duty. In both cases of course it's not really compulsory to take part, just to attend).

It's compulsory to submit a vote. If you wish to abstain, you can vote informally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com