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Comment by dobbsbob | Hacker News Reader

Democracy rapidly disappears at this point. Parties can use the data to identify areas of the population who are unlikely to vote for them and target them with robocalls and false mailings that instruct them their voting poll address has changed, or the date for voting has changed in order to prevent them from voting at all. Blackmail is also an option, so is discrediting opposition when you have access to watch them 24/7.

By the time anybody figures out shenanigans went down nothing will come of it because everybody involved will deny, and any elections authority that could have investigated will be gutted, de-funded and dissolved to make sure nothing comes of it. If irregularities are recognized then they will simply put together a bullshit reform package, call it the 'Fair elections act' and it will be anything but fair

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/bill-would-dise...

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I think you don't understand the Australian voting process very well. Australians are not as accepting of robocalls as Americans are (and with mobile phones becoming the norm, robocalls get expensive); the voting date is hard to fake since everyone has to vote at the same time and there are media blitzes about the date itself; and polling addresses are meaningless, because if you don't go to one of the ones for your electorate, you can go into a polling station anywhere in the country and record a vote, it just takes marginally longer. If you try and make it so that voters have to queue for 8 hours to lodge a vote in order to marginalise them, people will give up and go to another polling station. People here complain bitterly if they have to wait an hour to vote.

If someone did try the voting date switcheroo and succeeded in stopping a sizeable portion of people from voting, the most likely outcome - apart from the scandal - would be that the Australian Electoral Commission would call for a repeat of the voting for that electorate. By-elections happen all the time; it's not something that would be procedurally unusual.

Blackmail is still an option though, and still a good reason to oppose the law.

Too late to edit, but for clarity "everyone has to vote at the same time" is meant to be emphasis on 'everyone', rather than 'same time', since voting is mandatory. Since all voters have to show up rather than just those who want to, it's harder to mislead more people.

In a strange way, it's good that people don't get to vote. With voter apathy and declining turnout in many countries, might as well encourage people to stop voting.

Let voter turnout drop to single digit percentages. It would be hard for anybody to claim that the elected person had any kind of mandate. The news headlines would be farcicial, "Prime Minister elected, wins 55% of the popular vote, on 7% turnout"

Of course in Australia they currently fine you if you don't vote. Perhaps in future they'll make it a criminal offense and put people in prison for not voting!

The fine is a token amount ($20 - $50), although failure to pay results in the loss of your Drivers License. [1]

Considering the voting debacle in Western Australia (where a Senate result was declared with just a 14 vote margin, despite the Australian Electoral Commission admitting to losing 1375 ballot papers), I think there are some Australians debating whether they should participate in future elections.

[1] http://www.elections.wa.gov.au/vote/failure-vote [2] http://delimiter.com.au/2013/11/18/wa-likely-vote-senate/ [3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-29/court-of-disputed-retu...

They fine you if you don't attend, You can drop a blank or invalid ballot paper

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