do u think voting should be optional (1 Viewer)

[Lorie]

With a large amount of people not voting or not handing in valid voting cards, do u think voting should be optional. How many people do u think would vote if it were made optional?

 

[nerd2die4]

if the voting was optional not many people would be voting. this 'large' amount of people not handing in valid voting cards would be even larger if they didnt have to vote.

keep it compulsory.

 

[thorrnydevil]

Yeah...keep it compulsary. The invalid vote count isn't that high. In our electorate, 35,000 people voted and only 300 odd were informal...most people seem to take it seriously. Why change a system that has worked for the last 100 years?

 

[Lorie]

i did work with electrol comission last year at the state election and there was alot of invalid cards. People who just wrote F*** off and left it.

 

[mervvyn]

my personal opinion is that it should stay compulsory - if it became optional, voter numbers would drop off to the point that governments could feasibly come to power a la george bush - something like a quarter of the votes. i know there are differences in the system but i'm thinking of the political apathy that exists in the US - at least you have to think about it here, most invalid voters will have made a conscious decision to do so. if you haven't voted at all, then i think you've lost your right to whinge about the government of the day - and that's something we treasure
i know a guy who refuses to register, ditto his dad, because they don't believe they should be forced to vote - a right not a responsibility as it were

 

[omg_a]

despite that australia is one of the few democracies in the world with compulsory voting, i definitely think it is a good thing. Not only is there the american example where it's not so much about who get the most votes, as who gets the most people to go out and vote, but consider what happened in the last French election. they have two elections... a primary one which narrows it down to two, and then a final election. usually, it is the leader of the two main parties ( the equivalent of our labor and liberal parties). because people assume that is who will end up in the second election, they don't bother voting. and last time, so many people didn't vote that only one of the main people got in to the final two (chirac) and also a very far right politician (le pen) and chirac is already on the right wing side of politics. so it became an election between fairly right wing or very right wing. all because people just didn't bother voting.

so, yes, the few donkey votes we get are nothing compared the the wide spread apathy many countries have.

 

[Lorie]

yeah i believe that it shouldn't be amde optional. But i would like to see if the amount of people voting in the USA changes through all the protests against Bush and mike moores movies.

But there has been cases where people go around and pick up people from the pubs who haven't voted and drive them to the polls so they don't get fined. How is this fair when someone who is drunk and doesn't really have an idea what they are doing have the same say as a person who has studied the media and other sources.

 

[thorrnydevil]

i did work with electrol comission last year at the state election and there was alot of invalid cards. People who just wrote F*** off and left it.

I live in a regional area so there aren't as many dick heads around as in the city areas. No offence to those that live in the city.

 

[tattoodguy]

fuck yes..................................i never vote and will prboably never vote..i hate our country and i hate our government etc

peace

 

[tattoodguy]

but if you dont give a fuck..whats the point.........i dont give a fuck...so why should u try and make me vote on something i dont care about..


i dont seee any logic for compulsary voting.

 

[McLake]

I posted my opinion on this in the other thread ...

http://www.boredofstudies.org/community/showthread.php?t=40737

 

[ogmzergrush]

fuck yes..................................i never vote and will prboably never vote..i hate our country and i hate our government etc

You could always leave and go play somewhere else, or actively get involved in trying to improve it if you think it's really that bad.

As for the logic in compulsory voting, one reason that I entertain, is that it's an attempt to encourage some sort of interest by the general public in the direction of the country, and its policy.

As I've stated before in other threads, I think one of the main benefits in compulsory voting is that it encourages people to have their say. People who are largely indifferent towards politics, are forced to go to the effort of voting, and perhaps in doing so voice their sensible, indifferent opinions.

I think that it's possible that if voting was not compulsory, a lot of the people who actually bothered would be those with strong political agendas which they wished to further, which may not necessarily be in the best interests of the nation at large. By forcing people to vote (or at least go to the effort of casting an invalid vote), I think that a bit of a balance is struck between 'moderate' (perhaps conservative?) decisions and those of minorities, etc.

Of course just my two cents, I'm not a political scientist (Luckily), so I'm only voicing my opinion.

 

[tattoodguy]

even so, if you dont read up on politics and policies etc..whats the point of voting..if you dont give a fuck...i dont see any point. if you want to have ur say..u can vote..if you dont care..u should be able to stay home and watch tv.

 

[ogmzergrush]

even so, if you dont read up on politics and policies etc..whats the point of voting..if you dont give a fuck...i dont see any point. if you want to have ur say..u can vote..if you dont care..u should be able to stay home and watch tv.

I thought I just covered that, but I'll try again. Basically, if not everyone voted, the only people who DID go to vote would be those who 'read up, were familiar with policies, etc'. The groups of people that these would be most likely to be are not indicative of the wider Australian community. As the entire point of voting is to elect a democratic leader for the (ENTIRE) nation, it seems important, to me at least, that the (ENTIRE) nation play a part in determining the outcome of the vote.

An individual's level of education in relation to government policy doesn't diminish the fact that they have an equal say to others. I think if voting wasn't compulsory, however, these people probably would just stay at home and watch tv, as you put it, meaning that the elected leaders didn't really represent the opinions of the entire nation, and instead represented the opinions of those who had specific interests in politics (Two vastly different groups, I would think).

 

[thorrnydevil]

fuck yes..................................i never vote and will prboably never vote..i hate our country and i hate our government etc

peace

If you hate our country then fuck off to Saudi Arabia or something.

 

[thorrnydevil]

I also believe that those that don't vote,shouldn't be able to comment on the policies of ones country. Or there government for that matter. (I write there as its not there govt. cause they didn't vote them in, or attempt to vote in another party).

 

[iambored]

no it shouldn't be optional, it sort of it optional now, forces the people to vote who like someone but would otherwise not be bothered to vote. if you don't want to vote then you don't have to.

 

[Lorie]

I live in a regional area so there aren't as many dick heads around as in the city areas. No offence to those that live in the city.

i live in a regional area aswell

 

[thorrnydevil]

i live in a regional area aswell

Oh yeah...where?

EDIT: Ballina...I see. I'm sorry to say but Ballinas poulation far out does ours.

 

[thorrnydevil]

Besides...it really only matters what area you live in. Everyone in our community had an invested interest in who got in to State Parliament. Well, not everyone but most of them did. Put it this way, the guy that got in, Rob Oakeshott got 73% of the votes...after the first count.