Re: [OT] How Australia's elections work

On 2025-04-13 17:20:31 +0000, Ian J. Ball said:

On 4/13/25 9:40 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

 I knew Australia was due for an election this year so I wasn't totally
shocked that the campaign is already under way. I found this as I
started to dig into the election to see how things were progressing.
It's an explanation of how voting works in Australia, which is one of
the few countries that has mandatory voting. (I'm not clear what the
penalty is if you don't vote but I *think* it is a smallish fine.)

 One article said AUS $20; another said $110. I wonder if it varies by
state. It has the effect of forcing problems to address issues affecting
the young without exclusively pandering to pensioners, supposedly.

 I thot not voting (for Labour!) got you a firing squad?...
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl4Ea7N1wwc [4 minutes]

Enforcing voting doesn't really change anything. It simply annoys people by making them turn up to the voting places, and those who do not want to vote will void the voting forms by scribbling on them before putting them into the box, or simply putting the blank voting forms into the voting box.
The only way to actually enforcing voting is for someone to officially check each form has been filled out properly before it is put into the voting box, which then makes a mockery of the entire anonymous / private voting of the so-called 'democratic process'.
If people do not want to vote, that is their choice. Besides which, all of the candidates are useless morons, so it is not even worth voting for any one of them over the others.