It’s election time which means that beyond all the promises and press conferences, structural questions are being asked too. How do we get a clearer picture of what is actually being promised? Why are more and more Australians opting to vote early? Is this a problem? And why, when it comes down to it, do we need to vote at all? Crikey readers share their thoughts:
On compulsory voting
Wayne Robinson writes: If voting is made compulsory, then voting has to be made easy, which the AEC has done. In other democracies, with voluntary voting, voting is made (deliberately) difficult. In Britain, you have to re-register yearly and vote on a Thursday (a workday) at your local booth (even if you work hundreds of kilometres away). Australia has the best electoral system.
On early voting
Mark Dunstone writes: Early voters missing out on the details of political parties’ stated policies is irrelevant because as we know those “stated policies” have little to do with the “actual policies” they implement if elected. I would say early voters are able to make a more informed vote because they are less able to be misled by all lies.
On pork barrelling
John and Trish McPhee write: One way to get around the pork barrelling of election campaigns would be to legislate that all parties/independents must have their policies announced and independently costed before the close of nominations — and make it illegal to announce new spending measures during the campaign. The election campaign then becomes a presentation, debate and discussion of policy, not endless pork barrelling announcements, which just turn off voters because they know they are mostly bullshit anyway.
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“John and Trish McPhee write: One way to get around the pork barrelling of election campaigns would be to legislate that all parties/independents must have their policies announced and independently costed before the close of nominations — and make it illegal to announce new spending measures during the campaign. The election campaign then becomes a presentation, debate and discussion of policy, not endless pork barrelling announcements, which just turn off voters because they know they are mostly bullshit anyway. ”
There’s some issues with this.
It would require fixed terms, first of all (although this is plausible).
The financial figures people are working from would be out of date by the time of the election. One of the reasons costings are invariably late in the campaign is they have to be updated for the PEFO which isn’t even released by Treasury until after the campaign starts. Everyone could just work from the older figures available well in advance of the campaign, but that also means people are campaigning on stuff which is inaccurate and can’t update due to changes.
I don’t think you could actually make it illegal to announce new spending measures during the campaign- implied freedom of politicial communication and all that. Plus lack of ability to react to new information and new events. But let’s say you could for the sake of argument.
It would effectively make the campaign like 6 months long so that we’d all hate everything by the time of the campaign proper. Much like America in the last 18 months before a Presidential election is just constant campaigning. And the idea that the campaigning would be more about policy is a mere dream. There’d be the same myopic focus on spending and costings, and re-announcement and promotion of those pork barrel announcements.
The idea that the campaign would be about po
Compulsory voting does have its merits but it could be considerably improved by the voters not being lied to; by penalties, including disenfranchisement, for political lies; by enforcing honesty rules, similar to those imposed on the ABC by its Charter, onto all informational and opinion ‘news’ media; and by developing a system whereby those of obvious low intelligence, simple gullibility and lack of reasoning capability might be excluded fron eligibility to vote.
By my estimation, the latter requirement might decrease the time needed for the counting of votes by about half.
Who decides the cut-off? Sounds like fascism to me. Geniuses and fools can be found among the supporters of all parties, probably randomly distributed. There are no short-cuts to maintaining the ramshackle worst-except-for-all-the-rest system we’ve got – just persistent effort – and no guarantee that it will survive.
Then, you do no understand the meaning of the word ‘facism’.
‘Elitism’ might be a better description – something which Australians wholeheartedly support in sport, religion and money matters, but which they are all too happy to cut down in intellectual and artistic matters.
Do you also have a fear of the better minds in society?
I am content with one-person one-vote representative democracy. I am very happy to have elites recognised and respected in all fields, including in the formulation of policy, deliberation on it and legislating for it – where I expect our representatives to exercise their judgement on our behalf, not slavishly reflect their electorates’ latest opinions.
But then I require our representatives, at regular intervals, to face the electorate – and that means all of us.
I am happy to concede “Fascism”, as long as you concede that you are not talking about anything that can count as “democracy”.
Wayne Robinson’s point (compulsion also compels the state to facilitate voting for all) tops my quite long list of reasons for approving our system.
To be state-of-the-art, we should institute a legal “none of the above” option. Currently, only the secret ballot protects this perfectly acceptable decision, whilst the law bans both it and advocating for it.