When I first moved to Australia I rankled at compulsory voting as I believe that not participating is a valid political act. Countries without compulsory voting talk about the turnout as relative to previous years, and if it falls too far there will be questions about a mandate to govern.
In Australia that can't happen as turnout is always high, this leads to very little opportunity to overhaul the mechanism of elections to make it more applicable to the community, or to overhaul political parties entirely. Red team or Blue team are guaranteed some high proportion of the country voting for them and it gives a false sense of relevance.
However I'm now fully in favour of compulsory voting. Why?
Look at America, what an absolute shambles of a democratic system. One party spending decades attempting to stop black people voting. Voter suppression and gerrymandering (also not possible in Australia) baked into the political system. No thanks.
Australian politicians are no better, they would reach for those tactics in a heartbeat, compulsory voting stops us from heading down that path. There is no utopia, the system has problems, but the trade-off is worth it.
As an Australian living in America for 10 years you absolutely nailed it; compulsory voting effectively prevents what is the worst part of American democracy - the unceasing efforts to stop people voting .
Plenty of other bs, but at least the right to participate is guaranteed.
> compulsory voting effectively prevents what is the worst part of American democracy - the unceasing efforts to stop people voting
No, it doesn't; sloppy, deliberately overbroad purges of voter rolls (without notification of the targets) are a key voter suppression technique, and are not at all impaired by compulsory voting.
Are you Australian? I’m asking because I’m not aware of of that(very American) tactic being employed in Australia. Imho the requirement of voting moves the window of what’s acceptable in terms of voter rolls - I can’t think of one time I’ve heard of purging being employed inappropriately in aus. And I can’t really imagine a party getting away with it.
I could of course just be blissfully unaware, and it actually occurs all the time.
I am American, and I was reading “compulsory voting effectively prevents what is the worst part of American democracy - the unceasing efforts to stop people voting” as a claim that, applied where those efforts occur, compulsory voting would be an effective and adequate remedy, rather than “In Australia, compulsory voting exists and the efforts seen to suppress voting seen in America do not”.
AFAIK (which, I’ll admit, isn’t very far—my knowledge of domestic Australian politics is more of a very light random smattering than the result of any focussed study), you are correct that those don't tend to occur in Australia.
I understand your point now, thanks! I agree somewhat; if all you changed tomorrow in the USA was to make voting compulsory, you would immediately see redoubled efforts in purging rolls etc.
I agree I probably overstated, there would still be ways to stop people voting. Although it cuts out many many avenues, so you would imagine(hope?) the overall disenfranchisement would be significantly less, and decrease over time as the attitude of voting entitlement sets in.
> Look at America, what an absolute shambles of a democratic system. One party spending decades attempting to stop black people voting. Voter suppression and gerrymandering (also not possible in Australia) baked into the political system. No thanks.
It’s always interesting to see this essentially fake narrative. No one is trying to stop anyone from voting. It’s made up, to try and role the base, the same way you describe —- it increases turnout for the left. So they push the fake narrative.
Anyway, I see your point. But the US is an entirely different beast. As much as people want to knock it, the system is extremely robust. The federal government really isn’t supposed to have a mandate. That’s essentially the entire left and right debate in the US. States rights vs federal rights.
The issue you’re seeing in the US are that the left are socialist/Marxists who want a strong federal gov (authoritarian). The right believes that’s anti-American, and believes we should have strong states and personal freedom (Republican). If the left stopped trying to enact federal control (through monetary, economic, political, etc), the right would be totally happy. California would do its thing and Tennessee would do theirs, the best would win.
Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re doing.
This literally goes all the way back to the founding with the federalists (John Adam’s) and anti-federalists (Thomas Jefferson). The system is dysfunctional by design, the goal was never to have a strong government and while its tense, you have more freedom and security than just about anywhere.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked, "What's the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?"
Carvin responded, "Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game."
If you are saying the Republican Party has spent decades trying to stop black people from voting, that is simply incorrect. It is what the other party’s propaganda would like you to believe. Same with voter suppression.
Southern conservative as Democrats or Republicans like Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were very much in favor of not letting African Americans vote. Who they caucused with later is unrelated.
But yes, to say it was Democrats or Republicans would be very technically inaccurate.
It isn’t a coincidence that the states that were practicing Jim Crow before are the same states trying to discourage voting today.
"Texas ranks number 10 overall when it comes to engagement among African American voters, including being first overall in proportional representation of blacks in state legislature and national party conventions."
Just because they've been trying doesn't mean they've been successful yet. But just pile up more voting restrictions and let's see what happens...its not like Texas has very high voter engagement over all (which is on par with other poor southern states and...Hawaii).
Of black voter engagement (via some metric). Overall they are in the bottom 10 of voter engagement. I guess it should be ok to be compared to Mississippi.
Yeah, that's the problem that the new voting restrictions aim to fix. Likely also the redistricting; both because the Voting Rights Act, by which the federal government prevented Texas (among other states) from wholesale disenfranchisement, is out of the way.
The reality on the ground is that all Western European nations have stricter voting laws / requirements than the US does and almost nobody on HN will dare to talk about that fact because it's inconvenient to the propaganda game.
It's the sick joke of eg Major League Baseball moving the All-Star game from Georgia to protest new voting laws, shifting it to Colorado which already had similar voting laws to those that Georgia wanted to implement. It's all bullshit propaganda.
The same is true of immigration restrictions. You're not supposed to talk about how strict most other affluent nations are when it comes to who they let into their countries to become citizens.
Can you imagine the global uproar if the US began a cultural genocide program against Muslims like Denmark is aggressively doing? Forcibly taking children away from their parents to be re-educated via nationalist propaganda and forced value systems.
How about something less sinister - a national ban on full face veils like France, with punishment by forced re-education. The US would be called draconian, Islamophobic and racist for such treatment. Meanwhile over there's Macron one step away from calling for a cultural crusade.
When the US does it, it's bad. When everybody else does it, it's logical and good and progressive.
> all Western European nations have stricter voting laws / requirements than the US does
The UK* has never required voting ID for elections, and it is possible to walk into a local polling station and be given a ballot paper after just stating your name and address. Sadly that may no longer be the case for future elections, because the UK Conservative party has decided to introduce a voter ID requirement, modelled on the success that the Republicans have had with it at decreasing turnout especially among the poor and minorities.
The fact that other Western European nations have voter ID laws is likely because they generally have mandatory national ID cards already, and it makes to use those to record who voted (how many times). If Republicans were first pushing for mandatory state ID, then later requiring those IDs at polling time would not be seen as so suspicious.
> The same is true of immigration restrictions.
I'm sure it's possible to find examples of policies in some European countries which are worse than the equivalent US policy, but to provide some factual comparison for how welcoming the US is of (poor) immigrants, let me point out that Sweden hosts 8.52 refugees per 1,000 people while the US hosts 0.92, ranking 13th and 68th respectively on the global league table for this.[0]
But you're right, the US would receive criticism for adopting more bigoted policies, just as France was condemned for its bigoted face veil policy.[1] If you live in the US, it shouldn't be surprising that you hear (and are more sensitivity to) criticism of the US more than criticism of countries like France.
* Technically voter ID was trialled in some English constituencies recently, and it has long been standard in Northern Ireland, so perhaps "Scotland" is a better example of a "Western European nation" here. On the other hand, not every US state requires voter ID, so I hope it's still fair for me to say "the US does" require it.
You pointing out edge cases isn't a very convincing argument against Europe as a whole.
In general, Europe has more strict voting ID laws (fact).
In general, Europe has more restricted immigration laws (fact). I mean in the US the debate isn't even about who to let in, rather if we should even have a border and allow people to come in as they please.
In general, Europe is more racist. When Orlando Patterson, a renowned race-baiter in the US, surveyed the evidence he found that America was less racist than any other white-majority country by far. Americans are more open than Europeans to living next to a neighbor of a difference race. And we have sharply rising level of intermarriages.
I think you are making some reasonable points here, even though I don't agree with all of them. You're right that I was cherry-picking the example of the UK (just as the comment I responded to was cherry-picking examples of French and Danish policies) but I think I was justified in doing so since the other comment said "all Western European nations". Perhaps the difference between "all" and "nearly all" is not worth quibbling over, but my cherry-picked example does show that it's perfectly possible for a country to have legitimate elections without voter ID, which I think is relevant here.
Your comment would probably be more convincing if you provided some citations for your claims, though. The EU average for refugee population, on the link I gave last time, is 2.3 per 1,000 people and the European average is 2.01 per, which are both twice as much as the US. I suppose it's possible that Europe is more welcoming of refugees than other immigrants, but I think your second "fact" is not self-evidently true. The only policy you might have in mind is that EU states can, in some circumstances, expel citizens from other states, despite freedom of movement[0] and the Schengen system, which doesn't have an equivalent in the US as far as I know.
Of all your claims, though, the one that I think most needs to be supported is the idea that not having a border is a mainstream position. I don't think you're saying that every inch of America's land and sea borders need to have an impenetrable physical barrier to even qualify as a border at all, so can you point to an example of an official mainstream party policy saying that there should be no limits on who can enter the country? I'm sure some people on Twitter have suggested that the US shouldn't have a border, but I don't think it has more political support as a policy than, for example, the "shoot to kill" policy suggested by Georgia state Rep. John Yates (R).[1]
I think the poll worker would be entitled to perform a citizens arrest at that point, unless "the first person in line to mumble" that was also wearing a very good disguise.
So even without a physical ID document, the poll workers have at least the ability (if not the duty) to remedy a fraudulent vote attempt. The latest US "voting rights" push is to have as few voters as possible physically enter a polling place. Americans aren't grumbling about ID because they hate minorities; they're grumbling because their dead relatives voting in Chicago have been a running joke for 60 years.
The Democrats say that voting is being discouraged. What is being discouraged is invalid votes, to diminish fraud. Republicans would love to encourage an authentic black vote.
I'm not sure this is true, even as a black republican with several black republican voting family members. My experience is that most black voters are more conservative, but almost always vote based on race rather than policy. This is obviously changing, to skew towards black voters being less conservative- but calling candidates racist will usually trump all other values that go into the voting decision.
Black and Hispanic voters are more socially conservative on average, but they vote for the people that don’t actively work against their interests, as anyone who isn’t a push over should.
I’ll gladly vote for a Republican if I feel like the other side is working against my interests, ideology isn’t a determining factor.
So why do Black people say that Republicans are trying to stop them from voting?
I can't tell if you're completely comfortable with the fact that no evidence exists supporting fraudulent voting, or if you just think it's A-OK to break a few black eggs in order to make the omelette of your desires.
It also sets up conditions by which people have no choice but to make a choice which is in their own interest, rather than having a political process built on vote suppression, non-participation and the kind of clientelism which arises when politicians are more concerned with energizing their own base than expanding their appeal.
Quoting political scientist Waleed Aly:
"In a compulsory election, it does not pay to energize your base to the exclusion of all other voters. Since elections cannot be determined by turnout, they are decided by swing voters and won in the center... That is one reason Australia’s version of the far right lacks anything like the power of its European or American counterparts. Australia has had some bad governments, but it hasn’t had any truly extreme ones and it isn’t nearly as vulnerable to demagogues"
I think your point about compulsory voting creating ripe conditions for more propaganda is not borne out by reality - the USA is just as flooded with fake news as Australia.
I enjoy the quote from a political scientist, while ignoring the reality.
In Australia we have an example of what happens when you force everyone to vote. It’s not going well, they literally have concentration camps, ask for papers, don’t let you leave your homes, etc.
> I think your point about compulsory voting creating ripe conditions for more propaganda is not borne out by reality - the USA is just as flooded with fake news as Australia.
I think you assume what you see on TV is legit news. I agree, you see the same “fake news” everywhere. The problem, is those who believe fake news are often not those voting because they don’t do their own research, they aren’t engaged. You want the engaged going to vote, because they’re engaging with society. Forcing everyone to vote is basically a recipe for getting the candidate that “gifts” the most to the people. It’ll be the downfall of nations.
> It’s not going well, they literally have concentration camps, ask for papers, don’t let you leave your homes, etc.
Anyone who thinks this is actually what is happening in Australia is falling for propaganda.
> they literally have concentration camps
Offshore detention centres for refugees seeking asylum is a stain on Australia that cannot be excused or erased.
If you mean the quarantine centres they are finally building then.. they are nothing like concentration camps. They are a better alternative than the hotel quarantine system they have been trying and failing to make work until now.
And within 12 months we'll hopefully have vaccine rates hight enough travel for vaccinated people can get back to normal and they'll only be needed for people who choose not to be vaccinated and choose to come to Australia.
> ask for papers
I assume this is asking for vaccine certification? Seems reasonable, given our failure to get enough people vaccinated quickly enough.
> don’t let you leave your homes
I think this refers to home quarantine? That people in quarantine aren't allowed to leave their homes seems kind of the point?
> vaccine passports haven't been implemented in Australia yet.
The lack of vaccine passports is of little consolation when its citizens have already accepted this:
"The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person."
That is specifically about enforcement of home quarantine as an alternative to hotel quarantine for interstate travel. It's not generally applicable in any way.
Sorry, I should have provided more clarifying context. My point wasn't that this was a general policy, but that Australians have accepted a system of self- and AI-administered biometric constant surveillance for at least some citizens, some of the time. I could easily see this being used to enforce future lockdowns, or being a replacement for vaccine passports (checking that non-vaccinated citizens don't attend any venues they are not permitted to).
Mandatory voting can be done well if the first two options for every race are "I approve of none of these candidates" and "I approve of all of these candidates". Nobody should be forced to vote for a candidate that they don't want to, but it's also useful to be able to distinguish between a disaffected voter (the first option) and an apathetic voter (the second option). With non-mandatory voting, that distinction is erased, and the winner gets to freely claim that they have a mandate of the masses even if 70% of the eligible populace stayed home because they hate all the candidates.
Minor parties and protest candidates already offer the mechanism for that in Australia, and preferential voting means those protest votes often make a meaningful difference
In my anecdotal experience, people don't care about politics here and will most likely vote on either "I'd rather have a beer with X than Y so I'll vote for X" or "they're both as bad as each other so I'll just vote like my family always have."
That didn't sound like the point you were making, and others agree with me. Everyone is responding to you thinking that you were criticizing mandatory or compulsory voting, not universal suffrage. Your choice of words "forced to vote" rather than "right to vote" conveyed that meaning.
Forcing people to vote is universal suffrage on steroids. I don’t think universal suffrage is good be default (it might be idk), but I think forcing the vote takes the worst parts of universal suffrage, uninformed and/or indifferent population voting, and over samples that group
Imagine how elections would shift if only the elderly voted or middle age.
Imagine if only those with children could vote (as they have a reason for the future).
The voting base is important. Forcing people to vote sets up conditions where propaganda as opposed to an informed population is making the decisions.
That’s what happened to Australia