And I'm sorry for any other confusion I may have caused. What I meant by "abstain" was, "decline to travel to a polling place and register a vote (null or otherwise)". Which, in Australia, is illegal.
So, returning to my original question to you (not angrysoba) -- What is undemocratic about deciding to stay home on election day?
Thanks for clearing that up.
Probably the most undemocratic thing about staying home is that your vote is basically lost among all the other people whose vote isn't "abstain" but something else like "too lazy to vote" or as I understand it in the US "too busy to vote". If you can look past that then there wouldn't really be a problem in staying home and not voting, I however can't look past that.
I'm sure that in Australia there are people who don't show up for that very reason and they're more then happy to pay the $20 fine.
Why should I care what people believe or why the decide voting isn't worth their time and effort? What's important to me is that--whatever their reason--they have the freedom to decide for themselves what level of participation matters to them.
Because in your example you decided to declare that the 80% of people who didn't bother to vote are happy with being
virtually represented when that might not be the case.
Besides, if 60% of people don't think their vote matters, the solution isn't to force them to go and vote anyway.
Then what is the solution?
And if they're right, then I'd say your democracy has far worse problems than requiring people who know better to waste their time participating in a pointless ritual.
Well that wasn't the case in Australia when they introduced compulsory voting in Federal elections in 1924.
Or most people have decided that either candidate is worthy of the position?
Or most people have decided that the position isn't important enough to be worthy of their attention?
Or that the 20% of their fellow citizens who actually care about such things seem to be muddling along just fine without them, and they have better things to do that day?
So you do understand how simplistic your statement was.
But okay, sure: Let's set it up such that if an election doesn't attract at least a quorum of voters, then the position remains unfilled. But show me a position that can go unfilled, and I'll show you a position that didn't need to be created in the first place.
So if this applied to, for example, US Presidential elections, would that mean the office of President would have remained vacant between 1920-1928 and then again in 1996? And would that mean that the office shouldn't have been created in the first place?
Instead of agonizing about whether or not to force people to come out and vote for a position they don't really need, why not eliminate the pointless position and the pointless election that comes with it?
But what happens if the "pointless position" ends up being "most of the elected positions" if the voter turnout data
here is any guide?
How do you know it is an indicator that people aren't happy with the system?
I don't. It's just like how you don't know that it's an indicator that people are happy with their government.
And again, why should I care what their reasons are?
Well the last time I checked part of the way representative democracies worked was that the people voted for people to represent them. If a majority of people aren't voting I'd say that it's probably a good idea to figure out why that's the case.
They're free citizens in a free country. Any time their unhappiness with the system rises to the level of actually mattering to them, they're free to go and vote themselves a better system.
That's assuming that an alternative system is voted upon and not just implemented.
Here's an idea: Instead of passing a law requiring people to vote whether they want to or not, how about working to give them meaningful elections and convince them that voting is worth their time? And if you can't succeed at that (or working at it isn't worth your time), then why not let them decide for themselves what to care about?
Given that I was -65 years old at the time and none of my family members were in Australia when the compulsory voting legislation was passed I can't really say that I had much say in the passing of that legislation.
For one thing, it seems to result in a sort of sick fetishization of national elections, and distracts from the local politics that should actually matter more, and that indviduals can actually influence directly (not to mention that even in national elections, voters will have more influence by getting involved with their local party, instead than self-aggrandizingly marching into a booth on election day and pulling a lever for "the president of the United States").
That really seems to suggest that your country does a poor job in teaching its students about the electoral system. Then again given that how your government works makes no *********** sense to anyone that's not surprising.
My argument is relying on the premises that a free citizen choosing to stay home on election day produces just as democratic a result as the citizen who casts a vote; and that making them go to the polling place doesn't actually solve any of the problems that have been suggested so far.
So you see voting as a right in the same way that speech is a right, that you also have a right not to do the thing in question?
I'm saying, let's not make a fetish of People Voting For Things, and here it seems Australia has gone ahead and made it their state religion.
Considering that I'm required to get off my arse one Saturday every three years to vote in Federal elections and one Saturday every four years to vote in State elections I'd say that it's hardly a "fetish of People Voting For Things", especially compared to the fact that the US seems to have far more things to vote for and they don't have to vote. And lets not get started on Switzerland.
