this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Compulsory voting in Australia is looking good
Australia has a pretty good preferential voting system too.
The only major problem with elections in Australia that comes to my mind is the way political advertising works. Truth in advertising laws do not apply to political ads, for fuck-knows what reason. And there's a lot of money sloshing around for the purpose of supporting the politicians who support certain groups. The media landscape isn't exactly an even playing field.
But the voting part itself is genuinely quite well done.
We can't expect Americans to travel to Australia. Be realistic.
We give a lot of chances to vote in the US. Mail in ballots, early voting, polling places open late. Discounting the tiny group of people who do not have and cannot get proper ID, and the tiny group of totally disabled people with no support system whatsoever, everyone should be able to figure out getting their vote in.
That leaves the people who don’t want to vote. But there is no way around the fact that being unforgivably stupid. Does your vote really matter in our crushingly ineffectual two-party system? Not as much as I would like. But there is an obvious choice between a party intent on dismantling the very foundation of the nation, and one simply content to let it fall apart. Voting for the former assures destruction, voting for the latter gives us time. Voting for neither, is moronic.
My point - Do we think that forcing this group of lazy and/or idiotic Americans to vote would add anything valuable to the political process?
Education is where positive political participation begins. Until we fix that and stop actively making it worse, there is no election reform solution to the festering rot of ignorance and apathy.