A question for my Australian friends:

[urbpan]

No, it's not about venomous spiders or snakes or monotremes, as much as I love those things.  My question has to do with the Australian voting system.  As I understand it (my disclaimer before exposing my utter and typical American ignorance of any culture other than my own) voting in Australia is required.  First of all: is this so?  Second, if so, how is this enforced?

In the United States, voting is entirely optional, in fact, there are obstacles in place that could potentially skew the vote.  First of all, it's always on a Tuesday, when most people have work or school.  The polls are open before and after work hours, but many people find it too much of a hassle to figure out where their polling place is, find a place to park, wait in line, and do it.  Sometimes they run over little kids in order to find a place to park.

Also (and this is what made me make this post in the first place, thanks to the video sin_agua  posted, in which several celebrities remind us Americans that we have to register to vote) you have to register to vote.  That is, you have to go through some kind of government hoop, which depending where you live (and your internet access) is as easy as getting a hotmail account or as big a pain in the ass as getting a dog license (go to city hall, prove identity, certify rabies vaccination--or did the 14th amendment get rid of the rabies certification requirement?).  I realize that in order to prevent voter fraud, it's necessary to keep track of these things, but it makes me wonder:  In a place where voting is MANDATORY (like Australia, maybe? and Brazil?) do you have to go to the trouble to register first, or does the government keep track some other way?

I could google this, but hey I know some people in Australia, and I'd love to hear it from you guys. 

Plus I'm already splitting my attention between posting this and listening to the VP debate train wreck, where Biden and Palin seem to be participating in entirely different conversations.  Even if I agreed with her on anything (book banning, secession, creationism) I couldn't vote for her because her voice makes me want to climb the goddamn walls.  WORDS ENDING IN I-N-G SOUND LIKE "ING" not "EN."  Yer darn tootin' we're gonna be workin' on a whole mess a problems you betcha!  Good god, can't the leader of the free world sound like an educated adult?!  Even Dan Quayle enunciated his gaffes correctly.  She sounds like she's running for treasurer of the student council of a St. Paul public high school.  Except she lies more.

Comments

[audacian.livejournal.com]

The phrase is DRILL BABY DRILL, Joe.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Did she just say "respect for women's rights"?

[audacian.livejournal.com]

And she said we can't sit down with them but diplomacy and sitting down is what they'll do, first and foremost.

Sit down sit down.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

will sit down on them with our bombs!!!

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Nuke first, talk later

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

sitting too much gives you hemorrhoids. john mccain knows.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

i almost choked at that one.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

The way that he correctly pronounced "nuclear" three times in a row just now is clearly a condescension.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

he's an elitist from the east coast.

[gigglingwizard.livejournal.com]

So much so he puts g's on every single ing. Makes him sound like he's wound too tightly. Definitely an East Coast thing.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

that's how we roll up here.

[reinadelaire.livejournal.com]

honestly, I can't take anyone seriously who can't pronounce "nuclear" correctly...

[urimancy.livejournal.com]

http://www.slate.com/id/2201318/

[artemii.livejournal.com]

this doesn't actually answer your question (don't you love comments that start that way?), but regardless of whether it's true for australia, i know it is for greece (or at least was when i was living there). if you aren't by your usual polling station at the time of voting (due to travel or whatever), you have to go to the nearest one to where you are. i know they enforce it, but i currently can't remember how, though i do remember that if you don't vote you have to have a reason such as being out of the country during election day.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I think it's a good principle, but I'm worried that there might be more stupid people who aren't voting. Are there more smart people who don't vote? I don't know, Palin's jabber is eroding my thoughts as I type this.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

it's also easier to enforce in a country that has around the population of NYC (if i recall correctly) than a population the size of the US's.

i think it's also something that's easier to keep enforcing than to introduce into a population, especially one with such a pathetic voter percentage as our own. i know people who don't know the name of their national House representative or where their polling station is.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Did she actually call him Senator O'Biden or did I mishear it?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Someone else caught it, but I'm following so many online discussions I forgot who it was.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I agree, her voice just annoys me.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

i heard that.

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

Yes, voting is compulsory in state and federal elections (but not for local elections). However, the penalty is either not very bad and/or poorly enforced. Elections are held on Saturdays - pretty much every school becomes a polling booth, and if you're going to be elsewhere you can put in a postal vote. You do have to register and when elections are coming up there are plenty of ads reminding people who will turn 18 soon to register and those that have moved to correct their registration. I can't remember what it was like initially registering but altering a registration is a matter of filling out a card, getting it witnessed and posting it off. The most annoying thing is trying to figure out which electorate I was registered for previously (when you move a lot you may not update your registration before you move again).

Non-compulsory elections worry me because such a small percentage votes and the result does not reflect the sentiments of the entire population. But compulsory voting is also flawed because not everybody can be educated about all the candidates and their policies etc. God knows I'm pretty clueless. I just vote Green.

I also don't like how two parties perpetually dominate because if you vote for another party and they don't win the votes trickle to Labor and Liberal somehow. I didn't VOTE for Labor or Liberal, why should my vote go to them? I wish there was an option for "no candidate", because honestly, neither option that's likely to win is ever any good. I like how in Europe monkeys and donkeys get voted in by the people because the politicians suck so badly. Maybe if that was allowed elsewhere in the world the pollies would up their game.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that! And thanks for your comments about my blog on yours, that was really nice. :)

In the states not only do very few people vote, but most people are poorly educated about the issues and candidates. Notice that President Bush was reelected.

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

Hey John Howard got re-elected here too. But really, although Rudd is more aesthetically pleasing, he's just the lesser of two evils.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

i keep thinking: tina fey is getting so much more material tonight!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Same here. I feel like Palin is imitating Tina Fey tonight!

[artemii.livejournal.com]

me, too! i still can't believe she managed to say "drill, baby, drill!" with a straight face, and am wishing i'd suggested a drinking game involving how often she mentions her "special needs child".

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Any drinking game you can suggest--the "maverick" one for example--would result in alcohol poisoning. I'm drinking bourbon without any rules just to keep from defenestrating myself.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

when she said that the republicans are the ones who are protecting our freedoms, i nearly choked again.

[ssorca19.livejournal.com]

I dont know if you guys have seen this (someone else sent me the link, I take no credit) but it kinda goes along with your drinking game idea:
http://palinbingo.com/

and makes me laugh

[artemii.livejournal.com]

i've seen it but it bears spreading far and wide! :)

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Voting is compulsory in Federal and State Elections (not local government). If you don't do it (they tick your name off once you vote) you get fined $200.

Btw- we don't have your fancy lever and pully electronic whizbang machines, we have a little curtained booth with the forms and a pencil!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

We have crazy piecemeal system with different ballot kinds in each place. Up until last time I pulled the lever (which was very satisfying feeling--kachunk!) but on the last one I had to fill in bubbles with a pencil like it was a standardized test.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

it depends on the state. in most of the polling stations in my and urbpan's state, voting is done with a piece of paper and a marker.

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

curtains? Wow. All the polling booths I've been to have just been cardboard boxes with sides to hide what you're ticking from other people.

[droserary.livejournal.com]

I've moved around so much, I have fairly good experience in four states. In New Jersey, I always voted absentee since I was away at college. In Pennsylvania, I voted in the booths, curtains, levers, and all. Washington state had mail in ballots only and Ohio was the first place I've ever voted on a computer (it had a printed "receipt" that you could see printing as you pressed buttons).

It should be standardized and it should not be a proprietary business designing these machines.

[mas69ter.livejournal.com]

I just "love" Ohio's electronic voting things. You know, the ones from the company that put Bush and now McCain bumper stickers on their company cars.

I liked the monstrous machines with the levers that they had before the computers, they were pretty cool.

[jilder.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid, my primary school would pinch all the cardboard booths after the elections and turn them into forts, castles, viking longboats, or whatever else the curriculum required. Henceforth I connect the electoral process with sailing to Scotland to steal women.

(Incidentally, I vote Green too. The increasing number of people doing so has had an impact in shaping the Rudd government's environmental policy. So it's not a lost cause, just an indirect way of getting one's voice heard.)

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

I think that's the best result of elections that I ever heard of. :)