Re:Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against ...
by pessimizer on Saturday December 11, 2021 @06:42PM
(#29525404)
> 3. Make appearing at a polling place mandatory. This one is controversial. This is the system Australia has. You don't have to vote. You simply need to show up and get your name crossed off.
"It is not the case, as some people have claimed, that it is only compulsory to attend the polling place and have your name marked off, and this has been upheld by a number of legal decisions:
Some people (including me) see Australia's system as the forcing of an appearance of consent for the election of the same two parties. Within that system, you're not only not allowed to find all of the candidates unacceptable (and/or not to care about the outcome), but even further you're forced to rank all of the candidates. Albert Langer tried to get people to rank both major parties equally last, rather than accepting being forced to show a preference between them, and was jailed.
"During his incarceration, Albert Langer was deemed by Amnesty International to be a 'Prisoner of Conscience.'"
Australia managed to create a system even worse than FPTP. It annihilates small parties, and with their aggressive defense of it, this is obviously an intended effect. I think they just need proper runoffs if they honestly want to record people's preferences. At the absolute least, allow people to abstain from endorsing every candidate (but one, practically speaking.) Instead, millions of people who despise both the Labor and Liberal candidates have their votes recorded for one or the other every single election, under pain of fine.
Australian-style ranked choice reduces to almost exactly what we have now, but additionally artificially inflates the support of status quo incumbents.
"It is not the case, as some people have claimed, that it is only compulsory to attend the polling place and have your name marked off, and this has been upheld by a number of legal decisions:
"High Court 1926 – Judd v McKeon (1926) 38 CLR 380
Supreme Court of Victoria 1970 – Lubcke v Little [1970] VR 807
High Court 1971 – Faderson v Bridger (1971) 126 CLR 271
Supreme Court of Queensland 1974 – Krosch v Springbell; ex parte
Krosch [1974] QdR 107
ACT Supreme Court 1981 – O'Brien v Warden (1981) 37 ACTR 13"
https://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/voting/
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On Australia's ranked choice implementation:
Some people (including me) see Australia's system as the forcing of an appearance of consent for the election of the same two parties. Within that system, you're not only not allowed to find all of the candidates unacceptable (and/or not to care about the outcome), but even further you're forced to rank all of the candidates. Albert Langer tried to get people to rank both major parties equally last, rather than accepting being forced to show a preference between them, and was jailed.
"During his incarceration, Albert Langer was deemed by Amnesty International to be a 'Prisoner of Conscience.'"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Langer
Australia managed to create a system even worse than FPTP. It annihilates small parties, and with their aggressive defense of it, this is obviously an intended effect. I think they just need proper runoffs if they honestly want to record people's preferences. At the absolute least, allow people to abstain from endorsing every candidate (but one, practically speaking.) Instead, millions of people who despise both the Labor and Liberal candidates have their votes recorded for one or the other every single election, under pain of fine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langer_vote
Australian-style ranked choice reduces to almost exactly what we have now, but additionally artificially inflates the support of status quo incumbents.