An action to make society more democratic is one I can get behind. Few countries can really call themselves democratic.
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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So long as we have elected "representatives" we are not a democracy in the true sense of the word
Direct democracy is the only real democracy.
“But but you’ll get tyranny of the majority, which clearly doesn’t happen when the majority elect a tyrannical representative”
Are the lobbyists going to bribe us all to vote for their corporate interests over our own? You can buy out a “mate” you can’t buy out 26 million individuals.
What we will get is not having to pick a pollie who only aligns with 2 out of 2000 of our views. We won’t have politicians afraid to take action because they fear losing voters.
I have to say, the more I think about it, the more I genuinely think Thor Prohaska—a recurring independent candidate for Dickson (Peter Dutton's seat) and Kurwongbah (the state seat around the same area)—might have the right idea. He has an extremely detailed explanation for how it would work, but the short of his plan is that your MP would vote on any particular issue precisely how a majority of residents vote on the issue. But local residents could nominate some other local resident to be their proxy either overall, or for specific issues, alleviating the need for every voter to keep up-to-date and educated on every single issue, if there's someone else they trust who can do that for them—while still being able to pull away that trust at literally any moment, or to simply vote directly for an issue that they are particularly passionate about, or if there's one issue where they disagree with their chosen proxy.
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The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
Representative democracy is a form of democracy. Direct democracy is another form. There's no "true" form.
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16 years olds are pretty impressionable. I know I was. Wouldn't this kind of change make them more vulnerable to election manipulation?
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Austria, Brazil, Germany, and the UK region of Scotland (for devolved parliament and council elections only) have already enfranchised 16-year-olds. We should too.
There's currently a Parliamentary Inquiry into civics education, engagement, and participation in Australia. Changing the voting age is not in its terms of reference, but a large enough number of submissions calling for that could at least get a broader national conversation started.
(I also plan to put into my submission something about other voting systems and how feeling like your vote actually matters in a way that it largely doesn't in IRV would be a big help for civic engagement.)
Sounds good. I'm interested in why you think your vote doesn't matter in IRV? And what system you'd replace it with
So, it's obviously a relative thing. Your vote matters a shit tonne more in IRV than in FPTP, of course.
But it's also a lot less than proportional systems. At the last federal election, over 12% of Australians wanted a Greens representative. Less than 3% actually got one.
A combined 9% wanted One Nation and United Australia Party. They got 0. Labor got 51% of seats, from less than 33% of votes. The LNP is actually the most fairly-represented party, getting 39% of seats from 36% of votes.
My preference is a proportional system. Probably MMP, to keep local representation, as well as to remove the need for party lists. Rather than the proportional seats being done in party order, I'd do them in "nearest loser" order based on their local races. But that's a very niche aspect. The important thing is that it be some form of proportional representation.
A counter-argument could be that our Senate uses STV, which is quasi-proportional. Which is certainly a good thing, and far better than if we didn't have it. But it's still only a rough approximation of proportionality. Labor and the LNP each won 39% of seats, from their 30% and 34% of votes. That equates to 3 or 4 seats too many for Labor, and 1 or 2 too many for the LNP.
But even if it did work perfectly, the fact is that all the attention and most of the power is in the House of Representatives. It can be very disheartening and discouraging for someone engaged politically who doesn't support Labor or the LNP to know that the chances that the candidate they give their vote to will probably not actually get in, and that's not good for civic engagement.
I thought you'd be thinking of MMP - that nearest loser sounds interesting! It does seem to be the road to better representation.
I'm all for change - I think it'd need to be accompanied with plenty of education in the form of AEC ads on tv and online. Not so much the 'how to vote' but more the 'how our system works'. Plenty of people I talk to have no idea about IRV, and consider voting for anything other than libs or Labor "throwing your vote" - which it can totally not be if people are aware of how it works.
Current system gives all regions some chance to have a voice. Otherwise only interests of cities will be considered and interests of outback will not be represented at all.
MMP gives people local representation while still making sure a party with 30% of voters' support doesn't win 51% of seats, resulting in 100% of power.
My 2c, it should be optional at 16; mandatory at 18.
That's already how it works. You never have to register to vote; you can spend you're entire life opting out of the electoral system.
But when you register to vote you've accepted your civic duty to cast your vote everytime. So 16-year-olds would just have the option of starting earlier.
I've gone back and forth on this. I definitely think they should have the option to vote, but I'm not sure whether it should be compulsory or not.
The main problem I have with making it purely optional is that if you didn't, that could create a sort of smaller-scale American-style campaign where the goal isn't to make the best case, but to make your campaign about encouraging your supporters to vote and discouraging those who disagree from voting. Obviously they'd only be doing that for 16 & 17 year-olds, but that could potentially still be a problem. I don't want politicians to have any more incentive than they already do to run shitty negative inflammatory campaigns.
Another potential problem is around voter education. People are really dumb. So many people already have problems understanding how our voting system works. We want to send out a message that's as simple as possible. "Everyone has to vote" is a much simpler message than "16 & 17 year-olds can vote if they want, people aged 18+ must vote."
Always found it funny how I can pay taxes and have a child but can't vote 🤷
Why compulsory and not optional? Is there the same level of opposition to both?
Compulsory is such a good system. It doesn't take long. It's on a weekend so it's not inconvenient. You get a sausage at the sausage sizzle and you do your vote. There's a real holiday atmosphere. And it produces much more representative results. Brexit wouldn't have happened if they had compulsory voting so there's no denying it's valuable.
"you get a sausage at the sausage sizzle" is going to be my phrase of the week, thank you!
So you're saying we should be Straya?
To be clear, I am asking why the "push" is for compulsory and not optional, given there is likely to be stronger opposition to the former. Either will give a voice to those who want one, but on paper optional would seem to be a more realistic goal and therefore makes more sense to advocate for. Advocating for compulsory kind of feels like letting perfect be the enemy of good, so to speak.
Why not start them off in the way you mean to continue? It's not like there are any significant downsides.
Increased opposition is a significant downside.
Changing the voting age is one change, but making voting non compulsory for some voters starts to get messy. It would also be an easy thing for a government to tweak to reduce youth voter turnout by shifting that number around.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
At 16, you can learn to drive, open a bank account, get a job, pay taxes, be on the Organ Donor Register, and apply to join the army.
"We saw a massive amount of young people heading to the streets protesting, talking to their local MPs, posting on social media [about issues at the time]," she says.
Analysis of the 2022 federal election undertaken by the Australian National University shows that young people are drifting away from the major parties.
But apart from the Greens and a few independents, political parties today are coy about whether they support the concept of lowering the voting age.
The federal Labor government doesn't have a position on allowing 16-year-olds to vote, but Minister for Youth Anne Aly told the ABC it was important for young people to be engaged in politics as it had an effect on their lives.
Fifty-one years ago, Australia's voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 by Gough Whitlam, the Labor prime minister at the time, with bipartisan support.
The original article contains 817 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I don't support giving a 16 year old that we literally do not trust to drive voting rights. Sorry not sorry. You all know damn well 16 year olds are a goddamn pile of running hormones with no real life experience.
Again, you don't trust this person to give sexual consent but they can make policy?
And yes they are exceptions and adults dumb as rocks, it doesn't mean you should add more clueless teens to the mix. Now don't at me and get off my lawn.
We do trust 16 year olds to begin learning to drive though.
I would be completely open to the idea that at 16 you have the right and option to vote, but voting is not compulsory until you turn 18.
That way 16 year olds who aren't interested or ready or comfortable placing a vote don't have to, but those that are already politically active, interested and informed about voting can do so.
Across the whole there really isn't that much developmental difference between 16 and 18, there's a pretty big cross over between the more "responsible" 16 year olds and the "irresponsible" 18 year olds. I know that's not really an argument, but the fact is that many 16 year olds are just as informed, and just as responsible as the rest of the voting public.
Many 16 year olds work and pay taxes, they study in an education system managed by the department, they can begin joining the army, they might be looking at university and signing on for HECS debt before they turn 18 depending on their birth month. These are systems built on policies by parties that these young people had no say in, and it directly effects them.
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you don't trust this person to give sexual consent
Umm, age of consent in at least most of Australia (I only checked the 3 most populous states, and all of them matched) is 16.
From what I've seen of adults, I have no reason to believe the average adult is any more aware or any less susceptible to lies than 16 year-olds.
I trust politically interested 16-year-olds more than I do politically apathetic septuagenarians.
There first needs to be someone who is votable. Its always a selection of shitty choices. Its not a choice if no one produces improvements for the populus
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