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General Discussion / Re: What is all this national defence guff?
« on: November 26, 2014, 11:52:53 pm »They introduced the secret ballot due to the massive distances between towns and the general lack of education back then and no easy way to collect ballots. Now, fast forward 200+ years when we can talk to people in China in realtime.
The secret ballot is now obsolete. The Electoriao collage should be dissolved.
You're thinking of the electoral college, which is seperate from secret ballots. Secret or nonsecret ballots have no impact on distance or anything. How could they? Secret ballots are just casting your vote without anyone else being able to find out who you voted for.
And they were introduced for a very good reason - you cannot be targeted for intimidation and harassment for who you voted. That kind of voting manipulation was incredibly common and far from making votes less succeptable to manipulation, removing it would make it much easier for intimidation tactics and bullying to manipulate voters. I can't think of a better way of keeping votes as untainted as possible as secret ballots. Secret ballots are incredibly important, getting rid of them is a terrible idea.
And in places like the US or Australia vote manipulation is actually quite rare. I don't deny that it's possible, and that there are some problems with a secret voting system but the benefits hugely outweigh the risks and I cannot agree that the best method for dealing with it is abandoning protections already in place. No system is perfect but it's rare the best way of dealing with that is abandoning it rather than working to refine it. How would we best prevent intimidation and harassment to the same level that secret voting does without it? It's not like just getting the police to deal with it would be as effective. Before secret ballots were introduced in the US harassment was still illegal. The justice system alone couldn't possibly practically remove the possibility of harassment in the same way secret ballots can. Preventing it altogether is better than dealing with it after it's happened.
Incidentally, all other arguments aside, mandatory voting laws in Australia don't actually make voting mandatory. You are not punished for drawing a dick on your voting slip and leaving. All mandatory voting laws do is ensure that everyone actually goes to the booths in the first place, it's not illegal to donkey vote.