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[Eric Blank]

Australia is a strange place. Perhaps if the option exists it isnt made clear to the general public.

[scourge728]

Copypasting Unicode Cuneiform stuff doesn't work

[Eric Blank]

You found a cuneiform font? Can i have it?

[scourge728]

No. I found http://unicode.org/charts/ under which you can find cuneiform stuff

[martinuzz]

Are you not allowed to submit an empty ballot if you like? I thought that was an option in all countries with mandatory voting.

We have that option, and voting isn't even mandatory.
There's something something that if 1/3d of all votes are cast to this 'blanco' vote, the elections are declared void, and new elections will be written out.
Not sure how that's supposed to work, as you'd just get new elections for the same parties and same people.
Maybe there's a clause that makes it mandatory for anyone electable in the void elections to commit seppuku, to prevent this from happening. Or it would be a good idea at least, and make for great tv ratings and advertisement income xD

[Reelya]

Are you not allowed to submit an empty ballot if you like? I thought that was an option in all countries with mandatory voting.

Sure you can do that. Once they mark you off the electoral roll, then you're covered for the obligatory part. Nobody manually checks how you filled out your vote.

Looking through this list of candidates (at least it's just a local election) is pretty bleak. There's the Animal Justice Party, which I am unsurprisingly putting at number one (I can't be arsed explaining our strange voting system, to put it simply you number all candidates 1-10), but all of the other options fail to align with my own values very much at all from what I'm reading - and as far as I can gather from what I've read in the past about this arcane voting system, the weight of your vote basically goes to the first candidate in your preferences that would end up with enough votes to win overall.

It's called a better voting system. See Cpgrey's election videos to see why.

The reason it's better is that it doesn't suffer from splitting the vote. e.g. say there was a left-wing guy with 60% support, and a right-wing guy with 40% support, then obviously the left-wing guy should win. However ... say there was also another left-wing guy who's about as popular as the other left-wing guy, e.g. 60% of people like them more than the right-wing guy. Being logical the winner should be either left-wing guy A or left-wing guy B, since those two guys are the most popular candidates. However, that's not what happens. In the First Past The Post system, each left-wing guy only gets 30% and the right-wing guy gets 40%, meaning he's the winner, even though a majority of the population would have preferred literally any other candidate.

e.g. we're running an election where Alex always beats Bob, but if Charlie decides to run as well, suddenly Bob wins. However ... if Alex drops out, and only Charlie is running against Bob, Charlie always beats Bob. The ranked voting system used in Australia avoids this sort of paradoxical thing happening.

[Yoink]

e.g. we're running an election where Alex always beats Bob, but if Charlie decides to run as well, suddenly Bob wins. However ... if Alex drops out, and only Charlie is running against Bob, Charlie always beats Bob. The ranked voting system used in Australia avoids this sort of paradoxical thing happening.

Spoiler: That keeps things more interesting, though. (click to show/hide)

In other news, this is probably the most perfect reaction gif I have ever used and I am incredibly happy right now.
Like, 'tears of joy' happy. 

[Avis-Mergulus]

I am legally required to vote today. Lawd, what a waste of time.

Look on the bright side, you could be like me! I am not required to vote in the presidential election today. In fact, since they removed the minimum turnout to consider the elections passed, my presence isn't even necessary at all! And we have a great list of candidates, to wit:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- former UR millionaire with fake commie backing
- the Zhir, chauvinist clown extraordinaire
- Big P
- Lady Pointless, first female candidate in like forever and a fucking waste of ballot space
- tankie trash
- some sort of Orthodox neocon theocrat looking motherfucker, I don't know
- neolib from the rich people party, hold the chauvinism (maybe?)
- Yabbadon the Armless

So I'm stuck between not going at all, going and wasting the ballot, and voting for the fake commie millionaire. I have maybe... 90 minutes left to decide?

[Yoink]

Vote for tha Big P, obviously!


Current Mild Sad: all these nice landscape paintings at work are making me want to gtfo out of the city and go climb a mountain or some shit. This is one situation where it would be rather handy to have a car.

[redwallzyl]

Vote for tha Big P, obviously!


Current Mild Sad: all these nice landscape paintings at work are making me want to gtfo out of the city and go climb a mountain or some shit. This is one situation where it would be rather handy to have a car.

Abbadon the Armless is sounding pretty great in an ushering in an age of darkness kind of way.

[smjjames]

Wasn’t the female candidate rumored to be Putin’s niece? Or at least the daughter of an oligarch close to Putin.

Her being Putin’s niece most likely isn’t accurate (not sure where I read that rumor though), but she is supposed to be highly connected to Putin in some way or other.

[Maximum Spin]

It's called a better voting system. See Cpgrey's election videos to see why.

The reason it's better is that it doesn't suffer from splitting the vote. e.g. say there was a left-wing guy with 60% support, and a right-wing guy with 40% support, then obviously the left-wing guy should win. However ... say there was also another left-wing guy who's about as popular as the other left-wing guy, e.g. 60% of people like them more than the right-wing guy. Being logical the winner should be either left-wing guy A or left-wing guy B, since those two guys are the most popular candidates. However, that's not what happens. In the First Past The Post system, each left-wing guy only gets 30% and the right-wing guy gets 40%, meaning he's the winner, even though a majority of the population would have preferred literally any other candidate.

e.g. we're running an election where Alex always beats Bob, but if Charlie decides to run as well, suddenly Bob wins. However ... if Alex drops out, and only Charlie is running against Bob, Charlie always beats Bob. The ranked voting system used in Australia avoids this sort of paradoxical thing happening.

It is suddenly necessary that I explain that ranked voting systems are not actually better. They suffer from exactly the same "paradoxical" (which is a funny way to say "mathematically inevitable but people don't understand the mathematics of voting well enough so they get upset") results as any other voting system (because every voting system does; all that's different is the precise conditions required to cause such a result. In fact, because of Arrow's impossibility theorem, all rank-based voting systems necessarily fail in one of three specific and well-defined ways that other voting systems aren't exposed to.

FPTP is not intended to produce the "most popular candidate" in a general sense, it's intended to produce the candidate most people consider best. A and B are not interchangeable, even if they belong to the same party (remember that parties have no legal standing in the US); if only 30% of people think A is the best, and only 30% of people think B is best, while 40% of people think C is best, then C should win the election. I honestly think this is one of the most correct ways for elections to work.

ETA: I felt like illustrating this with this link on why instant runoff is terrible.

[scourge728]

except that makes the majority of people unhappy with the results...
EDIT:And in America, it's possible for the person with the most votes to LOSE due to the stupid electoral college

[deathpunch578]

EDIT:And in America, it's possible for the person with the most votes to LOSE due to the stupid electoral college

good old electoral college, the only reason it exists is because the government thought normal people couldn't handle elections

[Maximum Spin]

good old electoral college, the only reason it exists is because the government thought normal people couldn't handle elections

No, it exists because before the adoption of the Constitution the states were essentially independent entities, and less-populous states refused to ratify unless they could be promised that the big states wouldn't dominate the political process. Back then, you were a New Yorker (say) first and an American second if at all, and you certainly didn't trust the people in those other states to have your state's interests at heart.

Which, uh, I have to say, looks pretty vindicated.