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[Dsarker]

Idea- compulsory voting.

[Tellemurius]

Idea- compulsory voting.

If you got to stick a gun to my forehead just so i can give a stupid vote to some idiot politician, chances are im not gonna give a damn whose going into office and would be more worried about my own ass.

[Dsarker]

Idea- compulsory voting.

If you got to stick a gun to my forehead just so i can give a stupid vote to some idiot politician, chances are im not gonna give a damn whose going into office and would be more worried about my own ass.

Nono. Just a simple fine.

[Tellemurius]

Idea- compulsory voting.

If you got to stick a gun to my forehead just so i can give a stupid vote to some idiot politician, chances are im not gonna give a damn whose going into office and would be more worried about my own ass.

Nono. Just a simple fine.

Difference?

[Dsarker]

Idea- compulsory voting.

If you got to stick a gun to my forehead just so i can give a stupid vote to some idiot politician, chances are im not gonna give a damn whose going into office and would be more worried about my own ass.

Nono. Just a simple fine.

Difference?

Heh

But what it does do is it makes everyone's vote equal. Or at least it makes that possible.

Hell, even the Athenians did it. It just means people have an incentive (not losing money) to participate in politics, even at the 'just tick whichever boxes are easiest' level. And if people get used to that, at least some people are going to get interested in the issues when they weren't before, especially if you give people the idea that a vote has value. Won't want to waste it, y'see.

And of course, to get these things set up you'd need to tax the rich bastards a lot...and when you've got it set up and it's relatively cheap, well, why stop?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

As I recall, New Zealand has compulsory voting, and it gives them a 95% turnout.

I would only consider the implementation of compulsory voting if you could choose to show up but mark "abstain" on the actual voting card.

[Tellemurius]

As I recall, New Zealand has compulsory voting, and it gives them a 95% turnout.

I would only consider the implementation of compulsory voting if you could choose to show up but mark "abstain" on the actual voting card.

Meaning you don't want any of them? Surprising my town lets me have that choice for our city and county voting, good ol' Westminster, Colorado.

[Dsarker]

MSH, what about a no-one vote? An imaginary 'third party', which if it got the majority of votes, there would be (say) new candidates picked/the state would have some caretaker senator/whatever it is there? To me it sounds incredibly stupid (partly because I've just gotten home from a uni exam on latin and my head is telling me I should be asleep) but could there be something of value there?

[ECrownofFire]

The write-in spot also works for an abstain

[mainiac]

You live in a representative democracy and you vote for the person in your riding. Why should your vote influence the decision of someone in Texas or California? Just because your state isn't a swing state doesn't mean your vote doesn't count.

I really don't understand how you think that you can have a PR system and keep your local representative without losing the power of your vote.

I don't want to influence the decision of someone in Texas or California.  I want to influence 1 single representative in Washington.

To repeat myself from earlier in the thread.  You vote for a local candidate.  One or more candidates are selected from each district.  If your candidate wins, then yay for you, you have your representative.  If your candidates dont win then you are allowed to have your vote count towards a party's national share.  If a party's national share of the vote is below their share of winning candidates, then their 'at large' candidates are elected.

So say you me and 10 million other people decide to start the dwarf party.  We all vote for dwarf party candidates but we are spread out over the country so only one of our candidates won.  But we expected this, so we told all the dwarf party members to remember to check off support for our candidates at large and we publish the list of those candidates so everyone can see how they are stand up great people who they would want in office.  So after the tallying is done, the vote counters see that we had 5% of the vote but only one of our guys won.  So they start going down our list of candidates at large and adding them to congress until our share of congress is 5%, just like our share of the vote.  These candidates increase the size of congress a little, but that was expected before the country.

Now maybe the republican party had 35% of the vote exactly and won 35% of the elections so they were fine without the proportional system.  But after the vote counters increase the size of congress to accommodate the third parties like the dwarf party, the republicans are now under represented.  Well the answer to that is simple.  The vote counters take the first few names from the republican's at large candidate list and make them representatives at large for the party.  That way at the end of the day, every parties representation in congress is equal to their share of the vote.  The only people who don't get any representatives at all are parties so small that they don't even deserve a single representative.  With a congress the size of the US that means having less then .25% of the vote.  But even they can be accommodated if they agree to pool their votes with other tiny parties.

[Dsarker]

Actually, there is a way of doing it in Australia already. Called a 'donkey' vote. Just don't fill it in correctly, say by marking 0 for every candidate. No one gets the vote.

[kaijyuu]

Yeah "null votes" are necessary in compulsory voting, otherwise people fill in random things, or just check whoever's at the top of the list.

[mainiac]

I am all for compulsory voting myself.  Judgmental know-it-alls (like myself) tend to vote.  Whereas a huge number of people don't vote because they feel like they haven't studied the issue close enough.  Adding someone who is actually worried about making the wrong call to the electorate would do us a world of good.  Obviously you want an option to abstain, but just force people to make a decision, even if it's to abstain.

[Andrew425]

But that way you have people who aren't elected, rather they are chosen by the party.

Where is the accountability in that? What if you only like the leader but dislike the next 10 in line?

[ChairmanPoo]

None of the places you listed fall into the realm of political debate in the american political sphere.

.... what?  I seriously don't understand.  They're things our politics are doing to us, but they're not political issues?

What you said wasn't a governing ideology, it was a vague complaint against bad stuff being bad.  They are non issues politically.  It's like complaining about a doctor who proscribes medicine when you have a fever instead of proscribing that you have a lower temperature.  Then you get a second opinion and he proscribes a different medicine.  Then you bitch about not having any choices.  If there was a third medicine that you are denied by the cruel two doctor system that would be a legitimate complaint.  But what you are asking for is for a doctor to proscribe that you no longer be sick.

No, it's more like having two quacks who prescribe homeopathic remedies while insisting on how good they are, when it's plain they are just sugar pills. Moreover, they refuse to start prescribing anything else.

And you are the guy who stubbornly insists on trying to treat his cancer with that, and shouts at everyone who says that maybe chemo would be better. Guess how the above scenario usually turns out.