Australians All Let Us Rejoice...

[tielan]

So, here's the thing.

About a month ago, our conservative party made a deal with the right wing racists in the state of Western Australia.

Traditionally, the conservative party and the rural party play ball with each other, but the rural party has been grumpy with the conservatives for being too "city-liberal", so they're having a stoush. So the conservatives said to the right wing racists, "Hey, it looks like the UK and the US are getting right-wing racist happy, so we'll climb into bed with you for the state election in Western Australia and when we kick the centrist, left wing, and rural parties, there'll be orgasms all round okay?"

And the right wing racists were happy as hell to get legitimacy from the conservatives going into the WA election, so they said (in an accent much like Steve Irwin's) "Yes, orgasms all round!"

Does this sound in any way familiar?

Well, here's what happened last night in the Western Australia election.

The conservatives (Liberal Party) were pretty much routed. The right wing racists (One Nation) got their usual percentage of small-minded racist voters and may get a single seat in the Upper House, but the centrist party (Labor) gained a bunch of seats in both houses and has leadership of the state.

There are factors, of course - conservatives have been in power for 8 years and done crap-all, and Western Australia benefited exceedingly from the mining boom of the 00s, and early 10s, but is struggling more now, which generally turns into a switch in government.

And, of course, there's the mandatory voting.

Every person in Western Australia who was eligible to vote and down on the voting rolls, voted.

There was no "get out the vote", no people telling other people that they couldn't vote or lying about which day they should vote, no weird ID laws, nobody screeching about how people were voting twice. Voting was on a Saturday from 8am to 6pm so retail workers could still vote, at a multitude of public polling stations, including churches, schools, and town hall buildings. There was almost certainly democracy sausage at more than a couple of those polling places. Undoubtedly whole trees were handed out telling people how they should vote - including by the Greens (enviornmental/left-wing).

What this does is that it actually makes people:

• stop thinking of themselves as too precious to vote for anything less than someone who perfectly represents them,
• choose their priorities, instead of ceding it to other people,
• take an interest in what the parties are actually proposing across the board, instead of picking a single theme and running with it

It also means what you get is a pretty good snapshot of the electorate at that moment in time. And while the reasons people are voting for one party or another differ ("I like their policy on refugees, but I dislike their policy on environmental terrorism") you can get an idea of what's in the wind, and how people feel about things.

I know that people think mandatory voting is undemocratic. Or unfree. Or unfair. Or something. But I'd rather have everyone take part with no evasions of responsibility ("I didn't vote for Republican Prez, 45 - I didn't vote at all - so it's not my fault!") and know that, yes, this is the majority will of every Australian who's been registered to vote, than have my vote co-opted because some nutjob can screech louder, or convince my neighbour that I'm a Chink and I'm here to steal her job (which she's not qualified for anyway, because she can't even run a fish and chippie, let alone program a business services application), seduce her son, and corrupt her 'Aussie way of life'.

Australia has never been "great". In fact we've been downright awful lately - in particular, to refugees, to the point where the UN is trying to rap us across the knuckles for denying human rights.

But DAYUM, Australia, this morning, you are a great place to be living and a citizen of.

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Congratulations!

[tielan]

We are much relieved, let me tell you!

[kuwdora]

i have a friend who has worked for Tourism Australia for years now and every time she tells me about the sausage parties and mandatory voting, i just marvel. when it shouldn't be something that i marvel at.

♥ australia

[tielan]

Look, we have our share of shits and buggery, but I have never ever been so grateful for mandatory voting as in the last ten years, watching America scramble to get people out to vote - not to mention all the stuff about voter suppression, voter ID, etc.

...I just realised. We don't even have to show a licence or photo ID to vote. We go in, tell them our name, our address, and are given a slip of paper. I have not once been asked for voter ID. Not. Once.

I'm suddenly even more grateful for our system. (And possibly also for our national cynicism about politics and power.)

[kuwdora]

The US has 50 states and therefore has 50 states worth of differing voting laws. It's why international observers can't actually observe US elections because of the lack of uniformity in the way we are allowed to cast ballots.

so fucked up.

I'm a bit drunk right now but I'm having all these memory anger flashbacks in which in my home state of Wisconsin I know of elderly people who can't vote because the state has stopped accepting state IDs b/c elderly often don't have valid driver's licenses anymore.

[tielan]

...okay, I think I kind of vaguely maybe knew this on some not-quite-conscious level but WHAT THE FUCK?

Your voting laws aren't even across the board for a federal election? (Actually, in all honesty, I don't know if ours are, but I've never heard different... Wait, they are! We have the Australia Electoral Commission, whose purpose is to:

Maintain an impartial and independent electoral system for eligible voters through active electoral roll management, efficient delivery of polling services and targeted education and public awareness programs.

~ Functions Of The AEC ~

Of course, managing 25 million people is somewhat easier than managing 320 million, but...wow.

And now I'm trying to remember what happens with elderly voters who a) might not be able to get out to vote, b) might not be sufficiently cogent to cast a vote.

[kuwdora]

again, I'm drunk right now but I'm pretty sure Oregon is the only state that allows every single person to vote by mail right now. takes a bit of googling to confirm. but yes. each state has it's own voting and voting ID rules. Republicans have gerrymandered the shit out of districts for decades now but voter ID laws have become more problematic in the last few years due to the restrictions republicans have put into place on early voting and same-day registration. Ballotpedia has some good resources, I think that begins to dissect the fuckery going on.

there's so many stories and anecdotes about the shit that goes down in the US regarding voting. For instance, some states have not allowed college students to vote in their districts because they don't live in the district year round, only for school.

Federal appeals court could reinstate Wisconsin's early voting limits

here's another story: A Black Man Brought 3 Forms of ID to the Polls in Wisconsin. He Still Couldn’t Vote.

the stories are endless due to every state's differences'. and this is just about voting.

[tielan]

Such a scattered approach just boggles my brain.

In Australia, you register in one electorate and you vote there. When the electoral rolls are checked (because your name is marked off when you receive your ballot papers), if there are repeat votes by the same person then they warn you or you receive a fine or something...

[alexseanchai]

I know that people think mandatory voting is undemocratic. Or unfree. Or unfair. Or something.

Is there a "none of the above" option in every race? If yes, then surely people who don't want to vote at all could turn in a ballot marked "none of the above" for all the races? Which would solve the "unfree" and "unfair" objections, surely, and as for "undemocratic", surely that word better describes anything that results in fewer voters voting!

[tielan]

You can "donkey vote". What that means is you go to the polling place, you get your name marked off, you receive your ballot, and you cast an invalid vote.

That is you:
a) deface the ballot paper,
b) do not mark the ballot paper at all,
c) mark the ballot paper as though voting, but not in the prescribed manner.

And then you put your slip in the box and walk out of the polling place.

You're free to cast an invalid vote as a protest (and I absolutely have in my younger days), but you must go to the polling place and check your name off as having attended the polls. At that point, it's found, most people vote anyway. I don't remember the specific numbers, but once they have the slips of paper in hand, it's something like over 90% of Australians mark the ballot correctly to cast a valid vote.

[alexseanchai]

*nod*

Point is, it's not the "voting" that's being compelled here, it's the "going to a polling place and signing you've been there", and that's no less democratic or fair than compelling one to be licensed to operate an automobile in order to actually operate an automobile. :)

[tielan]

A good point.

While typing up my last reply, I did wonder whether more people would abstain if they just had to go up and get their name marked off, as compared to receiving the ballot and then having to put it in the ballot box (as compared to having a bin right there which people could toss the ballot into).

[copracat]

Last night I just flipped on ABC to see if Anthony Green had called it and ended up WTFing my way around the living room texting all my politics friends.

What a night.

[tielan]

It's a little more reassuring, in all honesty.

Now if only I could persuade my electorate that 'economic rationalism' shouldn't trump 'being decent to other human beings'...

[monanotlisa]

I am good with mandatory voting. There's plenty of historical precedent for unregulated capitalist nations as cesspools of misery; I'd rather have a more regulated democracy than kleptocratic fascism.

[tielan]

Americans (and capitalists generally) have this weird idea that things self-regulate for the best outcome for everything. Which I simply do not get, because: HUMANITY. ASSHOLES. SELFISHNESS.

So, yeah, I'm exceedingly grateful for mandatory voting - and never more so than watching the last 8 years of American 'democracy' at play.

[thothmes]

Over here, of course, WA is the postal abbreviation for Washington (State), so for a moment there, I was wondering what event had occurred there that you would be writing about. Given the kind of news the US fans been generating since November, it was pretty much guaranteed to be bad.

What a surprise and relief to find that it was a Western Australia, and that your compatriots have done you proud. Congrats!

Mandatory voting sounds like a very good idea, but I doubt it will ever be enacted over here, firstly because "It's my right not to vote, and you can't make me!", likely backed up by the ACLU, but in reality because even if we could overcome that hurdle, the Republicans know that demographic trend would doom them, as the white males they cater to become the minority, and soon. I can't see it becoming law without the buy in of both major parties.

Sigh.

[tielan]

Sometimes I think Americans are far too fixated on their own rights and not enough on their responsibilities to their country and society - unless it's also self-serving and self-aggrandising.

I have no idea how we ended up with mandatory voting, but boy am I glad that we did.

[thothmes]

Some Americans are, and they are vocal about it.

Then again, often the rights that a people are not vocal about, they lose. It's a big enough and a diverse enough country that there is always a group that cares passionately about any issue.

That said, remember too that we have an all volunteer military even though there is an expectation that service may include combat and all the dangers and suffering that may entail. Americans volunteer in their communities in large numbers. We are not a nation of Templeton the Rats.

I think that our diversity is our strength. We bring a vast wealth of ideas, backgrounds, and viewpoints to the table, but it is also probably a reason why we sometimes have trouble pulling in harness. Unlike, say, the Japanese, who have a relatively homogeneous society with many common goals, Americans have a vast number of cultures, goals, and societies within. I live in a small state, and on our scale government can make more sense and deal with problems as they come up on a human scale. Next to us is New York, a big state, and the must be more hard core, bureaucratic, and inflexible in order to be fair. Scale up to the Federal level, and it becomes nightmarish to get everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction.

There is some truth in what you say, but it misses some very positive civic engagement too.