Your third paragraph was glorious
Iâd never thought of that. Disenfranchised possibly isnât the right term, but thatâs semantics.
I suppose my personal view would be citizenship = voting rights (and this is for all countries, not just ANZ)âŚso they could certainly apply for them, although whether theyâd wish to renounce their existing citizenship makes that all murky.
Being ordered to sing the anthem or recite the Pledge of Allegiance (which I was required to do every day in school, yes) is a very different thing than being asked to give your opinion. What Obamaâs saying is that so few people in America bother to give their opinion at the polls that moneyed interests have an advantage. So, no, choosing not to give your opinion is simply inaction and helps nobody (except yourself, if you want to get another ten minutes of Xbox in or something).
One of the major improvements to the Democratic process in English speaking nations would be the demise of Rupert Murdoch.
There is any number of reason for people to lose their citizenship. People are incredibly mobile now. Iâm not sure this is keeping up with reality, the citizenship = voting connection.
The major part of Australiaâs voting isnât weighted, itâs simply preferential. i.e. Lower House representatives still need to win a majority in a given seat to take the seat. In theory a party can win 49% of the first preference nationwide and still not take a single seat (in practice that would be utterly improbable). The preferential system simply means you can vote for a minor party, knowing that providing you rank Lesser of Two Evils Major Party above Utterly Evil Major Party your vote is not âwastedâ even if the minor party doesnât win a seat. In practice, very few minor parties (except the Nationals that form part of the formal conservative coalition) ever win any seats in the lower house; so its still pretty much a two party system.
The upperhouse is a confusing combination of a preference and weighted system, and here minor parties do actually play an important role very frequently; in fact this system is highly criticised for giving extremely minor parties a fairly major say, as they often become the âbalance of powerâ. Our last election saw a bloke called Ricky Muir from the Motoring Enthusiasts Party win a seat with less than 0.5% of the primary vote, due to strange preference deals. He now wields considerable power, but thankfully turned out to be a pretty decent guy who seems to care about more than the right to drive big cars.
To reply to this thread in general: as a spoiled white female living in a benign democracy (Australia), have long been vaguely against mandatory voting. Suspect that view would rapidly change if I was, say, a black person or otherwise disenfranchised or minority living in a military or malign dictatorship.
However, as others have said, what we actually have here is more mandatory attendance at a voting station, presuming youâre registered to vote. Once youâve had your name marked off at the voting station, youâre pretty much free to leave your ballot paper/s unmarked, make a donkey vote, sketch random doodles, or whatever.
As for the mandatory attendance issue, my understanding is the only way to avoid that is to not register in the first place. Or get kicked off the electoral roll at some point later.
In contrast to my (admittedly weak) anti-mandatory voting stance, it kind of mindboggles me that evidently less than half of all eligible voters in the USA do so, then see decisions made for them by people with a voice thatâs far from a majority. Which also contrasts with me being increasingly repulsed and fucked-off about politicians in power here who have long hidden behind lines such as âwe were given a clear mandate by the Australian peopleâ to justify unpopular, unethical or downright evil decisions (for example, refugee children in detention, âturning back the boatsâ, etc etc)
A couple of weeks ago, I actually had renewed enthusiasm for electoral politics, because in Greece, SYRIZA, a coalition of radical left groups, won the government, on an anti-austerity platform. Immediately after the election, their approval ratings were very high â better than 80%, if I recall correctly.
A few weeks later, and the Greek government is planning to continue austerity measures.
Iâve seen similar things from close at hand. Once, I had a roommate, who was the campaign manager for a candidate for city council, who had impressive credentials as a political activist and as progressive a platform as you could hope for. For instance, she started her campaign with speeches criticizing the police and calling for a reduction in the number of police officers. Later in the campaign, she was at press conferences with all the other candidates, pledging to hire more police.
The mayor of Oakland who ordered (or agreed to, really) the police crackdown on Occupy Oakland had been a radical political activist in the 60s.
Thereâs just too many episodes that demonstrate that people with the best intentions in the world to bring about meaningful change through electoral politics will, when elected, do exactly the same shit as everyone else in office, just their speeches will sound a little better. Bourgeois republics are not new phenomena â thereâs a âcultureâ to them, thatâs developed over centuries. They place enormous pressures on politicians to conform to standard practices. And as best I can imagine, politicians are vigorously swimming against the current and imagine theyâre making desperately slow progress, when in fact theyâre not making any progress at all.
Bring it.
Itâll be time for a fucking street party, on every street. Ding-dong, the witch is dead.
I expect this is because you have to play by the systems rules to get anything done.
In Oxford we used to have some city councillors from the IWCA. Eventually the last remaining councillor announced that he wasnât running in the next council election, saying he âcouldnât stand on peopleâs doorsteps any more, telling them we were going to change things when that wasnât going to happen.â. All the places where the IWCA got in have labour councillors again.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
