Pre Poll Voting - Should it stay or go?

[Fire]

Australians should be proud that out electoral commission allows this, as well as a host of other initiatives to make voting as accessible as possible.

There are prominent democracies which are trying to suppress their own voters.

 

[iluvparis]

Hard to argue something that makes it easier for people to vote is not a positive.

 

[burge13]

I postal voted for no other reason than it's easier but given the election is a couple weeks away it begs the question why can we vote before all the info is out?

That's because everyone, including the parties themselves know they won't keep their promises so what difference does it make it we have all the info now.

I'd also suggest a high majority of postal votes donkey vote, or have decided who they're voting long before it happens (life long liberal/labor etc). It probably shouldn't be allowed but I don't think it should be compulsory to begin with so you can gauge my enthusiasm for it from that...

 

[Admiral Byng]

Absolutely should stay as it is.

Most people already have a clear idea who they are going to vote for before the actual election day anyhow. I don't buy the argument that there could be some major shift during the campaign that would change the outcome. If there is then parties need to get smarter the way they lauch their campaigns make their policy announcements - it is they who need to shift and adapt to what the people are doing - not the other way around.

 

[Freo Big Fella]

Hard to argue something that makes it easier for people to vote is not a positive.

This.

AEC deserves a lot of credit for how well they facilitate it, particularly in this neck of the woods: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-06/remote-polling-underway-in-australias-biggest-seat/11079272.

 

[Northalives]

Our voting system is miles better than any other place on the planet and right at the heart of it, is compulsory voting.

If we were to give away this guarantee of democracy, then just think how easy it would be to make it nigh near impossible for people living in far flung places on this vast continent by some mongrel saying "it's just too expensive" and other mongrels agreeing.

 

[Pessimistic]

Anything which arises during a campaign (Im thinking Tampa here) is likely to be 'tricky' anyway. I'm not buying it

 

[HurleyHepsHird]

It should stay, but a two week window does seem more appropriate.

 

[Forward Press]

The Australian Electoral Commission and how they run elections should be used as a model for the rest of the world. I mean, without an impartial body like that we would have issues such as:

- Voter disenfranchisment and voter suppression (ID requirements, stripping prisoners of the right to vote, polling booths being sparse in poorer areas etc)
- Gerrymandering (where electorate boundaries are drawn by the governments and not independent bodies)
- Undue influence on elections by parties (both political and foreign) and corporate interests

Obviously I am comparing us to the USA but the instant that our electoral body becomes compromised by party politics is the first step to the death of democracy. We've got it good here imo.

 

[The Speaker]

The Australian Electoral Commission and how they run elections should be used as a model for the rest of the world. I mean, without an impartial body like that we would have issues such as:

- Voter disenfranchisment and voter suppression (ID requirements, stripping prisoners of the right to vote, polling booths being sparse in poorer areas etc)
- Gerrymandering (where electorate boundaries are drawn by the governments and not independent bodies)
- Undue influence on elections by parties (both political and foreign) and corporate interests

Obviously I am comparing us to the USA but the instant that our electoral body becomes compromised by party politics is the first step to the death of democracy. We've got it good here imo.

The US system is astonishingly bad.

 

[HurleyHepsHird]

The Australian Electoral Commission and how they run elections should be used as a model for the rest of the world. I mean, without an impartial body like that we would have issues such as:

- Voter disenfranchisment and voter suppression (ID requirements, stripping prisoners of the right to vote, polling booths being sparse in poorer areas etc)
- Gerrymandering (where electorate boundaries are drawn by the governments and not independent bodies)
- Undue influence on elections by parties (both political and foreign) and corporate interests

Obviously I am comparing us to the USA but the instant that our electoral body becomes compromised by party politics is the first step to the death of democracy. We've got it good here imo.

Without a doubt Australian elections are some of the best run in the world, right down to ballot design.

 

[HurleyHepsHird]

The US system is astonishingly bad.

It's a system built around maximising exclusion.

People have to remember that voter disenfranchisement isn't new. Yes all countries that have Democratic elections were at some point exclusionary, but the US system of government wasn't originally designed with voting in mind and when it was thrust upon them, the idea was absolutely to entrench voting rights amongst a very small group of wealthy landowners for as long as possible.

 

[Northalives]

The Australian Electoral Commission and how they run elections should be used as a model for the rest of the world. I mean, without an impartial body like that we would have issues such as:

- Voter disenfranchisment and voter suppression (ID requirements, stripping prisoners of the right to vote, polling booths being sparse in poorer areas etc)
- Gerrymandering (where electorate boundaries are drawn by the governments and not independent bodies)
- Undue influence on elections by parties (both political and foreign) and corporate interests

Obviously I am comparing us to the USA but the instant that our electoral body becomes compromised by party politics is the first step to the death of democracy. We've got it good here imo.

Fantastic sentiment but just won't happen because it's in the interests of vested interests to NOT have some people voting eg. USA. but they are by no means the only so called "democracy" that has not much interest in actual democracy. The only way for true, genuine democracy to exist and therefore introduce an AEC type organisation is to have compulsory voting.

What's that I hear in the distance? Why, it's those "every person has a right to own a gun" morons screaming blue murder at having their "democratic freedoms" being taken away in a communist plot by compelling everybody to vote.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Don't mistake the lack of an AEC in America for being the problem. Britain doesn't have an AEC as we'd recognise it either. Republicans, wherever they get power (state, local), deliberately making it hard and impossible to vote is the problem. It's not a 'both sides', 'America lol' thing.

 

[GoldenSky]

Lefties complaining about the US voting system and disenfranchisement and yet in Australia, with compulsory voting and high turnout, we have elected more governments of a right-wing persuasion than in the US over the last couple decades.

Lefties always believe there is a magic bullet to their problems...and if it wasn't for pesky right wingers and normal people, they'd be in government.

 

[The Speaker]

Don't mistake the lack of an AEC in America for being the problem. Britain doesn't have an AEC as we'd recognise it either. Republicans, wherever they get power (state, local), deliberately making it hard and impossible to vote is the problem. It's not a 'both sides', 'America lol' thing.

Britain's system would be better with an AEC-esque body.

 

[Northalives]

America's two political parties are right wing and far right wing.

 

[GoldenSky]

America's two political parties are right wing and far right wing.

Not so these days - Dems are loopy far-lefties much worse than Labor here.

But my point was really that Americans have preferred THEIR left wing option much more than we have preferred our left wing option, even though we have such high voting rates...

 

[Northalives]

Not so these days - Dems are loopy far-lefties much worse than Labor here.

But my point was really that Americans have preferred THEIR left wing option much more than we have preferred our left wing option, even though we have such high voting rates...

No. The only loopy people around are those that reckon that that the Democrats are left wing and as for your simplistic take on Australian Political history, I would suggest that you go and do some study on the subject and then you won't embarrass yourself as repeatedly as you do.

Australian Political History is a wee bit more complex and sophisticated than you give it credit for. To begin with, we don't have Presidential elections in this country and never have had regardless of who the leaders of the parties are. We elect political parties to govern not individuals who appoint non elected people to positions of great power.

There is just no comparison between the United States and Australia.

 

[GoldenSky]

Australian Political History is a wee bit more complex and sophisticated than you give it credit for. To begin with, we don't have Presidential elections in this country and never have had regardless of who the leaders of the parties are. We elect political parties to govern not individuals who appoint non elected people to positions of great power.

There is just no comparison between the United States and Australia.

Thanks for the Year 2 political analysis.

Like I said, Americans have swung to their left many many more times than Australians have.

 

[Pie eyed]

Lefties complaining about the US voting system and disenfranchisement and yet in Australia, with compulsory voting and high turnout, we have elected more governments of a right-wing persuasion than in the US over the last couple decades.

Lefties always believe there is a magic bullet to their problems...and if it wasn't for pesky right wingers and normal people, they'd be in government.

ROFL.
You have your thumb in some many other peoples rectums you must be having trouble wiping your own arse.
RWNJ.

Vapid rambling of a jilted follower or are you Tony Abbotts mum?

 

[Baltimore Jack]

America's two political parties are right wing and far right wing.

Yep, they consider someone like Bernie Sanders, who would be in the right faction of the ALP here, a Socialist

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Democrats are centre-left. More centre than left at the top, but I think that's aging out. When people say they're the same as Republicans, they mean Democrats don't want to shut down the American empire either. Hopefully that's what they mean. Because if not, that suggests an ignorance on how different their domestic policies actually are.

 

[tandino]

I think pre-polling is great but I would rather it be a bit shorter to be truthful.

 

[The Speaker]

America's two political parties are right wing and far right wing.

lol