While the heading is too broad I thought I’d keep in on hopes that the thread would take off on those general topics rather than three separate threads.

I’m becoming more frustrated and disillusioned with the American political system. Some think that the system is on the cusp of realignment, a few think that the realignment has started and and it would seem that most aren’t sure of anything.

Undoubtedly, being in the middle of it seems to narrow the perspective no matter the circumstance. AussieGunWrier’s comparison of AU and the USA piqued my curiosity to know a bit more.

Based on that post your election participation is quite different than ours. Is compulsory the right term? Is there a penalty for not voting? Do you typically have a high voter turnout? How do voting and elections play out for you guys? I’m left with the opinion that your countrymen take a more active role rather than resorting to yapping as a primary mode of participation.

Yes, in Australia compulsory is the right word. There is a fine for not voting - it is seen as a civic duty, not a privilege.

Voter turnout is typically >95%.

Elections are held for local government (shire/county), state and federal (national). Federal voting is managed by a body specifically setup to run it - the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). The AEC sets electoral distributions (no gerrymandering), preparing and running the election, counting and declaring the successful candidates.
The winning party is those with the majority in the lower house (or at least enough to form government), with the role of US President split between the leader of the lower house (Prime Minister - from English traditions that the ministers of the King were led by the Primary Minister), and the Governor General (the notional representative of the sovereign - Queen Elizabeth II in this case).
The Majority voting system is used, with both voter preferences, and party preferences playing out to narrow down in a single runoff the most votes for a certain candidate. This leads to a predominantly two-party system of government.

https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Federal_Elections/2019/files/19-1201-fe19-fastfacts-A3-poster.pdf



The differences between federal elections for compulsory and non-compulsory voting is interesting.

With non-compulsory voting (USA or UK) the politicking emphasis in the leadup to the election is campaigning to ensure that your supporters all turn out to vote, especially in swing (or marginal) areas. Another by-product is that politics tends to be extreme, very polarised between left and right - the electoral distribution is like a dumbell (heavy on the extremes, light in the middle).

With compulsory voting, the electoral distribution is more of a typical bell curve, heavy in the middle, light on the extremes. As a result, politicking is aimed at the swing (non-aligned) voters in marginal areas because you know that your 'true believers' are going to be there anyway.

Voter fraud is almost non-existent (less than 0.2%). What is normal is Donkey voting - casting an invalid (informal) vote which is about 5% of all votes cast.

Disputes are referred to the High Court sitting in it's original jurisdiction as the Court of Disputed Returns.

Voting systems other than Preferential are worth considering; Hare-Clark, First Past the Post, Mixed Member Proportional Representation, etc. as they increase the number of independents - which can be a good balance to two-party government which becomes a dynastic mindset.

Here we might see as low as ten percent turnout. The sheriff has to track people down to get them to show up for jury duty.

Active apathy?

Basically the perfect term for it. A lot of people go out of thier way to avoid civic involvement.

I've been called in for jury duty a couple times, and more people got bench warrants than were in attendance for the roll call both times. So they'd literally prefer to be arrested than participate.

Voter turnout in the county I live in is typically around 60-70% on presidential election years, and 10-30% for other years or primaries.

In my opinion, there is probably a higher voter turnout that actually reported. Bad thing is, voter rolls are so out of date it is sad, or at least where I used to live. I was a precinct committeeman in my county several years ago. I had a list of all registered voters in my precinct and checked them off as they voted. This was during GWB's second Presidential run. If you subtracted all the names on the list that shouldn't have been there (due to moving or death), we had something close to 90% turnout. My sister was still on the list and she had married and moved away 10 years earlier. I don't know if this was an issue in only my county, state, or nation wide. However, I think that was the same year someone discovered there were more registered voters than there were residents in Alexander County. But that could just be an Illinois thing. If you want to see gerrymandering, just look at Illinois past and present voting districts.

I'm not sure how often rolls are updated here, but they do the same thing with checking your name off the list when you vote in the polling place I use.

The population in my county is pretty rapidly diminishing, so I'd still mostly chalk it up to apathy locally. They usually go over election results numbers by county district on the local radio after the state/local races, and the numbers are pretty abysmal during midterms.

My basic thought is that a lot of people fought and died for our right to vote. To just decide not to vote means that you A; are apathetic about who runs the country, or B; Believe those people fought and died so you could exercise your right to not vote. Personally, I believe that if you don't vote you've lost the right to complain about the result. No compulsory voting often means that you get a majority of the extremes from both sides showing up. I always thought that the US was a very politically aware nation.

Compulsory voting just forces the apathetic to vote and maybe it is better to just allow the enthusiastic to vote instead, although more open to counting fraud.

Seems that we only have 2 parties that ever are elected although sometimes there's a coalition to get one of them included.

I'll often vote for one of the smaller shooters or outdoor type parties hoping that at least other like minded will do the same so that at the least the results might give a shake up of the 2 major parties but it never happens.

It's only ever the 2 majpr parties and neither are any good really.

Not quite correct...there is a fine for not appearing and marking your name off the role...there is absolutely no issue with putting an unmarked form in the box.

Or option C: whoever you vote for gets you the same result. If anyone can show me a major deviation in UN policy across any of the 30 x 1st world countries, both political sides in the last 30 years Id be interested to hear it.

As it stands mass immigration, currency sales, moving manufacture offshore, moving services offshore, dissolution of family unit, sales of national assets( and price going through the roof for the next generation), complex bank derivatives screwing the market, civil disarmament and doubling police numbers per captita rolled out ""exactly the same speed across the 1st world" regardless "which side was in."

Or did I miss a sudden turn around on any of these points?

Did nationals give us our guns back, or labour?

Did the increased competition of selling our power grid to multinationals finally result in the promise of reduced costs or is the price still doubling every ten years?

Did we stop trading our real estate on wall street and drop the prices back to where young folk can actually buy a bloody house in the city again?

Did I miss where liberals who are all about business started making our own cars, fridges, textiles, industrial machinery again?

Please remind me where a labour or liberal swap over actually did anything.

Its possible the issue here is my magnifiying glass is just not strong enough and I missed it

Say what you will about the AusNz's, at least they have enough sense to hold Christmas in the summer. Merry Christmas and best wishes to all the old Anzacs down there. Fellow vets, never mind the politicians.

In my town, Chandler AZ (Phoenix suburb) voter turn-out is very low for primaries and "off - year" elections. It pi$$es me off people don't turn out for elections that have a major impact on their lives. The state legislatures, City Council, Mayor, School Board, etcetera no one cares a damn.

We just had a major city bond referendum where about $500 million in bonds for the city were voted on. Voter turn out was less than 20% and every damn bond was approved. Well my fuggin' property taxes are gonna increase substantially because of it. One category for roads was needed, but the other four categories only serve those that don't pay for a damn thing.

That just about sums it up. It seems that when we vote, we are not selecting good candidates, just the lesser of two evils... all the while feeling that just by participating in the charade it serves to encourage the bastards.

What can you do...

Merry Christmas to you too flintlocke. Stuff the politicians and their self serving B/S.

Apologies for the long absence on the thread that I started. Life has been a goat rodeo over the last few weeks.

I appreciate these two posts. It seems that we share the same problems with minor deviations at best. It isn't surprising that the progressive movement is everywhere in the 1st world countries. At 55 I've heard the "vote them out if you don't like their policies" mantra for far too long. It appears that this saying is a lot of hot air everywhere it is muttered. I've also kept waiting for the "Pendulum to swing in the other direction". Trump crudely exposing the uniparty here in the US was the greatest accomplishment of his presidency and maybe the only thing that he needed to accomplish. Do you guys deal with the uniparty phenomenon?

Considering your system in comparison to ours do you feel or see that you have better representation through your political system? What are some of the general complaints of Australians regarding your system?

Same outcome

From afar, allowing non citizens and no ID being required to participate in your voting systems seems rather bizarre? This also seems to clearly favour one party, correct me if I am wrong. Unfortunately the western worlds political class are venal and corrupt nowadays, I include all western countries we’re no better than the locations we disparage each day.

Id say less Australians respect the top job in politics( prime minister) than Americans do with their president. Things happening now have shaken things up but previously your respect for the office of commander in cheif(even if you didnt like the guy) was singular amongst most of the world. A lot of the rest of the world..dont share the same love for the boss you guys do basically.

Before covid, some Australians would be flat out even naming our prime minister. We had so many of them swapping jobs the last few years( their own party deposing them and replacing them with another leader-another difference between Aus and the US) and the whole situation was seen as clownish.

Our prime minsters so closely follow UN mandates, chinese trade and US war politics, its a marvel to see just how flexible someone can be in serving three masters at once.

I don't think Americans quite understand the disdain that Australians hold for politicians and politics.

I think the Covid issue has made it worse. I can barely tolerate the sight of them on TV, yet alone listen to the sh*t that comes out of their lying mouths.

OZ has no (selected) gerrymandered districts as boundaries are set by the Australian Electoral Commission whereas in the US they are set by the GOP and Dems. BIG DIFF!

I think that distain for politicians is pretty universal. Someone said that the trouble with democracy is that you always end up with a politician. But I di sometimes think that many of us take our freedoms for granted. (I realise at this point there may be comments about Covid and gun control ).
But we can, under normal circumstances move around our country freely from one State to another without "papers". We have freedom of assembly and we can deride our leaders as much as we like. Try that in Moscow or Beijing.
Anyone who chooses not to vote should try living in a country where that freedom doesn't exist.

We can "under normal circumstances" move around between states without papers and have freedom of assembly? In other words we only have these rights depending on governments definition of when and what normal is, and when it isnt , we now need papers lol.

Good heavens talk about putting a good spin on things. You take the glass half full philosophy to mean the glass is totally missing but you are still happy you can drink out of the toilet.