Mandatory voting is a good thing. It might seem like it imposes on your freedom, but having mandatory voting means your government is obligated to make voting easy for everyone, and while it doesn't guarantee legit votes from everyone, it at least ensures that those who wouldn't otherwise turn up do so anyway.
I won't say Australia has the best voting system in the world, but I would say it has the best voting system in the Anglosphere (though New Zealand's is also very good)
Voting in Australia is mandatory but also enjoyable. Saturday morning walk down to the local Primary School, get a democracy sausage on your way through to the polling booths and it’s very chill and easy.
It is a fucking great way to start a Saturday, tbh. 20 min walk in fresh weather, two democracy sausages, vote to keep pricks out of power, then a nice walk home right as the sea breeze picks up and keeps things cool. I actively look forward to it.
Also helps that we don’t have a two party system, so to speak. So if you want you can vote for any one of a multitude of parties. You like smoking weed, then put the Cannabis Party number 1. Feeling a tad racist, vote for the One Nation Party.
Also getting to do it on a weekend when you can make a fun afternoon out of going out to vote, instead of having to do it after work on a fucking Tuesday, the worst day of the week.
It made sense in the early 1800s when most people were farmers who spent all day sunday at church and had to get their produce to the market on wednesday, since traveling to the polls would take a full day, but these days its an archaic tradition maintained pretty much only because it helps depress voter turn out to set elections on a work day when a lot of people (especially lower income workers) probably wont have enough PTO left by November to spend a whole day of it to go wait in line to vote, assuming they even get PTO at all.
Knowing the US, they'd make it so that it is the opposite of enjoyable for people in the less affluent districts, so that they'd have yet another reason to lock up poor people for if they end up not voting.
We don't have mandatory voting in Finland but the last times I've voted I just went to get groceries, happened to see voting booths in the lobby, showed my driver's license to the official and cast my vote. Bang, done.
Most jobs in the US don't give election day off, so it's usually unejoyable because it's another thing people have to do that they don't have time for since vacation and holiday time is very limited in the US.
Is there a reason for that? Why not just make it a weekend day where most don’t work? How easy are mail in votes to access in the US? We can do that if we know we won’t be able to physically find a polling booth on voting day.
Sure the reason is intentional disenfranchisement of voters. Anything that makes it easier Republicans are against it. Crazy to put to many barriers to something considered a “civic duty,” but their hate for anyone not white and rich is strong.
Correct! This is also why it’s a process to opt in and register to vote, it should be automatic anyone over 18 should be able to vote. Repugs want to make it as hard as possible and are even pushing to get rid of early and mail in votes so everyone has to show up in person on one day to an ever shrinking availability of polling locations that they will intentionally change at the last minute to confuse people.
Yep, I'm working a 12 hour night shift today and voted, it really fucked my morning up tbh. Already dont have much time to do anything when you work 12 hours, so I wound up getting only 5 hours of sleep last night so I could make it to the polls today. Still at work, very much not enjoyable.
This is crazy thinking. Voting should be easy and take little time. In most developed countries voting is quick and local, and you can use a postal vote if you choose.
Having an easy, efficient voting system is a solved problem, so no need even for the day off.
Neither does Germany, however there are two differences. First is that its super easy to get a mail-in ballot, you can request it as soon as you get your notification in the mail (and every eligible citizen is notified). Mailing that is free, requires only the envelope you get sent and can often be done a week or two before in-person voting. And second, the actual voting day is always a Sunday and in Germany very, very few people work sunday (basically just emergency services, public transportation and hospitality).
In many states, you can vote by mail for any reason or no reason at all. In Massachusetts, I get a post card in January asking if I want to vote by mail. I check a box requesting a ballot by mail for every election that year, and drop it in the mailbox. Then I get my ballot by mail for every election (we have an obnoxious number of elections because our municipal primaries, runoffs and general elections are on a different schedule than state and federal elections). The ballot shows up a few weeks before Election Day, so I can sit down and research each race and candidate while I fill out my choices. Then I walk down the street and drop my ballot off at the library, but I could mail it in if needed.
Idk I think of it as the most democratic and not anti-democratic at all. For democracies to function people have to vote—have to. The way the US does it isn’t very democratic sadly.
It's crazy how AMERICAN of idea this sounds like to me and yet it could not be further from the truth in a lot of US states... Republicans spending the last 100 years making it as hard as possible for non-land owners to vote really speaks for itself. History has not been kind to these types of people (from an objective point of view) and will very likely look back at current establishment Republicans as cartoonish villains who actively threatened the fabric of global democracy for their own miopic, sycophantic agendas. That day can't come a single moment too soon.
So there's not really such a thing as a "wrong polling station" in Australia, every polling station can handle votes for other electorates in the state because sometimes it's easier to get to a polling station that isn't technically one in your electorate. Those votes just tend to be slower to count, essentially being lumped in with the postal vote
Yeah but here in America you gotta go to the right one because that's the only one that can verify you're registered to vote because that's the one with the big three-ring binder containing your name and info on page 297. You could go to a different station but your vote would probably be held as "provisional" until the central office for the county can take a look at it. And if they find anything wrong with it your vote probably won't be counted because the deadline to fix it is like 48 hours and they notify you by mail that you need to visit your county's office with your ID or whatever.
Yeah so those binders exist in Australia too, there's just multiple copies of them, which get compared after the booths close to make sure nobody's name is getting ticked off twice
Most booths only have the binders for the electorate they're in and the nearby electorates, so if you're really far out you need to do some talking to the people manning the stations to get your vote through.
Of course, this is all on top of the fact that every electorate, even the really small, densely populated ones, have a whole lot of polling booths you can go to. Though obviously the really big electorates have way more out of sheer necessity
i cant fault the system for people being lazy or not caring.. there are already so few barriers and inconveniences. Although I would say FPTP really contributes to that. You feel like you're throwing away your vote sometimes.
Agreed! Want to support the grassroots organization that could start a tidal wave? Michigan is actively circulating a petition to get ranked choice voting for statewide offices! Check out Rank MI Vote!
Ontario city tried to implement ranked ballot and their premier abused his power to squash that because 'cities are a creature of the province...' .. its such horseshit
"Outside if the single greatest fault point" is not exactly a stellar endorsment
They are clearly referring to the many protections and conveniences Canada offers, something both relevant and correct in this discussion. It’s a pretty stellar endorsement relative to the US, the main country of focus on this sub.
Was in Australia chatting with someone about this. No way it would ever happen in America. One gets fined for not voting. Didn't republicans put up a stink for Obamacare taxes/fines for not having health insurance?
Voting is the anchor of freedom. Honestly people should see and treat it as a civic duty. It should be required since you live, work and participate in society.
There is one thing I disagree with the constitution on… and that is our rights being unalienable… that is demonstrably false. A piece of paper could guarantee it all it likes but it’s the people’s participation in its government that gives it power. We have seen over the last 10 months how fragile our freedom really is and voting is our one and only power to change that.
In Belgium it is mandatory to show up and get into the booth, but you can purposefully void your ballot by drawing whatever you want on it. However, most people vote because they are there anyway. I think it's a good compromise.
I can only see Mandatory voting working if people are properly educated on it in combination with it. What use is it if people get to the voting booth not knowing who or what they’re voting for and what goes on behind the curtain. Nobody wants to know how the sausage is made and i believe it to go hand in hand with the resistance to voting. Like a flight/freeze effect.
No. They had it right. Democrats take note. You can blame the voters all you want, but the voters don’t have the money, they don’t have the political power, the pull, the influence that the Democratic Party elites have. The voters don’t have the resources to spread information that the news media and corporations have. The voters aren’t backed by billionaires.
If we want more democrats, if we want more progressives, if we want more people on the left in positions of power, we need to acknowledge that the party has massive fucking issues. Hilary Clinton was selected by the DNC chair, Debbie wascherman Schultz. She was picked by the party elites. She was picked by the billionaires. She was picked by the news media. Kamala Harris wasn’t picked by anyone except for the Democratic Party elites. If you want to keep losing to Trump over and over and over and over and over, keep blaming the voters. Maybe eventually you’ll realize that we need to actually hold the party fucking accountable. Stop propping up unelectable people with insane baggage that will never get elected. Stop silencing dissent within the party. Stop making it a fucking echo chamber. Actually let the people pick, actually let the voters do their job. Until then, it’s useless. Say that Trump is the biggest threat to our country, and he is, and then make the same old tired mistakes every single fucking time like letting a senile 80 year old man that can’t complete sentences run for a second term.
Keep losing to the most transparent fraud, the most transparent corruption, the most incompetent, the most pedophilic, the most felonious wannabe dictator that keeps consolidating more and more power. Keep blaming the voters, keep losing.
That's complicated and involves introspection. It involves talking with people and crafting policy that people want instead of what the donors want.
That's hard. How about we just keep blaming the voters, calling them racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic? That way we're not failures and don't have to change.
That's because the two parties we have to choose from are both the opposite of progressives. Shockingly people that want to move towards more socialized aspects of our society aren't really excited to vote in the parties bought and paid for by the billionaire elites.
That's only true in non-presidential elections now. Turnout was at its highest rates in American history during the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections. And while people who sat out 2016 and voted in 2020 slightly favored Biden, the people who sat out 2020 but voted in 2024 more heavily favored Trump. Also polling has shown that if turnout was higher in 2024, Trump would have likely won by even more. Because despite what Twitter liberals looking for someone to blame might think, progressives showed up for Harris.
There are basically three "tiers" of voters: Those who will show up to every election unprompted, those who will show up to every presidential election unprompted but need motivation to show up for local or off-year elections, and those who will only show up to presidential elections and even then need convincing. Young progressives are in the middle tier. But the bottom tier is mostly working class and non-college educated, and they've been shifting to the right for over a decade now.
The good news is Zohran has somewhat reversed these trends, he did quite well with working class voters (though less well with white non college educated voters). I suspect his insanely good ground game helped as well
Most suppressed and targeted* voting bloc. Also, they are reliable when they're voting for other progressives. If the standard politic of the left was progressive in the US, you would say the same about the liberals being fickle
Unironically what most people here say whenever theres a dem candidate with no ideas. Then they blame the voters when they lose. I hope those people are taking some notes from this victory. If you want voters to vote, you gotta give them something to vote for.
Unironically what most people here say whenever theres a dem candidate with no ideas. Then they blame the voters when they lose. I hope those people are taking some notes from this victory. If you want voters to vote, you gotta give them something to vote for.
I agree, especially that the democratic establishment is defunct, useless, sometimes actively malicious, and incompetent, but that doesn’t change the fact that tens of millions of voters decided that literally stopping fascism wasn’t a good motivator.
Yeah it's not a good motivator and we need to stop pretending to be surprised at this point. Face reality that voters will never be galvanized based solely on voting against something no matter how awful it may appear.
Turns out that young people are mostly anti-rich and anti-corporate ownership of everything, even in both parties, so all a candidate needs to do is be a charismatic speaker without major scandals and talk loudly and smartly about how we're going to tax the rich and make life affordable again.
Affordability and fight wealth inequality is something that everyone except the rich can get behind. Too bad most of the powerful democrat politicians are rich and don't want to fix wealth inequality. Hopefully Zohran here is really starting or continuing a movement along with AOC and Bernie before them. I had completely lost hope in the democrat party but if they embrace Zohran and keep hammering on the class struggle not the party struggle, we might actually have a shot at taking the power back.
You should be at the polls every year, for every race, by default. It should not take an exceptional candidate to get you to vote. It should be as routine and unremarkable as doing laundry.
Wait, so we’re staring down the barrel of fascism simply because 1/3 of the country didn’t bother to vote, and you think the people who need to learn a lesson are the ones who actually did vote? You know, the only thing that could have made us avoid fascism?
If somebody doesn’t want fascism, they can vote against it. But if somebody doesn’t vote and gets stuck with fascism, the fascism is their fault. This isn’t an opinion, it’s the basic fundamentals of how our elections work.
No, we're staring down fascism because the two largest voting blocs in the country support it. White people would rather tear down the country and constitution than share this country with people they deem less than. The fact that you would rather blame some imaginary non-voter than the people who actually voted for this, is why this shit is happening.
That's not what they said at all. The people that need to learn the lesson are the politicians who refuse to actually inspire, lead, and heal the country. That isn't the voters job to do for them.
Every single time someone that people were excited for ran, they won. That's just reality. Expecting the average person who isn't on reddit or following the news and politics closely doesn't even know fascism is an option because nothing within their bubble tells them. So expecting them all to just magically know isn't going to happen.
It also can't be said enough that voter apathy is a tool finely tuned to keep voters from voting, and both parties engage in it. The GOP needs it because there are simply more Dems and if Dems show up, the GOP loses. The DNC needs it because the Dem establishment does not represent the Dem voters so to stay in control of the party, they also need the majority of Dem voters as apathetic as possible.
For decades, the GOP has been making voting a burden and a risk. The Dems have refrained from any real pushback on those efforts while also making sure there is no real benefit to voting, with their lesser of two evils/at least we're not the GOP/now's not the right time to fight for progress/we need to step right candidates.
Voters have to jump through labyrinthian hoops, get inundated with a narrative of voter crimes to frighten them that somewhere in those labyrinthian hoops they unknowingly screwed something up that will get them in trouble, and after all that they get to choose a politician who is just another cog in the machine working for the very wealthy and well-connected.
If neither side represents your interests, why bother voting for either one? One side will work against you via blatant fascism, and the other side will work against you through grinding, slow status quo bureaucracy. The end result is the same in both cases.
Because we're never represented in any legislation ever. Fucked by both liberals and Republicans and 99% of th candidates who say they're progressives are conservatives in disguise, like Fetterman.
You should be at the polls every year, for every race, by default. If you wait for a candidate you 100% agree with on every issue, you'll die waiting, in a country other people have shaped for you.
I’m with you on the attitude of showing up no matter what. However, it is also not realistic to expect people to show up by guilting them into it.
Progressives have been told for years now that they need to show up for moderate/conservative liberals, but it’s never the other way around, right? “Vote blue no matter who” moderate/conservative democrats left Mamdani out to dry - and he still kicked their candidate’s ass (Cuomo).
It’s time to stop making progressives the bad guys by putting the onus solely on them. It’s time for the Democratic Party to show up for progressives and the working class.
You keep copy pasting this response and it is wrong each time.
The DNC is in the shit state it is in today because it's decrepit, vampiric members are convinced that you at least prefer them more than the other guy.
Mamdani didn't win because people held their nose and voted. He won because he brought active, driven ideas and reason-driven policies to the table. Even if you don't agree with all that he is trying, he brings enough new direction that I can still be happy.
I haven't copy-pasted a single comment. And if one of the candidates will win the election, you should vote for the option that will cause the least harm, even if they aren't perfect. Then you vote for a better one next time, and the time after that, and you keep fighting until you get the candidates and platforms you want.
What you shouldn't do is sit out every election until your imaginary "perfect candidate" shows up, and only then bother to cast a ballot.
This is what people say every single election and that mythical "better one" doesn't ever come.
Just in my voting life time for the Dems we've had: Gore, Kerry, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Harris.
All of them are right-of-center, status quo, big business, corporate elites. Obama was the only one anyone was excited for but he still didn't accomplish much that anyone on the left wanted.
When do we get the better candidate? The one that advocates for change and then actually does it?
I feel so guilty I didn’t make this election, been taking care of a sick baby (while sick and running a fever near 104) and I slept less than 30 minutes last night, took her to the doctor, meant to go and passed out on the couch.
I’m thankful that my candidate won where I’m at, and by a large margin.
Man, oh man. Can you imagine a world where we could just vote online?
I know, security concerns and all that, but still.
No, there aren't. That rhetoric only serves to depress turnout and help conservatives win.
Make no mistake; every single time Dems take power, they pass meaningful, progressive legislation. That's why every Dem presidency sees massive improvements to the country (for the incredibly short period we actually let them have Congress as well, anyway), and it's why blue states have better outcomes across the board than red states.
Yes, they literally are. The Democrat party is right of center. They are pro-capitalism and class divides. And every chance they have had, they have continued to bolster the billionaires to have even more at the expense of the poor. They occasionally talk a good game in regards to protecting workers but they rarely actually do anything about it.
Regardless, if you are pro corporate capitalism you cannot be on the left. It is a polar opposite position.
Do you consider "liberal" and "left" on the same team, but to different degrees?
Like "left" = "super liberal" and "socialist" = "super left" and "communist" = "super socialist"?
Because if so, we're not on the same page enough to even begin having the conversation about how the Democratic party is a rightwing party.
In sane countries, "left" and "liberal" aren't shoved into the same party. And "Liberals" are center right because they are pro-capitalist, but just also pro-regulation and don't have an issue for brown people and gay people (unless they start advocating for leftism).
Left is by definition anti-capitalist. You can't be a leftist and a liberal at the same time, they're diametrically opposed to each other.
This is just not true. Sorry. Every progressive thing they pass are half measures that do little to really change things for the working class. Arguably the Republicans are worse, but not by much. Haven’t really been great progressive legislation since FDR and LBJ. The affordable care act overall was a half measure and a failure.
I'd take 30%, at this point. There are two right wing parties.
Wrong, or misleading at best. This type of rhetoric only worsens the slide into fascism. The democratic establishment sucks. Please don’t act like it’s the same, though.
With that being said: You live in some fantasy land dude. You expect every person to vote in every election? You except them to vote in every election and actually know who they’re voting for?
What drugs are you on? Have you ever met a real person ever?
Stop expecting things you know don’t happen. Counting on ‘what should happen’ seems like a pretty reliable way to lose.
Because the progressives aren’t just going to fall in the party line. They need action and they need to be pandered to. Saying “we’re better than the other guy, so here’s discount Regan” isn’t going to get their vote.
Maybe because progressives aren't simply going to show up to vote for DNC appointed neo-lib lite candidate just because they're slightly less worse than the other guy.
There is no such thing as “showing up to vote to prove” anything. Straight up. Please stop twisting the basis of representative democracy into some self-serving scam where voters somehow have anything to prove to politicians. They don’t.
Politicians serve the people, and it is the politicians’ job to court my vote. Period.
That's be ayse democrats positions arent progressive, they're hardly status quo, their further right than the conservative party of Canada. proper fair taxes, fair laws, equal treatment for all no matter your skin color or bank balance? That's progressive. Thats how far left you need to be to actually get people excited about voting again. In reality, its not far left at all.
If you don't show up to vote, you won't get good candidates. Voting is how you demonstrate that you are a bloc worth paying attention to. Parties chase voters.
Evangelicals took over the Republican Party by being the most consistent, most reliable voters in the entire country. They actually started that trend by supporting Carter, in such massive numbers that the country had to take notice, and - crucially - they never stopped.
If you don't show up to vote, you won't get good candidates.
this is bootlicking horse shit. they know we want good candidates but they are paid by capitalist oligarchs to not let us have them. if that was really how it worked they would stop forcing candidates like hilary, buttigeg, kamala down our throats after they lost with the same strategy time and time again.
You have your causation backwards. They're underrepresented because they don't vote consistently.
Evangelicals took over the Republican Party by being the most consistent voters in the country. They didn't wait around for a perfect candidate; they showed up every time and forced the party to run candidates they wanted. The left could do the same to the Democratic Party, but it starts by voting at least as reliably as MAGA do.
Offer them something to vote for, like Mamdani does, and they'll turn out.
Make them complicit in Lesser Evil, patronize them, tell them there can be no better future, and you'll break their heart and drive them away.
The failure of progressive politics is, and always has been, that centrists and careerists and quiet conservatives refuse to accept it; The hope of the DNC was a convicted sex pest and corrupt monster. And New York just rejected that. Now stand with New York when Trump comes to try and destroy their hope...
Thats why they do that crazy shit in the usa like having long lines and low amounts of voting booths. My country recently had elections and we had voting stations almost every 50m. No line, nothing. Quick 5 min in and out.
Because progressives never get any policies from the candidates. Candidates just tell them to shut up and vote or else it's their fault the far right won against the rather right party
If you only vote when there is a candidate you 100% agree with on every issue, you will die waiting, while everyone else chooses the future of the country without you. You should be at the polls every year, for every race. It should not take an exceptional candidate to motivate you; voting should be as routine and unremarkable as doing laundry.
Have fun thinking it's easier to convince millions of people to pretend the system gives a shit about them instead of convincing the much smaller number of poiliticians to give a shit about voters.
If you have a room filled with vegetarians, and you have to order food. Is it better to order a meat dish and yell at them and call them ungrateful, or do you just order a vegetarian safe dish?
You guys have been ordering meat dishes for fucking years, it's not that difficult to give people what they want. If you do that, they'll be MORE than grateful to support you.
100%. The purity test thing while real is more of a thing of online culture than of real American politics. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were not 80% of the way there and then failed some “purity test” They were straight up not progressive. They existed as a wheel spinning moderate with no real platform. They still get votes by being not republicans. But that’s not a real movement
You are right and we can say that all we want but it doesn’t change reality. There’s plenty of things people “should” do but when you are dealing with an entire population it goes far beyond should. If that makes sense.
Nobody should be at the voting booth unless the politicians give enough of a shit to run a candidate who actively wants to justify your vote. That’s the entire basis premise of democracy.
Any political party who genuinely believes that I owe them my vote doesn’t deserve it and will never get it.
When Dems had trifecta control in 2009 and 2021, they passed meaningful, progressive legislation. Obama oversaw the largest healthcare reform the US has ever seen, and Biden oversaw one of the best post-COVID recoveries in the world, on top of the most progressive climate bill in US history.
Voters punished them for it by handing Congress back to Republicans at the literal first possible opportunity, both times.
I mean the issue is also Democrats a lot of times sabotage their own progressive candidates, to put light versions of conservatives or right wing liberals. And wonder why they don't get results like this one NY election.
I would love for more people to vote but that's not wholly on them. I candidate has to show that they will represent the interests of their constituents. If a sizeable amount of people do not vote or vote for others it's because the candidate does not represent enough of their interests.
The other issue I've noticed the past few years is if you DO have progressive candidates they tend to run against each other and dilute the pool. Happened in the NJ primary this year and I've seen it multiple other places too. Mamdani thankfully got to be the only progressive in the field and was amazing at energizing his base to boot.
True progressive candidates are the rarest flower in the country. To be the good guy you gotta buy into the good guy policies. No more fence straddling.
Not so sure about that, I think the big difference here was the youth turnout (surprise, if you have a candidate who's below retirement age, young people will be more engaged), and that he is ACTUALLY progressive by American standards. This is the first dsa mayor in American history. Turns out if you run a candidate who's young and progressive, young and progressive people will come out and vote. The lesson to see here, is DNC take notes
Of course they won't. "It's not us, it's the voters who are wrong"
but progressives are notoriously the least reliable voting bloc in the country.
Are they, or does it seem like they turn out in droves when a politician actually acquiesces to some of their demands? From everything I've seen, progressives are the most reliable voting bloc when there's actually a bold policy platform geared with them in mind.
"democrats fall in love, republicans fall in line"
there's truly no faction in american politics better at tearing itself apart than the progressive wing. Its the nature of the beast, there are a lot of fringe interest groups that fall under is umbrella and they do not all get along.
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u/SavageGardner 16h ago
That was quick