A Place of Safety
I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love.
Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving!
We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
















You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > Making your vote count
icon3.gif Making your vote count  [message #65653] Mon, 02 May 2011 06:43
DesDownunder is currently offline  DesDownunder

Likes it here
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Registered: September 2010
Messages: 127



I see that the voting system in the UK is under scrutiny:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/02/3205436.htm?section=justin

What I find interesting is that the Australian preferential voting system is being considered as an alternative to the present first past the post.
Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages, and here in Australia we do have people wanting to return to a first past the post. Mostly these people are from the right wing.

There are a couple of things that need to accompany any voting system and I believe compulsory voting, as we have in OZ, is one of them. Another thing that must be considered is that electoral boundaries must constantly be redrawn. We do this in Oz based on the previous votes in each district booth.

There is also an argument which proposes that multiple member electorates facilitate fairer representation.

I leave the details for you to discuss at your convenience and as you think best. However I will add that the argument favouring compulsory voting seems to be inviolable wherever the democracy is founded on the principle of "no taxation without representation," and where that taxation is also compulsory, it logically follows that so too should the voting.

Of course if the taxation is not compulsory then the voting doesn't have to be either, and I think that would win a landslide vote in its favour; at least until government services ran out of money.

In the mean time it might be wise to examine voting systems around the world to see what should not be considered as well as those that do offer viable variations of electoral equality.

And the best of British luck to you all.



DesDownunder

Call me naive if you want, but life without trust in the goodness of others would be intolerable.

Religious indoctrination: It gets better, without it.
Previous Topic: iomfats seems so different
Next Topic: Today's news is troubling
Goto Forum: