How does one "Not Vote" in a Country with Compulsory Voting... Legally?

Adelaide, Australia
December 10, 2015 5:50am CST
What do you do in a situation where it seems there is no way out? Here, in a Federal Election, it's compulsory to vote if you are over the age of 18... Elections in my state work a little differently. It's not compulsory to register to vote, but once you have done so, it then becomes compulsory to vote! Each state is a little different in this aspect, which makes it interesting! Failure to vote will incur a financial penalty, so if you don't want to contribute to a system that you don't support... you will support it by not voting. I know other countries are working up to elections as we write, but there's nothing further from the thoughts of most Aussies at this time. We are currently reasoning why we'd have the slightest bit of enthusiasm for the whole system when we watch elected leader after elected leader just get knifed by their own party so as to give us a new leader we didn't vote for! All of this aside, I was quite relieved some time ago when I discovered I had a Constitutional Right to display my complete disapproval of the vast array of pathetic + dangerous parties & individuals on each ballot paper, in this, the most politically over-represented country on earth! What was even more surprising is that too few know how to go about this & even fewer exercise this. So, before we lose any more of our rights, we'd better pull together & start using them... because it's true what they say that when you don't use it, you lose it! Now, the first point is important. You need to bring along your own black ballpoint pen to the booth. Just a regular one. Actually, bring at least two, just in case. The pencils they provide you with can easily be erased! On the front of the page, draw two diagonal lines across with about two centimeters between them, just as you would across a bank cheque, to mark it "Not Negotiable"... remember having to do that? Within those two lines, print clearly in block capitals, "None of these Candidates Suit my Requirements"! Should just 42% of the votes in any electorate be counted to be marked thus, then the Governor General (the Queen of England's representative here), is required to dismiss every candidate & call a new election or by-election with a whole new set of candidates. This process continues until the electorate (or more!) votes for the listed candidates in satisfactory numbers. The more people who practice this, the more hope we have of taking back control of our country!
2 people like this
3 responses
2 Nov 17
I had not voted til September 2017, because I wasn't enrolled. Shame! I newly enrolled last September to participate in the SSM plebiscite as my Constitutional right and freedom to vote 'NO'. Liberals, Coalition Nationals, Family First, Australian Conservatives, I realized have keen eye for conservative values and national security. Labor and Greens lost my trust and are sentenced under "None of these Candidates Suit my Requirements" crosslines! :-)
1 person likes this
• Adelaide, Australia
2 Nov 17
I discovered a lot of things I had never dreamed would be possible within our system after following a Constitutional Lawyer with generations of experience. Well worth looking into all this.
1 person likes this
2 Nov 17
@veganbliss May I know how do you go about finding and learning from this Constitutional lawyer?
1 person likes this
• Adelaide, Australia
3 Nov 17
@everwonderwhy Like all good things... by accident My wife found a post on Facebook (I'm not on Facebook) one day just before a federal election.
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@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
10 Dec 15
In my view, whether voting is compulsory or not, it is still the duty of everyone eligible to vote to do so. If you don't vote because you do not agree with any of the candidates, your non-vote is not statistically recorded anywhere. On the other hand, if you spoil your paper (as you suggest here - the actual method and wording doesn't matter, so long as the paper is invalid) the fact that you voted but spoiled the paper HAS to be counted and recorded.
1 person likes this
• Adelaide, Australia
10 Dec 15
Fair enough. Voting is/was a privilege hard fought for. Have you heard of anything similar under British Common Law? You're right that the paper thus marked & submitted Must be counted & recorded, thereby avoiding a fine. And the pen avoids the vote being changed. It's my understanding that there are specific rules surrounding the classification of a spoiled paper. One such spoiling could be labelled a "donkey vote". It's my argument that a paper with the specific wording I mentioned initially Must be counted as having this wording & accumulated until it reaches the point where the law compels our GG to act upon it. Until such a percentage is reached, once all has been counted/sorted, it can be discarded for the purpose of determining the outcome, but still recorded for the purposes of statistics (which can create problems!). I believe this was included / allowed for to help ensure elections were not hijacked by The Money Power nor Corporations nor any other power with an agenda by stacking their candidates. I reckon that if such an event happened, The Establishment has ways of quickly reducing / manipulating the population in such an electorate to ensure (?) a favourable outcome for them.
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
10 Dec 15
@veganbliss British law doesn't make voting compulsory and nor do I think it ever will, at least in the near future. I believe that the criteria will only specify what a valid paper is, rather than what counts as a spoiled paper, so that anything which is not valid is 'spoiled', regardless of anything written on it. I have never worked on an election count, however, so I cannot say for sure but I cannot see that any specific method of spoiling would be counted any differently. If I were you, I would contact your elected representative (either national or local council) for his or her opinion ... oh, I forgot! YOU didn't elect a representative, did you!
• Adelaide, Australia
10 Dec 15
@owlwings I haven't actually put this into practice, but have it from a lawyer specializing in this area. Local council elections are not compulsory here & typically have a voter turnout of less than 30%! My father was on the local council for a decade. Never actually did anything that benefited the people at all, except attend unproductive meetings & annual Christmas parties. But I will take you up on that one & see how it goes
@boiboing (13153)
• Northampton, England
10 Dec 15
Sounds like a perfect way to create more cost in running extra elections without actually causing any positive change to the system.
• Adelaide, Australia
10 Dec 15
A fair point. Isn't "not causing positive change" much better than implementing policies that do damage, negatively impact on the well-being of the people, or killing them off because the 1% & those who serve them wish for a dramatic population reduction? We need to remember that it is the system, however costly it is to get it right, that serves the people & not the other way around. It seems to me that an element has been built into our system allowing the people to regulate the regulators. An element which has long been ignored.