What's the point of democracy if Australians don't understand freedom?

In Australia over 10% of eligible voters are not registered to vote, and over 5% of electors vote informally. This leaves our real voter turnouts below 77%.

In New Zealand only 6% of people are not registered to vote and under 1% vote informally. This leaves their voter turnouts at around 78% – higher than ours. Also, 100% of New Zealand voters vote voluntarily. They vote because they want to vote, not because their government forces them to.

Most democracies in the world do not enforce compulsory voting like we do here in Australia. Enforced compulsory voting is extremely rare. Many other countries with voluntary voting also have higher voter turnouts than we do, including Sweden, Malta, Iceland, and Denmark.

We tend to assume that if Australians are not forced to attend the polls, our voter turnouts will plummet. We think people only vote to avoid a $50 fine.

Some people say ‘compulsory attendance’ reminds us of value of democracy by forcing us to engage with the process. But it does the complete opposite. It encourages people to completely disengage with the free thought process required when one decides to vote. It encourages blind conformity.

Our decision to vote should be democratic. And this democratic choice is an important test of a politician’s ability to lead, and motivate people to engage with the process—both physically and mentally. It is easier for leaders to ‘lead’ when they have the force of law behind them, but leading people who are free to choose is not so simple. The electorate can simply switch off.

If voting were voluntary, political leaders would need to inspire the electorate and earn trust. They would need to wake people up, spark people’s imaginations, and motivate the electorate to participate. Compulsory voting doesn’t empower people; it oppresses them.

On polling day, if we simply do nothing we can be fined. And if we continue to do nothing we can be jailed. They punish us for doing absolutely nothing, and nothing wrong. They steal our freedom away to teach us the value of freedom. The trouble is, their version of freedom is not really freedom at all.

Of course, freedom cannot be mandatory because then it ceases to be freedom. And Australians have learnt this lesson very well. We have learnt the lesson that in Australia, freedom is not freedom. Freedom doesn’t exist.

In the absence of freedom, we have come to assume that government is the answer to all our problems. The individual is not capable of growing, learning, or changing; only government intervention can save the day. If we gamble, drink, smoke, or don’t vote, it’s not our fault – it’s the government’s fault. It’s all the government’s fault. The government is like the puppet master and we’re the puppets – unthinking, irresponsible, pawns. Helpless victims living under the all-powerful (god-like) force of government.

If voting were voluntary people would come to learn the true value and meaning of democracy, which is freedom, because our leaders would need to promote this, in order to win votes. And if they can’t, better leaders would emerge to take their place. Real leaders. Democratic leaders.

Under voluntary voting, Australia’s real voter turnouts could rise to the levels of New Zealand, Sweden, Malta, Denmark, or Iceland. More importantly, we would have 100% voluntary turnouts, far higher than our current levels.

The Australian spirit will shine more brightly under a free electoral system, so in this instance we should fall into line with the rest of the democratic world and reintroduce voluntary voting. All that is required is a vote in parliament. No constitutional change or referendum.

The sooner we realize the true meaning of democracy, and the true value of freedom, the sooner all of our lives will grow and flourish, because we will begin to reclaim decisions that have been stolen from us. We will become more accountable to ourselves, and our own lives.

Any nation who believes freedom can and should be mandatory, doesn’t understand what democratic freedom is, and that may be even more tragic than not being free in the first place.

Jason Kent administers the facebook groups Free Our Right To Vote, or Eureka Freedom Rally. (originally posted November 13, 2011 on Menzies House)

Compulsory voting: Why we should be free to vote in Australia

Voting is central to our claim to being a free people. If we are not free to vote, it means we are not free. For example, if we are not free to carry a knife, it doesn’t mean we are not free, it just means we are not free to carry a knife. But if we are not free to vote in favour of carrying a knife, then we are not free – period.

The funny thing about freedom and democracy is that you must believe in the other person’s right to deprive your freedom, in order to support the basic mechanism which provides that freedom in the first place. We must all be free to vote, in order to be free.

In Australia, we are not free to vote. It might sound strange or outrageous, but think of it this way: We are not free to pay tax, we are forced to pay tax; we are not free to follow the road rules, we are forced to follow the road rules; we are not free to comply with the building code, and we are not free to vote. It’s that simple.

The purpose of democracy is that we are free to self-rule. As a free people, we are free to choose our own government. Each individual has equal power to have his or her say as to who should lead our nation. We can choose leaders based on their policies, or for whatever reason we like.

When you force people to vote, it influences their decision, dependant on their political or ethical beliefs. For example, some people don’t like to be forced to make a choice, so they vote informally or avoid registering to vote. In Australia, over 5% of people vote informally and over 10% remain unregistered. This drives our voter turnouts lower than many countries where voting is voluntary, including Sweden, Denmark, Malta and Iceland.

Australia has around the 20^th highest voter turnout in the world, but it’s very hard to determine exactly where we sit, because governments tend to pump the figure up to make their countries look more democratic.

So what can you do to get more people to vote? Well, the political parties have a vested interest in encouraging people to vote. If there is a section of the community who doesn’t vote, it’s in a political party’s best interest to attract them. In this way the political parties are somewhat obligated to sell and promote democracy. They must earn their votes when voting is voluntary.

In Australia people are encouraged to vote by force. The government fines us for not voting, and can even jail us if we don’t pay the fine. The trouble is, this means we are no longer free to vote, and it turns people away from the process, because the system is unfair and completely undemocratic.

Some people say ‘we aren’t free to do a lot of things, so what’s the difference with our vote?’ Remember the example: If we are not free to carry a knife, it doesn’t mean we are not free, it just means we are not free to carry a knife. But if we are not free to vote in favour of carrying a knife, then we are not free – period.

People twist this by saying we are free to choose once we enter the polling booth (pick a cell, any cell); and they may be right, but it’s already too late, because for our vote to have meaning it is summed along with the other votes, and unless the people who vote represent the entire population of eligible voters, the results of elections are not representative of the people.

When you force people to vote, it distorts the sample. Some people avoid voting to protest against the coercion, and others avoid registering to vote to maintain and protect their freedom.

If people are free to vote, some people will be more likely to vote, since there will be no reason not to. There will be no reason to avoid registering and no reason to vote informally. If voting were voluntary, our voting rates might actually increase. Either way, the group of people who votes would be a different group of people, or a different sample to the one we use now.

So which group is better - the group who votes because they are forced, or the group who votes voluntarily? Clearly in a democracy it should be the group who votes voluntarily. It should be the people who decide who votes.

Deciding if one votes is as much a part of the voting decision as deciding which party to support. If the government controls our decision to vote, it affects the results of elections by tainting the sample.

The effect of this interference is that elections favour the group who is more likely to conform to the government, than oppose it. Government always wins. This puts upwards pressure on the size of government and the degree of government control, and downwards pressure on individual freedom & liberty.

When we vote, our decision usually comes down to a choice between increasing or decreasing government regulation & control. If we choose to support a carbon tax, NBN, internet filter, media censorship, mining tax, workplace laws, and the like; we are choosing to increase the level of government regulation & control.

There needs to be a balancing force which opposes government control, so that the government doesn’t become ever more powerful. Our government revenue as a percentage of GDP has almost doubled since the sixties and it continues to rise. We call ourselves a nanny state now, but it keeps getting worse.

“Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.” W. Somerset Maugham.

If we are not free to vote, we are not free. It really is that simple.

Jason Kent is a free member of the Facebook groups “Free Our Right To Vote” and “Eureka Freedom Rally” (originally posted October 5 2011 on Menzies House)

Compulsory voting: Motivating The Base & Australia's Electoral Fraud

If you have ever spent any time in America during a presidential election campaign, you might have noticed talk of the Democrats or Republicans needing to motivate the base. 

Since voting is voluntary in the US, like it is in almost every other developed nation in the world, political parties need to make sure that not only the swinging voters vote for them, but that even their regular supporters come out and vote.

In Australia, there is no need for political parties to motivate the basebecause voting is compulsory. Unlike, German, Swedish, English, Portuguese, Japanese, Irish, French, Canadian, New Zealand, and almost every other democratic people, Australians are not permitted to make this important decision for themselves. And the government won’t let us forget it either. 

Prior to the recent NSW state election the then government advertised far and wide that “Voting Is Compulsory”. The ALP used the NSW Electoral Commission to bombard us with the threat that not “voting” incurs a $50 fine. 

So with this helping hand from government, Australian political parties have been free to focus all their efforts on persuading undecided or swinging voters, rather than motivating the base.

In countries where voting is the decision of the people and not the government, the swinging voters are not the most powerful group; and in many cases they relegate themselves, by their own free choice, to being the least influential group.

Under voluntary voting, commonly known as a free electoral system ordemocracy, political parties need to target not only the swinging voters but also the swaying voters - those members of a party’s regular supporter base who might not show up on polling day. 

Consider the different influence these two systems have on the parties’ marketing strategies. For the Liberals to attract a swinging voter (the undecided who lie at the centre of the political spectrum) they need to playdown their Liberalness and appear more moderate. Yet in a free electoral system for the Liberals to attract the swaying Liberal voters, they may need to play up their Liberalness. And the same goes for Labor.

Under a free electoral system, the political parties must target two distinctly different groups, while under a compulsory system, both major parties target the same group. Therefore, under voluntary voting the marketing messages of the two major parties necessarily diverge, while under a compulsory system the messages converge.

When the messages of the major parties converge, the decision as to whom to support becomes a far more difficult one for many voters to make. Some people have trouble telling the difference between the two major parties’ ideologies already, without the centralizing affect of Compulsory Voting. 

It leads to confusion, mistrust, and frustration; which produces the very type of political apathy that Compulsory Voting claims to correct. 

And just because we have higher than average voter turnouts in Australia, it doesn’t mean that people are any more engaged with politics, or passionate, or anything. Compulsory Voting merely hides so-called political apathy, and our higher voter turnouts are nothing more than a government-manufacture fraud. 

In any case, Malta, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Luxemburg, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Greece, Venezuela, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Norway, and Romania all have relatively high voter turnouts, above 80%, under voluntary voting.

So what of the people who don’t vote? How is their opinion represented? Well, maybe the question should be, how is their opinion not represented? Their opinion was to choose either both or neither party in equal measure. They basically split the difference and hedged their bets placing the same amount on both sides. For the swinging voter that lies at the centre of the political spectrum, there could be some logic in abstaining.

But whether you like their perceived decision of indecision or not, you cannot deny that it is their decision. And it should be their decision andtheir decision alone. Not yours. Not mine. And certainly not the government’s. When the government makes our decision to vote for us we have a case of the tail wagging the dog. 

If people are capable of deciding whom to vote for then they are certainly capable of deciding if they vote.

The idea that freedom, or democracy, can or should be mandatory, is absurd. It represents a blatant political deception that sees Australians punished for doing nothing wrong and hurting no one. Punished for something that isn’t illegal almost anywhere else in the world.

Further, while both major parties are trying to attract the same narrowly defined group of undecided swinging voters, the standard of the political debate suffers. The majors can’t afford to look either too left or too right wing, so they keep their heads down and leave the people in the dark.

The confusion created by this leads to uninformed voters making potentially poor voting decisions for themselves and the nation.

Voluntary voting would allow the parties to present themselves more like they really are, and speak directly to their supporter base, instead of hiding behind the façade of centrality. And let’s hope it remains a façade, because if both parties ever really did own the centre ground, we’d be in big trouble. 

It would be great if the parties needed to remind people they have the power and the freedom to choose, because that’s what living in a free democratic society is all about. Forcing people to the polling booth to exercise their freedom under threats of fines and jail terms (for not paying) sends the completely wrong message. It suggests that somehow we owe the government thanks for our freedom since they are the ones who fine us for not using it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our freedom does not belong to the government and it is not their place to say how or if we use it. It is our freedom, and exercising it should be ourchoice. This freedom should belong to us, like it belongs to people in almost every other democracy in the world. We should own our decision to vote.

Under a free democratic system the electorate would become better equipped to make an informed choice, instead of filing into the pooling booth like donkeys to avoid a fine. Is it any wonder that for the second time in recent decades, we find ourselves in the second term of the worst government in Australia’s history? 

Freedom is the heart of the Australian spirit but this is being slowly eroded by socialism. At a time when our governments should be getting better, the sum of our two-party-system is at an all time low. And what hope is there for a political party trying to sell the ideology of individual freedom & liberty, under a system in which freedom is mandatory? Our very concept of freedom is lost at sea, drowning in an ocean of socialist lies, deception, and confusion.

Of the top 70 nations, by GDP per capita, only three enforce Compulsory Voting. And there has been a trend away from it with Italy, Spain, Venezuela, the Netherlands, Austria, and the US State of Georgia, all having abolished Compulsory Voting. Why is Australia so out of step?

In 1996 the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report recommended that Compulsory Voting should be repealed. Unfortunately, the ALP and Democrat members of the committee did not support the recommendation. And as recently as 2010, Julia Gillard said that her favorite aspect of the Australian political system was Compulsory Voting. Thankfully some ex-Labor ministers have recently come out in support of voluntary voting, so maybe the tide is turning. 

Jason Kent is a member of the Facebook groups “Free Our Right To Vote” and “Eureka Freedom Rally. (originally posted July 23 2011 on Menzies House)