Newsgroups: aus.politics
Subject: Re: Some US observations (was compulsory voting)
From: mjp@itd.dsto.gov.au
Date: 9 Nov 92 12:05:45 CST
Distribution: aus

suter@fawlty8.eng.monash.edu.au (Mr D. Suter) writes:

David,
	in your attempts to make out that we have dogma
problems, you demonstrate how dogmatic you yourself are.

>In article <tas.720988268@tasman> tas@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (Tas van.Ommen) writes:
>>
>>and that he would be alarmed if some people were forced to vote.  This
>>is subtle indeed - it sounds rational, but underneath is the premise
>>that *I* know what is best for the poor and uneducated.  It smacks
> *******************************************************
>>of paternalism.  It is anyone's right to vote with as little or as
> ************** 
>>much thought as they desire.  It is the challenge of our leaders and
>>media to inform people about political matters.
>>
>When you try to have it both ways, i.e. make a paternalistic
>argument for forcing the non-voters to vote and THEN criticise
>those alarmed at the increased noise this generates as paternalistic:

There is a big difference between making a system compulsory
so it includes people, so they in general have a choice and
making every decision for them. Things aren't black and
white, you can have it both ways.

>1) I agree anyone has the right to vote without having to qualify
>based on  an assessment of how much thought those people have put in. 
>Such has never been suggested by me or anyone else. The
>crucial point is whether they should be FORCED to vote if THEY themselves
>recognise that they haven't good reason to vote.
You are looking at this from the soley individual view, and
from a one time snapshot view rather than looking at the
long term effects of non-attendance.

>2) To say that there are social inequities in the US and to say that
>the US has non-compulsory voting does not establish a causal relationship.
>Those people that suggest our compulsory voting system is the difference
>between us and the nasties of US society are plainly wrong (listening
>Phil). In Victoria (which I think you will all agree has compulsory
>voting) we have just elected a Liberal govt that the VERY SAME people
>who are claiming this causal relationship are labelling further
>right than Attila the Hun. You simnply can't have it both ways in
>this respect either.

Firstly, there is no contradiction here because you are not
taking the long term view. How long will kennet remain in
power? I firmly believe that voters diserve what they get if
elected under a fair and equitable system. In the case of
Vic most people who swung to Kennet did so because they
percieved him to be the better alternative to what was
perseved to be a no hope govt. Most people with any
political nause would have known he had a hidden agenda,
and now everyone does. Wether he survives till the next
election has yet to be seen, and it is up to other parties
to provide a viable alternative for that election.
Your argument is very poor if you wish to look only at one
offs rather than long term trends.


>I simply can't understand how we have come to the situation where
>as soon as someone paints a certain postiion as opressing the poor
>we instantaneously throw logic out of the window and dismiss
>any further need to justify a causal relationship and FACTUAL
>evidence to support that claim. The politically correct police
>seem to dictate the very principles of logic in this day and age.
>All one has to do is to mention your support for poor, black, gay, 
>women, disabled, whales, trees (preferably in the same sentence),
>the crimes the US has committed against the same, and the 
>fact that your proposed policy differs from that of the US, and your
>position is instantaneously unassailable.

Yes it is by your logic. You also assume that we are all
trying to be pious and nice to people. Sure I'd like to be
nice to people, but my whole argument about why we support
the poor/disenfranchised etc etc. is not merely because of
ultruism but self interest. Ok I might be able to fuck them
over for a while and maybe I will have much benifit in doing
so in the short term. In the longterm, however, I don't
believe doing so will benifit me because it will curtail my
freedoms (threat of violence) and leave to country overall
less competative and adaptive. Dam it, I want everyone to be
able to contribute to this country's wellbeing and therefore
my own.

>Yesterday, Phil told us that compulsory voting has solved completely
                                                           ****
>the problems disadvantaged groups have in being considered by the Governement
You are putting words in people's mouths again David, trying
to say we claim things are perfect/100% we don't we just say
thay are substantially better.

>(obviously John Halfpenny has yet to hear) becuase it ensures they
>all vote and therefore ensures that the governement has to take notice
>of them (almost his exact words). He also claims the poor
They will, but not for 4 years, the Govt is gambling on that
fact. In fact David, the unions you so dispise are a perfect
example of what is wrong with optional voting.
>representation of Blacks, Women, Gays, Hispanics in the US is
>due to non-compulsory voting. Now Britain has had non-compulsory voting
>and has had a women leader - have we? No I forgot, conservative
But how many women does it have in parliament, how many as a
proportion? How many black MPs, how many openly gay MPs?
Does the UK have a history of women as leaders? You can not
profer an exception to the rule and say this shows that no
disenfranchisation happens. I was wrong about the US there
are now 6 female senators. (I thought 5 or 7).

You have yet to show how that the optional attendance
process does not produce structural or systematic
discrimination. I have not argued our system is perferct, in
fact I have heavily critisised our electoral process for
being disproportionate and geography centric. 


>women leaders don't count becuase you can't mention support
>for blacks, gays, trees, women etc in the same breath. Besides which, she
>was obviously unrepresentative becuase you can't mention
>these things in the same breath.
You are again rewriting peoples arguments. Margaret Thatcher
does count, as does Bronwyn Bishop (who I have previously
counted). Nor am I saying that compolsory voting solves all
those problems. There is structural discrimination against
women in the party preselection process. Not all are equal
e.g. The ALP has an affirmative action policy about getting
women onto some or all of thier internal structures (25%)
but only 1% of safe seats are preselected to women. Because
the ALP's internal structure is stronly hierachical it will
take some time for the women to trickle through in numbers.
The Democrats have no affirmative action policy, but
candidates are selected by postal plebacide. The democrats
record has been that since it's creation in 1977 the number
of females in all positions in parliament has been about 50%
sometimes more sometimes less. There was no protection for
Janet Powell as leader simply because she was a woman.
I do know know enough about the Liberal parties internal
processes to comment.

Nor will electoral reform alone solve problems with gay,
racial or gender discrimination. But freeing up the system
to be less biased will certainly help. Gays and Lesbians for
instance have very different problems from most minority
groups because they are not necessarily visable.

>We hear the the number of elected
>US people in these groups (well, cut out the Gays, whales and trees -
>I didn't see figures on those) has doubled this election. Couldn't
>have happened since the US doesn't have compulsory voting now
>could it? This US election CLEARLY demonstrates that democracy works
No, it shows that despite the problems some progress will be
made. That doesn't excuse the system at all. And it is still
very disproportionate. 

>in the US at least as well as it works here. The difference in the
>social justice situation (usually magnified) are due more
>to historical and cultural factors than voting methods. As much
>as you may not like the Thatcher/Bush regimes they were popularly
>elected in a democratic fashion (same as Kennett here). Compulsory
No, Thatcher was elected under a first past the post system
that was biased to single parties as opposed to coalitions,
that was not the case with Kennet. Kennet has more standing
than she did for those reasons. Often more voted against her
than for her.  Certainly cultural
factors to play a big role, but to what extent are those
factors influenced and perpetuated by the electoral system.

>voting makes no measurable difference either way. The only differece
>is that here we "mask" the apathy/undecided vote becuase it makes
>some of us feel better to say 49% support our governement rather
>than 25% support our government, 12% support the opposition and
>the rest are undecided/apathetic. We can then kid ourselves that
>our government is more representative.
Actually I think only 44% of people (may have been 46%)
voted for ALP directly last time round, yet they still have
a majority in the reps. So much for that house being the
representative house, what a joke. I agree that compulsion masks the
undecided vote, but I still think this distortion is lesser
than the distortions introduced by optional attendance. Also
the undecideds tend to cancel each other out or vote
informal.

Michael
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Newsgroups: aus.politics